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Neil Patrick Jordan (born 25 February 1950) is an Irish filmmaker and writer. His short story collection, Night in Tunisia, won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979.Duncan J. Petrie, "Jordan, Neil", Encyclopedia.com.Marianne Brace, "Neil Jordan: the writing game", The Independent, 14 January 1995. After a stint working at RTÉ, he made his directorial debut with the 1982 film Angel.
Jordan's films include the crime thrillers Mona Lisa (1986) and The Crying Game (1992), the horror dramas Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Byzantium (2012), the biopic Michael Collins (1996), the black comedy The Butcher Boy (1997), the Graham Greene adaptation The End of the Affair (1999), the transgender-themed dramedy Breakfast on Pluto (2005), and the psychological thriller Greta (2018). Jordan also created the Showtime Network television series The Borgias (2011–2013) and Sky Atlantic's Riviera (2017–2020).
He is the recipient of numerous accolades for his film work, including an Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, three IFTA Film & Drama Awards, a Golden Lion and a Silver Bear. In 1996, he was honoured with receiving the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Of his religious background, Jordan said in a 1999 Salon Magazine 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 Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, the invention of God is probably the greatest creation of human thought."
He also worked on his own writing. His first book, a collection of short stories, Night in Tunisia, was published by Dublin's Irish Writers Co-operative in 1976. It won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979.
In 1981, when John Boorman was filming Excalibur in Ireland, he recruited Jordan as a "creative associate". A year later, Boorman was executive producer on Jordan's first feature Angel, a tale of a musician caught up in the Troubles. The role was played by Stephen Rea, who has subsequently appeared in almost all of Jordan's films to date.
During the 1980s, Jordan directed films that gained acclaim, including The Company of Wolves and Mona Lisa, both made in England. The Company of Wolves, a dark and sexually themed reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, based on short stories by Angela Carter, became a cult favourite.
As a writer/director, Jordan has a wide variety of to his 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. He was also the driving force behind the cable TV series The Borgias.
Unconventional sexual relationships are a recurring theme in Jordan's work. He often explores a sympathetic side to characters that audiences would traditionally consider deviant or downright horrifying. His film The Miracle, for instance, follows two characters who struggle to resist a strong, incestuous attraction. Interview with the Vampire, like the Anne Rice book it was based on, focused on the intense, intimate relationship of two undead men who murder humans nightly. (Although the pair never have sex, they are clearly lovers of a sort). They are accompanied by an equally complex 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 natures.
In his remake of The End of the Affair, based on the novel by Graham Greene, two people (Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore) engage in a love affair that begins and ends suddenly, with neither wanting its end.
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 are both set during The Troubles, both feature a transgender character (played by Jaye Davidson and Cillian Murphy, respectively), and each has Stephen Rea as leading man. The two films, however, are very different: The Crying Game is a realistic thriller/romance, and Breakfast on Pluto is a much more episodic, stylised, darkly comic biography.
Jordan also frequently makes films exploring the lives of children or young people, such as The Miracle and The Butcher Boy, based on the novel of the same name. His work ranges from films grounded in reality to those of more fantastic or dreamlike quality, such as The Company of Wolves, High Spirits, Interview with the Vampire and In Dreams.
Jordan's early critical success drew him to Hollywood, where he directed High Spirits and We're No Angels; but both were critical and financial disasters.
He later returned to Ireland 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. He also directed the crime drama The Brave One starring Jodie Foster.
Neil Gaiman announced during his Today show appearance on 27 January 2009, that Neil Jordan would be directing the film of his Newbery Medal-winning book The Graveyard Book.Laurie Hertzel. "Gaiman's 'Graveyard' will be a movie, too." Star Tribune. 27 January 2009. Retrieved 1 August 2021. Jordan also wrote and directed the 2009 Irish-made film Ondine, starring Colin Farrell and Alicja Bachleda-Curuś. He also directed Byzantium, an adaptation of the vampire play of the same name starring Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton and Jonny Lee Miller.
In 2011, Jordan's next feature was announced as the later aborted sci-fi romance Broken Dream, which was to have featured Ben Kingsley and John Hurt.
He directed the thriller Greta (2018), starring Isabelle Huppert and Chloë Grace Moretz.
After working on scripts for Riviera, Jordan has disowned the show, because his scripts were reworked by others. He said he had no idea who rewrote these episodes. "They were changed, to my huge surprise and considerable upset. There were various sexual scenes introduced into the story and a lot of very expository dialogue. I objected in the strongest terms possible."
In 1996, Neil Jordan was honoured with receiving the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.Ordre des Arts et des Lettres He has received many honorary doctorates, including from Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and Queen's University Belfast.
In 2009, he signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, calling for his release after he was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.
In 2018, he donated his archives to the National Library of Ireland. Jordan's donation included TV and film scripts, production files, notebooks, storyboards and personal correspondence with artists and political figures.
| 1981 | Traveller | |||
| 1982 | Angel | |||
| 1984 | The Company of Wolves | |||
| 1986 | Mona Lisa | |||
| 1988 | High Spirits | |||
| 1989 | We're No Angels | |||
| 1991 | The Miracle | |||
| 1992 | The Crying Game | |||
| 1994 | Interview with the Vampire | |||
| 1996 | Michael Collins | |||
| 1997 | The Butcher Boy | |||
| 1999 | In Dreams | |||
| The End of the Affair | ||||
| 2000 | Not I | |||
| 2002 | The Good Thief | |||
| 2003 | The Actors | |||
| 2005 | Breakfast on Pluto | |||
| 2007 | The Brave One | |||
| 2009 | Ondine | |||
| 2012 | Byzantium | |||
| 2018 | Greta | |||
| 2022 | Marlowe | |||
Producer only
| 1988 | The Courier | Frank Deasy Joe Lee | Executive producer |
| 1999 | The Last September | Deborah Warner | |
| 2003 | Intermission | John Crowley |
Creative associate
| 1979 | Miracles & Miss Langan | TV movie | ||||
| 2011–13 | The Borgias | Directed 6 episodes Wrote 20 episodes | ||||
| 2017–20 | Riviera | Wrote 2 episodes | ||||
| 1984 | The Company of Wolves | 4 | |||||
| 1986 | Mona Lisa | 1 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 1 | |
| 1992 | The Crying Game | 6 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 1 | |
| 1994 | Interview with the Vampire | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | ||
| 1996 | Michael Collins | 2 | 2 | 2 | |||
| 1999 | The End of the Affair | 2 | 10 | 1 | 4 | ||
| 2005 | Breakfast on Pluto | 1 | |||||
| 2007 | The Brave One | 1 | |||||
| 1986 | Mona Lisa | Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Direction Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay |
| 1992 | The Crying Game | Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated- Academy Award for Best Director Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Direction Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay |
| 1996 | Michael Collins | Golden Lion |
| 1997 | The Butcher Boy | Silver Bear for Best Director |
| 1999 | The End of the Affair | BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Direction Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Director |
| 2011 | The Borgias | Nominated- Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series (for episodes "The Poisoned Chalice" and "The Assassin" ) |
| 1987 | Bob Hoskins | Mona Lisa | |
| 1993 | Stephen Rea | The Crying Game | |
| 2000 | Julianne Moore | The End of the Affair | |
| 1993 | Jaye Davidson | The Crying Game | |
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