The Baltimore Fiddle Fair

Visitors to the Baltimore Fiddle Fair in west Cork will see actor Jeremy Irons play an unusual role on Sunday. The Oscar winner will give his first public performance on the fiddle in the Glebe Gardens Amphitheatre.

"I play the fiddle very badly. Irish fiddle, I can't get my head around. It's very fast, and the rhythms are very difficult for an Anglo to get," Irons told the Irish Independent. The British actor, who has studied with fiddle master Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, lives in the 15th-century Kilcoe Castle (which he had painted pink) near Ballydehob. Asked why he chose pink, Irons said, "It's traditional. ... It will mature and settle." Jeremy Irons won the Academy Award for Best Actor in Reversal of Fortune (1990). In his next film, Appaloosa, a western, he stars opposite Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger and Ed Harris.