Neil Jordan
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| Neil Jordan | |||||||||||
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 Neil Jordan at the German premiere of The Brave One, 2007 |
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| Born | Neil Patrick Jordan February 25, 1950 Sligo, Ireland |
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| Occupation | filmmaker and novelist | ||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | Brenda Rawn (2004 - present) | ||||||||||
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Neil Jordan (born February 25, 1950) is an Academy Award-winning Irish filmmaker and novelist. He received the Academy Award for The Crying Game.
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[edit] Early life
Jordan was born in County Sligo. He was educated at St. Paul's College, Raheny and was raised Catholic. Jordan emerged unscathed from his upbringing, however: "I was brought up a Catholic and was quite religious at one stage in my life, when I was young," Jordan said in a 1999 Salon interview, "but it left me with no scars whatever; it just sort of vanished" [1]. Later, Jordan attended University College Dublin, where he studied Irish history and English literature.
[edit] Work
When John Boorman was filming Excalibur in Ireland, he recruited Jordan as a script consultant, which led to his doing second unit work. His first feature Angel, a tale of a musician caught up in the Troubles, starred Stephen Rea who has subsequently appeared in almost all of Jordan's films to date.
As a writer/director, Jordan has a highly idiosyncratic body of work, ranging from mainstream hits like Interview with the Vampire to commercial failures like We're No Angels to a variety of more personal, low-budget arthouse pictures.
Unconventional sexual relationships are a recurring theme in Jordan's work, and he often finds a sympathetic side to characters audiences would traditionally consider deviant or downright horrifying. His film The Miracle, for instance, followed two characters who struggled to resist a strong, incestuous attraction, while The Crying Game made complicated, likable characters out of an IRA terrorist and a transgender woman. Vampire, like the Anne Rice book it was based on, focused on the intense, intimate interpersonal relationship of two undead men who murder humans nightly (although the pair never have sex, they are clearly lovers of a sort), accompanied by an equally lusty vampire woman who is eternally trapped in the body of a little girl. While Lestat (Tom Cruise) is depicted in an attractive but villainous manner, his partner Louis (Brad Pitt) and the child vampire Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) are meant to capture the audience's sympathy despite their predatory nature.
[edit] Themes
In addition to the unusual sexuality of Jordan's films, he frequently returns to the Troubles of Northern Ireland. The Crying Game and Breakfast on Pluto both concern a transgender character (played by Jaye Davidson and Cillian Murphy, respectively), both concern the Troubles, and both feature frequent Jordan leading man Stephen Rea. The two films, however, are very different, with Crying Game a realistic thriller/romance and Breakfast on Pluto a much more episodic, stylized, darkly comic biography. Jordan also frequently tells stories about children or young people, such The Miracle and The Butcher Boy. While his pictures are most often grounded in reality, he occasionally directs more fantastic or dreamlike films, such as The Company of Wolves, High Spirits, Interview with the Vampire and In Dreams.
[edit] Hollywood
The critical success of Jordan's early pictures led him to Hollywood, where he directed High Spirits and We're No Angels; both were critical and financial disasters. He later returned home to make the more personal The Crying Game. That film was nominated for six Academy Awards. Jordan won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film. Its unexpected success led him back to American studio filmmaking, where he directed Interview with the Vampire. He has not had a major hit since Vampire, although several of his recent films have done well by arthouse standards and have been generally popular with critics.
[edit] Personal life
Despite the unconventional and often non-heterosexual relationships depicted in his films, Jordan himself has been twice married to women and has several children.
He resides primarily in Dublin, Ireland.
[edit] Selected filmography
- Angel (1982)
- The Company of Wolves (1984)
- Mona Lisa (1986)
- High Spirits (1988)
- We're No Angels (1989)
- The Miracle (1990)
- The Crying Game (1992)
- Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)
- Michael Collins (1996)
- The Butcher Boy (1997)
- The End of the Affair (1999)
- In Dreams (1999)
- The Good Thief (2002)
- Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
- The Brave One (2007)
- Ondine (2009)
- Heart Shaped Box (TBA)
- A Killing on Carnival Row (2009)
- Our Lady of the Forest (TBA)
- Borgia (TBA)
[edit] Novels
- Night in Tunisia (1976) - Short stories
- The Past (1980)
- The Dream of a Beast (1983)
- Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994)
- Shade (2005)
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Neil Jordan |
- Neil Jordan's web site
- Neil Jordan at the Internet Movie Database
- Neil Jordan at Allmovie
- Aosdána biographical note
- Interview with Jordan and author Patrick McCabe for Breakfast on Pluto, January 2006.
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