“For her exquisite rendering of a lonely wife aching to be seen and heard” the extraordinary Irish actor Eileen Walsh scooped the Best Actress Award at Tribeca Film Festival this year. The film was Eden, a punchy domestic drama and a festival underdog which touched American audiences in ways they couldn’t have foreseen.

Steve Weinberg from Cinematical described the film as “one of the most honest, touching, and quietly insightful people stories I've seen in quite some time,” and sure enough, the ‘people’ in Eden carry the film with considerable muscle, hoisting a potentially low-key film up to the bright limelight.

It’s a quaint story: the everyday between a married couple in the Irish midlands is becoming agonisingly banal, but neither is prepared to shout out their pain.

“The crux of the problem is that Billy and Breda don’t speak, they don’t argue, they don’t let things out because they’re so frightened of what will come out,” explains Walsh who plays the latter.

These are characters whose two lives boil down to one long process of delay. They are unremarkable, functional creatures who maintain a family with reasonable dignity, but are afraid to demand more.

It’s normal, and we can all relate to it, but is there a place for normal on film?

“Real life is interesting, and for me the challenge with Breda was to make it captivating,” says Walsh.

Her approach involves flourishes that few actors would dare attempt. At the core of Walsh’s attitude to acting is a fiery sense of shamelessness, a willingness to show the world her body in superlatively wretched states.

And it would be fair to say that it’s her striking lack of inhibitions in front of a camera that marks her out from the manicured ruling class of today’s cinema.

But she has a better way of putting it: “It’s my lack of vanity! Obviously we all have it but good actors should have the bravery to accept all the things they hate about themselves.”

“I let my characters come through my eyes. And then what happens to my face happens to my face.”

“If I’m not ashamed of the way I look, then the camera can come as close as it wants and capture real emotion.”

For all the film’s interest in the normal, Walsh’s life strayed far from it during the six-week production. She remembers crying all day at work, a mixture of professional and personal tears, and barely having the time to shake it all off in the evenings, threatened by the daily six o’clock starts.

“But the perk of the job is it’s over in six weeks and you can go on a nice little holiday and get back to normality again.”