Actors Domhnall Gleeson and Maura Tierney and director Lee Cronin were honoured at the Oscar Wilde Awards in Los Angeles last night as the US-Ireland Alliance's annual pre-Oscars event celebrated the contribution Ireland makes to film, television, and music.
Supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland and Northern Ireland Screen, the Oscar Wilde Awards have become a fixture in the pre-Oscars build-up and are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year.
Comedian Matt Walsh was the host, and Dermot Kennedy and Dave Lofts provided the music at the Ebell of Los Angeles on Thursday night.
Host Walsh, currently starring in Vladimir on Netflix, saluted the remarkable rise of Irish screen talent.
"There's Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in Hamnet," he said.
"Plus, many Irish actors populating the new Beatles biopics. Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo [Starr], Saoirse Ronan to play Linda McCartney, and Irish passport holder Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
"If they write a screenplay about the Beatles in their 60s, Bono is sure to be cast."
Domhnall Gleeson received his award from Star Wars director JJ Abrams, a longtime supporter of the awards who worked with Gleeson on Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Abrams told the audience he was outraged that the Dublin actor did not make Vogue Australia's list of the 70 most famous redheads.
He said Gleeson is so talented and so famous that "the only way he could be more famous would be if he's friends with Taylor Swift, which he is!"
"I've been blessed in my career to work with a great number of wonderful actors, but none more brilliant, kind, dedicated, caring, funny, compassionate, famous, or ginger," said Abrams.
"It is cool that this is the 20th anniversary of these awards because on the same week in 2006 that Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan were receiving the first-ever Oscar Wilde Awards, that was my first-ever week on my first-ever acting job in America," Gleeson recalled.
"I was 22 years old. I was doing a Martin McDonagh play. When I finished that job many months later, I had made friends for life on my first 'US-Ireland Alliance'."
The Mummy director Lee Cronin was presented with his award by Hollywood producer Jason Blum, who spoke of his love for Ireland, where he has made four films in the past 18 months.
Accepting his award, Cronin said that "the US is a big landmass with a lot of money and Ireland has a lot of stories to tell. Let's put them together and keep doing it."
Cronin also spoke of how inspired he was to meet Steven Spielberg at an Oscar Wilde Awards ceremony and gave the iconic director his brand-new business card.
The Dubliner met actor John Cho at the same event and thought he had also given the Star Trek star a business card.
"He looked at me really funny," Cronin recounted.
"And then I realised I'd given him the room key to my hotel. Spielberg never called. John Cho never knocked on my door. But it was the start of a Hollywood adventure I'm very proud and very lucky to have."
Accepting her award, Maura Tierney, best known for her roles in ER and The Affair, said that she was very happy to be representing the American half of the alliance.
The Bostonian told the guests that her grandmother, Nan Costello, emigrated from Leitrim to America in 1926 when she was 16 years old.
"She met and married my grandfather, Bill Tierney, and they moved into the housing project in South Boston," Tierney continued.
"When my grandfather died suddenly in 1948, she was left to raise seven children as a single mother. But she was determined that would not hold them back."
"I can only hope a little bit of this resilience, persistence, and determination has been passed down to me," she said.
When Tierney came to Ireland to work, she thought about "how lucky I was to be there".
"Walking the streets of Dublin, I felt part of a legacy both artistic and personal," she added.
"I don't think my grandmother would ever have envisioned me performing in Ireland eight decades after she left. And I hope to have the chance to do it again."
A number of Ireland's Oscar nominees this weekend were present at the ceremony, including Avatar: Fire and Ash's visual effects lynchpin Richard Baneham, who is already a double Oscar winner; Retirement Plan director John Kelly and producer Andrew Freedman, and Bugonia producers Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of the Dublin-based Element Pictures.
Other guests at this year's event included Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy, Caoimhe Archibald, Minister for the Economy of Northern Ireland in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and actors Sarah Bolger, Eoin Macken, Samantha Mumba, Jason O'Mara, Kevin Ryan, Jane Seymour, and Karl Urban.
Guests were told that an anonymous donor has pledged $2 million to the US-Ireland Alliance's scholarship programme if other donors step forward to give the same amount.
"We welcome this generous pledge of support and hope it inspires others to invest in the continued success of this important programme," said Trina Vargo, founder of the US-Ireland Alliance.
Last month, the US-Ireland Alliance removed the name of former Senator George Mitchell from their scholarship programme due to his links with the late disgraced financier and convicted child sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
The 98th Academy Awards, hosted by Conan O'Brien, will be shown live on RTÉ One from 11:00pm on Sunday, 15 March, and the ceremony will also air on RTÉ2 on Monday evening from 9:30pm.
