Neil Jordan

Neil Jordan
Jordan at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	Neil Patrick Jordan 25 February 1950 (1950-02-25) Sligo, Ireland
Occupation	Filmmaker/Novelist
Years active	1979–present
Spouse	Brenda Rawn (2004–present)
Website
http://www.neiljordan.com/

Neil Patrick Jordan (born 25 February 1950) is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay) for The Crying Game. He also won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival for The Butcher Boy.

Early life

Jordan was born in County Sligo, the son of Angela (née O'Brien), a painter, and Michael Jordan, a professor. He was educated at St. Paul's College, Raheny. Of his religious background, Jordan said in a 1999 Salon interview: "I was brought up a Catholic and was quite religious at one stage in my life, when I was young. But it left me with no scars whatever; it just sort of vanished." He said about his current beliefs that "God is the greatest imaginary being of all time. Along with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, the invention of God is probably the greatest creation of human thought." Later, Jordan attended University College Dublin, where he studied Irish history and English literature.

Career

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.

Neil Jordan at the German premiere of The Brave One, 2007.

Themes

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. Interview with the 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.

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.

Hollywood

Jordan with Alicja Bachleda-Curus and Colin Farrell at the Ondine premiere, 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

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, which 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: The Vampire Chronicles.

Neil Gaiman announced during his The Today Show appearance on 27 January 2009, that Neil Jordan would be directing the film of his Newbery Medal-winning book The Graveyard Book.

Neil Jordan wrote and directed Ondine (2009), starring Colin Farrell and Alicja Bachleda-Curuś

Neil Jordan's next feature is entitled Broken Dream and will feature Ben Kingsley and John Hurt He will also direct an adaptation of the vampire play "Byzantium", starring Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton.

Personal life

Jordan lives in a house on Sorrento Terrace in Dalkey, which is a part of the larger town of Dún Laoghaire in Ireland.

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)
• The Borgias (TV Series) (2011)
• Byzantium (2012)

Novels

• Night in Tunisia (1976) – Short stories
• The Past (1980)
• The Dream of a Beast (1983)
• Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994)
• Shade (2005)
• Mistaken (2011)

External links

• Neil Jordan's web site
• Neil Jordan at the Internet Movie Database
• Neil Jordan at AllRovi