Biography

Neil Jordan

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Overview

Born
February 25, 1950 · Sligo, Ireland

Biography

Neil was born by the sea in County Sligo where his father was a joiner and his mother was a painter. In 1952, they moved to a seaside suburb of Dublin where he was educated at the University College. In 1970, he founded the Irish Writers Coop and acted, wrote and directed for the Children's T Company, Scot Players, a fringe theatre, which included Jim and Peter Sheridan. He idolised Charlie Parker, bought a saxophone and played with a Dublin band and for Irish television, He wrote a script, Memories and Miss Langan, and also adapted his own short story 'A Night in Tunesia' for television in 1978 and wrote the script for 'Traveller'. He worked on the final draft of the shooting script for Excalibur on which he was credited as creative consultant. His directorial debut was The making of Excalibur- Myth into Movie. In 1982 he was executive producer on Angel.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tonyman 5

Family

Spouses
Children

Trademark

Stephen Rea features in many of his films
Often cast Irish musicians in his films.
In many of his films people with no prior acting experience or training appear in leading or substantial supporting roles.

Trivia

Directed 4 actors in Oscar nominated performances: Bob Hoskins, Stephen Rea, Jaye Davidson, and Julianne Moore.
His father, a university professor, would never let him read comic books, but read them himself so he knew what children would be interested in.
Is the award-winning author of a number of acclaimed novels and collections of stories. Nearly all his stories are set in Ireland and most deal with the subjects of children, family relationships and childhood memories.
Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1992.
He has five children: Musician Anna Jordan and Sarah Jordan from his marriage to solicitor Vivienne Shields; Dashiel Jordan and Daniel Jordan from his current marriage to Brenda Rawn and Ben a child from a brief relationship with architect Mary Donohoe.

Quotes

I'm fascinated by monsters [and] monstrous people and fascinated with illogic and irrationality.
I grew up in a respectable, lower-middle-class home. Our family was quite educated; my mother was a painter, and stuff like that. And I didn't chop up my next-door neighbour. But I remember those emotions. It was a very strange world. Ireland is very grey, and it seems like nothing has changed for centuries. The only bits of colour 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. - about his life growing up in Ireland
But in a strange way, the more organization and the more preparation you do, the more freedom it gives to the performances and to those things that are totally dependent on those moments when you shoot. Visual things are very complicated. I can't improvise visual events. I can't improvise a sense of composition. I have to compare. I have to look at the street where we are shooting on. I have to know where the light is coming from. Obviously, you would have to know where the trucks are parked and stuff like that. But what you cannot legislate for is emotion, the way emotion displays itself in a scene and that always comes from the actors. That is the way I work.
The only reason I ever want to make movies is if there are characters that find bits of themselves that they didn't understand. I don't believe we are fully rational beings. I don't believe that any explanation that we ever give for our behavior is adequate.
There have been too many vampire films lately. The extraordinary thing is it now appeals to young teenage girls. If Anne Rice's vampires symbolized the spread of AIDS, the creature of the night has become something altogether more 'strange.' When I saw the first Twilight (2008) I thought "OK, well now it's become this allegory about chaste love between teenagers. How weird!"