Local YouTube star appears in newly-released 'Free Guy' movie
Sean McLoughlin, aka Jacksepticeye, is making his first big-screen appearance in Free Guy, an action comedy starring Ryan Reynolds which is released in Irish cinemas today (Friday).
The IMC Cinema in Sean's former home town of Athlone is one of the places showing the film, which was initially expected to be released last December but was postponed due to the pandemic.
Announcing his involvement in Free Guy last year, the YouTube star said: "It's a movie about video games... and who better to have in a movie about video games than the Irish video game man!"
Sean is one of a number of video game 'influencers' that pop up as themselves in the film. A native of Cloghan in Offaly, he lived in Athlone for a number of years and became an international YouTube superstar, with many millions of followers, before moving to the UK in 2017.
On Twitter, yesterday, he wrote that he was looking forward to people having an opportunity to see the film.
And in an interview with the video gaming news site, SVG, he said he really enjoyed being part of it.
"It was really cool. It's different than being in a movie, how people think you would be in it, because we weren't on production sets. We didn't have the director yelling 'action' and things like that," he said.
"We just got to sit in a room and do our thing and talk to our camera the way we always would. And I got to represent myself. I'm not playing like a YouTuber named XYZ. I'm just playing Jacksepticeye as I am.
"So it was very freeing that I just got to be myself. And I felt like that took a lot of the pressure off. So then we didn't have to worry about flubbing any lines. We didn't have to worry about ruining anything or not being able to act or anything like that. I feel like everything kind of came naturally."
Sean is one of the most successful YouTube stars in the world, with more than 27 million subscribers to his channel.
Free Guy is currently being shown in the IMC Cinemas in Athlone and Tullamore. The times can be found on the IMC Cinemas website here.