Jamie Dornan to be honoured with an Oscar Wilde Award
Date Posted: December 3, 2021
Northern Ireland born actor Jamie Dornan will be honoured with an Oscar Wilde Award at the US-Ireland Alliance’s Oscar Wilde Awards on March 24, 2022, at Bad Robot, the Santa Monica production company of J.J. Abrams and Katie McGrath. Northern Ireland Screen is proud to support this year’s event.
Dornan has captured the attention of audiences and critics alike for his roles in both film and television.
He is currently being lauded for his moving role in Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical film, Belfast. The script is about a boy growing up in Belfast during the Troubles in late 1960s Northern Ireland. Jamie portrays the role of ‘Pa’, the young boy’s father, alongside Caitriona Balfe, Judi Dench, and Ciaran Hinds.
Other Oscar Wilde honorees will include his Belfast director Kenneth Branagh and Academy Award winning writer-director-producer Adam McKay. Irish actor, Dónall Ó Héalai, will receive the “Wilde Card”, an award presented to up-and-coming talent. Irish performers Loah & Bantum, and True Tides will perform.
Trina Vargo, founder and president of the US-Ireland Alliance, said, “Jamie has spoken about how much this role meant to him – both in terms of how lucky it is to be in a film about your hometown and about how this role allows him to pay homage to his father, who died before being able to see this film. Belfast is very personal to Jamie and that shines through in his moving performance.”
Dornan will next star in The Tourist, a limited series which will air on the BBC and STAN in January 2022 and on HBO Max in Spring 2022. It tells the story of ‘The Man’, played by Dornan, who loses his memory after a truck tries to drive him off the road in the Australian outback. He searches for answers about who he used to be while being chased by people from his past.
Earlier this year, he surprised audiences with his comedic turn starring opposite Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo in Lionsgate’s comedy Barb and Star go to Costa del Mar.
In 2019, Dornan starred in two films which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival: Synchronic, opposite Anthony Mackie, and Drake Doremus’ Endings Beginnings alongside Sebastian Stan and Shailene Woodley.
In 2018, he starred opposite Peter Dinklage in Sacha Gervasi’s HBO Movie, My Dinner with Herve. The film, based on the life of Herve Villechaize, (“Tattoo”of Fantasy Island),was nominated for a 2019 Emmy Award in the category of “Outstanding Television Movie.” Also in 2018, he received critical praise for his portrayal of Paul Conroy in Matthew Heineman’s Marie Colvin biopic, A Private War. Conroy is a celebrated photographer and journalist in combat zones and the film tells the story of his collaborator, war correspondent Marie Colvin (Rosamund Pike) who was an award-winning journalist who died while covering the siege of Homs in Syria.
In 2016, Dornan starred, alongside Cillian Murphy, in Anthropoid, the true story of the World War II mission to assassinate a high-ranking German SS and police official. In 2015, 2017 and 2018 he starred along with Dakota Johnson in the Fify Shades trilogy, based on the novels written by author E.L. James. The films, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and later James Foley, earned over $1.45 billion in the worldwide box-office.
Dornan received critical acclaim for his portrayal of a serial killer in the BBC’s television crime drama The Fall, opposite Gillian Anderson. In 2013, the series launch was the highest rated drama for the channel in 8 years. His role earned him a TV BAFTA nomination for Best Actor and two IFTA wins for Best Lead Actor and Rising Star in 2014. He also won the Breakthrough Award at the 2014 Broadcasting Press Guild Awards for his performance and the drama received a nomination for Best Drama at the National Television Awards. The series was shown on BBC2 in the UK and was available on Netflix in the US.
His feature debut was in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 Oscar®-winning historic epic, Marie Antoinette in which he took the role of Count Axel Fersen, the lover to Kirstin Dunst’s eponymous Marie Antoinette. In 2009, he starred in the British independent film Shadows in the Sun, with Jean Simmons and James Wilby.
Presenting Sponsors of the Oscar Wilde Awards are Hackman Capital Partners, along with its affiliate and studio operating and service company, The MBS Group (owners of Ardmore and Troy Studios in Ireland). Other major supporters include Screen Ireland and Northern Ireland Screen.
