The writers who won over Hollywood

THE screen adaption of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is widely tipped to win several Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards Ceremony in LA. The movie’s success follows hotly on the heels of Cillian Murphy’s Oscar for Best Actor in Oppenheimer (2024) and Kenneth Branagh’s Golden Statute for Belfast (2021). Irish writers and actors have excelled at the Academy Awards in recent years. However, these artists are a part of a long tradition of Irish literature being turned into successful films which have been recognised by the Oscars.

This tradition includes George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion winning a breathtaking nine Oscars in total. Not to mention, Christie Brown’s autobiography My Left Foot, with the Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Brown, deservedly winning the Best Actor Award in 1990. Irish literature’s rich storytelling tradition is one that is easily moves from page to screen and Maggie O’Farrell is rightly being recognised in this year’s awards ceremony for Best Screen Play.

O’Farrell on Hamnet

The film Hamnet starring two Irish actors, Paul Mescal, who plays Shakespeare, and Jessie Buckley, playing his wife Agnes, looks like taking the Oscars and BAFTAs by storm, already picking up a Golden Globe for best motion picture drama. However, the Irish influence in retelling the tale of the Shakespeare’s tragic loss of their young son Hamnet, does not end with the actors.

The book on which the movie was based was written by Coleraine-born Maggie O’Farrell. Speaking from LA, the writer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The film world isn’t really my world. I’m very used to the book world. It’s just, I think what’s very different about winning an award like this, is it signifies a really communal effort.

“You know, it’s a kind of family. It’s the Hamnet family and we all made the film together, and everybody’s been recognised, which is just really, really lovely.

“It’s pretty buoyant, I have to say. Everybody ’s really excited. And Jessie, of course, Jessie Buckley was singled out for her best efforts, which was really fantastic to see. So, everybody’s pretty happy. I can certainly say that.

“I think Shakespeare has always had and always will have a very universal appeal. And I think this story, which is focused on the death of his son, presents him to us as a human being. Not the literary icon he was.

“When I was writing the novel, I wanted to ask readers to forget everything they think they know about him and meet this person as a human. It is a story about grief and loss, but it’s also about huge catharsis by the end.

“And, you know, we sort of understand where art comes from and why we need it, how grief transmutes into love and then back again.”

O’Farrell’s magnificent screenplay deftly demonstrates the ability of Irish literature to portray the complexity of the human condition and to be able to translate the personal to a global cinema audience.

My Left Foot

If your father is an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who is Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, how do you live up to his reputation? Well, you win three Oscars and go by the name Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel’s father, Cecil Day-Lewis was born in County Laois, yet despite spending most of his life in England, never lost his sense of Irishness, a trait that his son Daniel inherited particularly in his acting career.

Through the 1980s, Day-Lewis saw his acting star steadily rise with films such as My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985). However, it was in 1990 that saw Day-Lewis’s star truly rise to international acclaim. The Irish actor won his first Oscar award for playing the Dublin artist Christie Brown in the screen adaption of Brown’s autobiography My Left Foot. Day-Lewis plays Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy who learnt to write and paint using only his left foot. The film charts the life of Brown who overcomes immense personal and societal challenges to become a celebrated artist and writer.

The six-foot-two Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Brown—a man racked with cerebral palsy—is still as remarkable now as it was then when it was first screened. His method acting attention to detail in portraying Brown accurately and sympathetically, marked him as being one of the great young actors of his generation. The film also gained Brenda Fricker, who played Brown’s mother, academy recognition when she picked up the Best Supporting Actress award. The film also marked the beginning of Lewis’s artistic collaboration with the Dublin Director, Jim Sheridan, which would see Lewis in his Irish element throughout the 1990s.

