The Sile Show Ep 4 - John Connors

That’s Not My Business: John Connors on Pain, Practice & Personal Truth

A conversation on faith, fury, and freedom from the roles we never agreed to play.

Acclaimed Irish actor, writer and activist John Connors, joins Síle Uí Chiaráin on The Síle Show, for a conversation that goes far beyond the expected. This is not just about performance or politics — it’s about survival, self-definition, and the quiet radicalism of choosing peace over legacy, and practice over performance.

Connors — who recently won the Seymour Cassel Award for Outstanding Performance at the 2025 Oldenburg International Film Festival for his role in Crazy Love — is known for his unflinching portrayals of complex Irish masculinity (Love/Hate, Cardboard Gangsters), as well as his tireless advocacy for Ireland’s Indigenous ethnic minority community.

But in this conversation, he speaks not as an actor or activist — but as a man who has endured, examined, and evolved.

Raised in the aftermath of deep personal loss — his father died by suicide when John was eight; he later became a carer for his terminally ill mother — he reflects on the long journey from rage to reverence. From inherited pain to chosen faith. From chaos to clarity.

Today, John is a man rooted in his Catholic spirituality, engaged to be married, and unafraid to speak of love, loss, forgiveness, and the sacred discipline of showing up for yourself.


🌿 Themes we explore:
• Healing without needing to be understood
• Faith as a foundation, not a performance
• The difference between lineage and obligation
• Owning identity beyond inherited narratives
• Belief as something that lives in the body
• Why practice is what proves what we truly believe


🕊️ ‘That’s Not My Business”

Written and performed by
Síle Juda Pheadair,
this closing poem reframes boundaries not as separation, but as sovereignty.
A soulful reminder that not everything we inherit is ours to keep — or carry.
This spoken-word offering is a transmission for the soul group: those walking the long way home to themselves.


✨ Invitation for the Week:

Ask yourself —
• What do I believe in?
• Why do I believe it?
• Does it serve me — or simply soothe me?
• What do I practice, that proves it?

Because:
‘Belief without practice is noise.
Practice without alignment is theatre.
And the self you live — becomes the signal you send’

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This episode is a call to remember:
Your story does not begin with pain.
Your belonging is not earned through performance.
And your peace is not up for negotiation.

Some things are sacred.
The rest?
‘That’s not my business’