Ali Coffey: Entrepreneur in acting
At just 28, she’s emerging as one of the most innovative entrepreneurs in the arts. A casting director and former actor, Ali has been on both sides of the auditioning process, and cannily spotted a gap in the market. She has just single-handedly launched fishpond.ie, a casting database for professional actors. The site is the first of its kind in Ireland; a one-stop shop that allows directors and producers to search through a wealth of talent by just logging on.
She left school at 15, and after answering an ad in the newspaper for an open casting, won a role in the cult film How to Cheat in the Leaving Cert. It was an appropriately maverick first project for someone who had always chafed under the restrictive authority of exams and teachers. “I loved school, but I hated being told what to do,” she says. “It was this great epiphany when I realised that no one could actually make me go.”
Not long after, roles in Hollyoaks and the football drama Dream Team followed. She moved to London and buried herself in hectic filming schedules and the heady lifestyle of a soap actress which, in the case of Dream Team, wasn’t that unlike the glitzy world the show portrayed. “There was a lot of fake tan and diamante. A lot of people in the cast weren’t really acting,” she says.
Despite having established a successful screen career by the time she reached 21, she had decided that acting wasn’t her calling. “I knew I wasn’t going to scale great heights as an actor,” she says of the realisation that prompted her change of heart. “In the end, I wanted to be more in control of what I was doing.”
She grew up with business in her blood, so it’s no surprise that her entrepreneurial streak soon found an outlet. Ali’s family own the Farm restaurant in Dublin and have always had various interests in the hospitality industry. Hotels, bars, restaurants and nightclubs are their stock in trade. Having a team of advisors at hand every time she sits down with her family has proved a huge advantage now that she’s venturing out on her own. She’s never short of advice, or an expert opinion.
See www.fishpond.ie