In the Name of the Father

Day-Lewis and Sheridan’s next cinematic collaboration brought to screen Gerry Conlon’s book Proved Innocent (1990). The film adaptation of Conlon’s book about his wrongful conviction and physical mistreatment in prison for the Guildford bombing was released as In the Name of the Father (1993) with Day-Lewis playing Conlon. For the part, Day-Lewis took method acting to its extreme, losing two stones, spending stretches of time in a prison cell and insisting that the crew verbally abuse him and throw freezing water over him. Throughout the shoot he never deviated from speaking in a Belfast accent. The role earned him his second Oscar nomination, a third BAFTA nomination and second Golden Globe nomination. Through the early 1990s, Day-Lewis—a man born into privilege yet with a strong social conscience—made his acting name by depicting less fortunate Irishmen.

Boxing clever

Given physical traumas of playing Brown and Conlon, most actors would have been content to rest on their laurels and maybe take the lead in a romcom, not Day-Lewis. Again, he teamed up with Jim Sheridan for the 1997 film The Boxer. The Irish actor played a former boxer and IRA man recently released from prison. His preparation for the film included working with former World Boxing Champion Barry McGuigan. So impressed with his ring craft that McGuigan judged that Day-Lewis could have been a professional boxer. McGuigan commented that: “If you eliminate the top ten middleweights in Britain, any of the other guys Daniel could have gone in and fought.” Again, Lewis’s feat of acting preparation saw him nominated for a Golden Globe.

Day-Lewis has gone on to win two more Academy Awards for Best Actor for his lead roles in There Will be Blood (2007) and for Spielberg’s epic Lincoln (2012). With 139 acting awards to his credit Lewis is widely seen as the greatest actor in cinematic history. Yet throughout his career, he has continually returned to Irish character roles that have mesmerised worldwide cinema audiences.

The Quiet Man

From social realism to romance, Irish literature has been adapted for the silver screen. In 1952, the director John Ford adapted Maurice Walsh’s short story The Quiet Man and gave Ireland the Hollywood treatment. Starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, the plot centres on Sean Thornton (Wayne) a boxer who, after accidentally killing an opponent in the ring, leaves America and returns to his native Ireland, hoping to buy his family’s homestead and live quietly. In doing so, he runs afoul of Will Danaher, who long coveted the Thornton property. Spitefully, Will objects when his fiery sister, Mary Kate (O’Hara), begins a romance with Sean and refuses to hand over her dowry when the couple wed. Mary Kate refuses to consummate the marriage until Sean retrieves the money.

Sean is reluctant to fight because of the tragic events in the ring. However, he is goaded by Danaher to such a degree that he breaks his pacifist vow and the stage is set for one of the longest fight scenes in Hollywood history. But with most Tinseltown movies of the 1950s, all ends well. The film won two Academy Awards with Ford winning the Best Director accolade. It has since been viewed as one of the classic films of Hollywood’s golden era.

World first for Ireland

Most people would be overwhelmed to win either a Nobel Prize or an Oscar and see it as the pinnacle of their professional achievement. Yet the Dublin writer, George Bernard Shaw, won both prestigious prizes and was the first person in history to do so. The screen play of his classic play Pygmalion won the Oscar in 1939. Yet Shaw was so unimpressed by the Academy’s recognition that he did not attend the ceremony. Moreover, it was rumoured that he used his gold statute as a doorstop.

In 1964, Shaw’s play would again be adapted for film as the musical My Fair Lady. Starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, the film would go on to win eight Academy Awards including the Best Picture Award. Shaw, despite his many accolades and awards, remained a lifelong socialist and with his humour made serious human observations. His acclaimed character Professor Henry Higgins wryly observed that to be a successful person: “The great secret… in having the same manner for all human souls.”

Few have said it more simply or more accurately than George Bernard Shaw.

Irish toast of tinseltown

The 98th Academy Awards looks like being another triumph for Irish actors and writers in their artistic endeavours. Yet in their creative output Jessie Buckley and Maggie O’Farrell are only part of a wider Irish literary and artistic tradition which sees culture as being central to the Irish psyche. As Shaw observed: “Happy is the man who can make a living at his hobby.”

Dr David McKinstry is a teacher and poet whose poems are widely published and broadcast across Ireland and in the UK. If any readers wish to share their literary output with him, they can contact him at: davmick38h@yahoo.co.uk