At the Golden Globes in January, Michael Keaton took home the Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy prize for Birdman, beating out two other actors with Irish ties – Chicago-born Bill Murray, and Ralph Fiennes, who was born in England but raised in Ireland.
St. Vincent (starring Murray as well as fellow Irish American Melissa McCarthy) was also nominated for Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Dominic West (who attended Trinity College after his Irish parents moved to England) was nominated for Best Actor in a TV Drama, and West’s series The Affair (on Showtime) won the Golden Globe for Best TV Drama. Irish American Gillian Flynn was also nominated for a Golden Globe in the Best Screenplay category for writing the script based on her best-selling book Gone Girl.
Meanwhile, Oscar nominations gave Keaton a Best Actor nod while Fiennes’s movie Grand Budapest Hotel was nominated for Best Picture, and the thoughtful animated Irish film Song of the Sea also received a nomination in the Best Animated Feature Film category.
Nominations for the British Film and Television Awards were also announced in January, and nominees with Irish ties included (again) Keaton and Fiennes as well as Imelda Staunton, whose parents were born in Mayo. Staunton starred in the film Pride with other Irish talent
(Dominic West, Paddy Considine). The film is set during the 1984 miners’ strike in England and explores the unlikely bond that formed between union members and gays and lesbian activists who raised money for them.
Also earning several BAFTA nods was the gripping Northern Ireland film ’71, about a British soldier who gets separated from his unit and must navigate a hostile Catholic neighborhood on his own. ’71 was nominated for Outstanding British Film as well as Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. Fittingly, ’71 star Jack O’Connell (whose father is from Kerry) was nominated for an EE Rising Star Award.
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