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Neil Jordan
Jordan at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	Neil Patrick Jordan (1950-02-25) 25 February 1950 (age 76) Sligo, Ireland
Education	University College Dublin (BA)
Occupations	Filmmaker writer
Years active	1979–present
Spouses	Vivienne Shields ​ (divorced)​ Brenda Rawn ​ (m. 2004)​
Children	5

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.^[1][2] 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 Award, 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.^[3]

Jordan was born in Sligo, the son of Angela (née O'Brien), a painter, and Michael Jordan, a professor.^[4] He was educated at St. Paul's College, Raheny. Later, Jordan attended University College Dublin, where he studied Irish history and English literature. He graduated in 1972 with a BA in History. He became involved in student theatre there, where he met Jim Sheridan, who was also later to become an important Irish film director. After graduation, in 1976 Jordan produced his first collection of short stories: Night in Tunisia and other Stories.^[5]

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."^[6]

Jordan's career began in the late 1970s working for the Irish television channel RTÉ. His work included writing storylines for the children's fantasy series Wanderly Wagon.^[7]

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.^[8]

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.^[9] 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.^[10] 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.^[11]

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.^[12]

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."^[13]

Jordan has five children: Anna and Sarah from his marriage to solicitor Vivienne Shields; Dashiel and Daniel from his current marriage to Brenda Rawn, and Ben, from a relationship with architect Mary Donohoe. Jordan lives in Dalkey, Dublin.^[14]

In 1996, Neil Jordan was honoured with receiving the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.^[15] He has received many honorary doctorates, including from Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, and Queen's University Belfast.^[16][17][18]

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.^[19][20]

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.^[21]

Producer only

Creative associate

• Excalibur (1981)

• Night in Tunisia (1976, short stories)
• The Past (1980, novel)
• The Dream of a Beast (1983, novella)
• Mona Lisa (1986, screenplay) co-written by David Leland
• Angel (1989, screenplay)
• A Neil Jordan Reader (1993) collects A Night in Tunisia, The Dream of a Beast, and The Crying Game (screenplay)
• Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994, novel) published in the US as ‘’Nightlines’’
• Michael Collins: Screenplay and Film Diary (1996, screenplay)
• Shade (2004, novel)
• Mistaken (2011, novel)
• The Drowned Detective (2016, novel)
• Carnivalesque (2017, novel)^[22]
• The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small (2021, novel)
• The Well of Saint Nobody (2023, novel)

• Guardian Fiction Prize for Night in Tunisia (1979)
• Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1981^[23]
• 2004 Irish PEN Award
• Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for 'Shade' (2005) and Mistaken (2011)^[24][25]
• 2011 Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year for 'Mistaken'^[26]
• UCD Alumni Award in Arts & Humanities 2021

Under Jordan's direction, these actors have received Academy Award nominations for their performances in these respective roles.

• List of Academy Award winners and nominees from Ireland

• Nolan, Val, Neil Jordan: Works for the Page (Cork: Cork University Press, 2022).
• Pramaggiore, Maria, Neil Jordan (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008).
• Rockett, Emer and Rockett, Kevin, Neil Jordan: Exploring Boundaries (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2003).
• Zucker, Carole, The Cinema of Neil Jordan: Dark Carnival (London: Wallflower Press, 2008)
• Zucker, Carole (ed.), Neil Jordan Interviews (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2013)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Neil Jordan.

• Neil Jordan's web site
• Neil Jordan at IMDb
• Neil Jordan at the BFI's Screenonline
• Neil Jordan "Breakfast On Pluto" Archived 14 January 2023 at the Wayback Machine Interview