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"I wanted to confuse the audience because the guy is letting you down through the whole movie," he said.
So Carlyle played Malachy McCourt much more sympathetically in the film, making him less the villain as written by Frank McCourt in his book of the same name. Carlyle's characterization of McCourt's dad walked a fine line between wide-eyed dreamer and deadbeat drunk.
"It's wrong to make this guy the villain," explained the rail-thin Scottish actor with the rolling brogue, decked out on this morning in New York in a black long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans.
"The guy's crime was that he was addicted to alcohol and, as anyone who's been down that road knows, that's a terrible, terrible disease. His second crime is that he couldn't face his responsibilities."
Angela's Ashes, which opens in Edmonton tomorrow, follows an Irish family during the mid-1930s as they flee New York and land in Ireland during a famine. The harrowing tale depicts their Dickensesque existence in the squalor of damp, old Limerick, as recalled by McCourt in the memoirs of his childhood.
"I spoke to Frank for about half an hour. And I don't want to sound ungrateful, but Angela's Ashes the book and Angela's Ashes the film, to me, are two separate entities. As soon as you put anything on film, you gotta change it and alter it in some way in presenting your interpretation of the character," said Carlyle.
"Thankfully, Frank seems happy with my interpretation of the father. But the one thing I took from Frank, was, I asked him, 'How do you feel about your father?' and he said, "I love him ... I still love him,' and that was all I needed to hear, that the kids loved him to the day he died.
"None of them ever had a bad word to say against him. And it's kind of a hard thing to figure, when you see the film."
Carlyle has the chops to carry the complexity of the character, developing the tragically flawed but adored father figure beyond an unemployed, drunken dad cliche.
"In the book and in the screenplay, (I saw him) as three different people," he said, as he recalled preparing the role for screen.
"The one in the morning with the Woodbine (cigarette) and the story, the one in the afternoon with the walks, looking for work and the one at night when he comes home with the smell of whiskey on his breath. And that to me was gold dust."
After watching the film, McCourt called Carlyle's portrait of his dad "brilliant. He has what I say about my father in the book - the odd manner. He has the edge my father had, that sense of danger."
Bringing an edge to the role was what got Carlyle noticed, as he won rave reviews for his poignant portrayal of the psychotic Begbie in Trainspotting.
The versatile actor with the expressive brown eyes has played everything from a druggie to a bus driver to a good-natured police constable. He is currently in theatres as a twisted Bosnian kidnapper in the latest James Bond caper, The World is Not Enough.
But he is perhaps best known as the unemployed welder who forms a group of male strippers in The Full Monty.
It was his Full Monty role the children in Dublin on the set of Angela's Ashes instantly connected him with.
"Aye," he laughed. "Aye, and I did have to do the dance as well for them."
Born the son of a housepainter in Glasgow, Scotland, Carlyle was raised by his father from the age of four. He became a housepainter as well until the acting bug bit at age 21. From regional theatre, he moved up to television and movies, drawing more and more attention for his work, until Trainspotting in 1996 thrust him into public awareness in North America.
"With Trainspotting I knew from Day 1 that there was something kind of special about that film, and on this film (Angela's Ashes) as well," noted Carlyle.
"It's not the happiest piece, but one of the many things (director Alan Parker) has done is to ensure that there's a degree of humour in the story, because it would be very relentless otherwise."