Neil Jordan
(Director)

A respected screenwriter-director, Neil Jordan first established himself as an author of moody, turbulent short stories and novels dealing with passion, sexuality and the changes of the last generation in his native Ireland. About his life growing up in Ireland, he commented, "Ireland is very gray, and it seems like nothing has changed for centuries. The only bits of color were in churches, with statues and gaudy religious vestments. It was a very insanely Catholic country. And you have an educational system run by celibate men in skirts, which is bizarre in itself. But there's just a sweet irrationality to the whole place."

After enjoying success with his collection of stories A Night in Tunisia and the novel The Past, Jordan began in films as a script consultant on John Boorman's Excalibur (1981). Soon thereafter he directed three impressive British features of his own. Angel (1982, also released as Danny Boy) was an intriguing study of a musician who becomes obsessed with the murder of a mute woman, and The Company of Wolves (1985) was a haunting revamp of the Little Red Riding Hood story. The best known of these films, though, was Mona Lisa (1986), a gritty urban thriller that transformed Bob Hoskins from character actor to leading man and featured Michael Caine. Buoyed by his initial successes, Jordan focused on Hollywood. After the re-edited High Spirits (1988) and We're No Angels (1989), which co-starred Robert De Niro and Sean Penn, proved disappointing, Jordan returned to Britain to work. His The Miracle (1991) proved an interesting take on one of the stories from his Nights in Tunisia collection. In 1992, Jordan's The Crying Game, a film meant for small-channel distribution, parlayed a plot secret about sexual identity into a stunning cultural and commercial success. It earned six Oscar® nominations (winning for Jordan's screenplay) and numerous critics' awards.

The triumphant Jordan returned to Hollywood, where he landed the plum, if daunting, assignment of adapting Anne Rice's bestseller Interview with the Vampire for the big screen. Once he had assembled the cast he wanted (including Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and the controversial choice of Tom Cruise in the role of the vampire Lestat), Jordan found himself with enough box-office insurance to handle his big-budget assignment, for the most part, as he pleased. The result garnered mixed, but generally favorable reviews, also doing quite well at the box office. More impressively, the film proved thematically consistent with Jordan's earlier work, which frequently explores themes Jordan describes as "...impossible passion and, especially, the violence of emotion." In 1996, Jordan returned to Ireland to shoot his next film, Michael Collins, a cherished project for which he had spent more than a decade developing the script. This biopic of the still controversial Irish hero told a story that had taken nearly four decades to get to the screen. Over the years, individuals from John Ford and John Huston to Robert Redford and Kevin Costner had attempted to develop this story based on the life of the Irish Republican Army commander-in-chief. Some reviewers proclaimed that Jordan had proved himself to be the right man for the job. Not surprisingly, controversy ensued as both English and Irish audiences found fault with Jordan's interpretation and condensation of historical events. Controversy also greeted The Butcher Boy (1997), Jordan's version of Patrick McCabe's novel centering on a bright Irish lad who descends into homicidal madness. Many were put off by the boy's visions of the Virgin Mary as a scatological figure (that she was portrayed by singer Sinead O'Connor -- who was noted for her own "issues" with the Catholic Church -- added another layer to the notoriety). Well-acted by youngster Eammon Owens, Fiona Shaw and Interview with the Vampire cast member Stephen Rea (as both Owens' father and the grown-up version of the title character), the film received a mixed response. His follow-up, In Dreams (1999), is the story of a woman who finds she is linked through psychic thoughts to a serial killer.

Elements of whimsy, fantasy, surprise and horror are common in Jordan's films, even in the political thrillers, which stand as some of his finest efforts. At its best, his is a provocative cinema that combines a stylistic freshness with pensive philosophical, social and sexual dimensions. Other recent projects Jordan has directed include The End of the Affair (1999), Not I (2000) and Double Down (2001).