As a teacher, Dignam has over twenty years of experience working with students and researchers at all levels. At IADT, he serves as the Head of the Department of Film & Media, Chair of Film & Television, and Irish Course Director on the Erasmus+ Joint Master of Art in Cinematography.
In 2021, Dignam becomes IADT’s Programme Director of FilmEU, the European University for Film and Media Arts. FilmEU represents a pioneering approach to arts and culture education, uniting eight higher education institutions from across Europe. FilmEU has grown into a transformative initiative that enhances the academic landscape for film and media while addressing critical societal issues such as sustainability, inclusion, and digital transformation.
Dignam and his partner, Hugh Walsh, are one of the first couples to enter into civil partnership in Ireland, and the first to do so after the mandatory three-month wait (six previous couples are granted exemptions on compassionate grounds).
In 1990, Cusack, in the role of Masha, joins two of her sisters, Niamh (as Irina) and Sorcha (as Olga), and her father, Cyril Cusack (as Chebutykin) for a well-received production of Anton Chekhov‘s tragicomedy Three Sisters in a new version by Frank McGuinness, directed by Adrian Noble at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre in London. The production also features Niamh’s husband, Finbar Lynch, as Solenyi and Lesley Manville as Natasha. The production wins the three real-life sisters the Irish Life Award in 1992.
One of Cusack’s best known stage roles is Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry in 1998, in which she plays the principal role of Mai O’Hara in performances in Ireland, on Broadway and at the National Theatre. For this she wins the 1998 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress, the 1998 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress and her fourth Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2006-07 she stars with Rufus Sewell in Tom Stoppard‘s Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Royal Court Theatre in London which transfers to the West End and Broadway, winning Cusack her fifth Olivier Award nomination and her second Tony Award nomination.
In 2015, Cusack returns to Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, where she begins her theatre career. She appears in the world première of Mark O’Rowe‘s play Our Few and Evil Days, acting opposite long-time collaborator Ciarán Hinds. She wins the Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for Best Actress.
Cusack stars with Peter Sellers in the film Hoffman (1970). She guest stars in an episode of The Persuaders! (1971), a TV series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, as Jenny Lindley, a wealthy heiress who suspects that a man claiming to be her dead brother is in fact an impostor. In 1975, she makes three appearances in the TV series Quiller as the character Roz.
Further starring roles include lead roles in Oliver’s Travels (1995), Have Your Cake and Eat It (1997) for which Cusack wins the Royal Television Society‘s RTS Award for Best Actress and Frank McGuinness’s The Hen House (1989) for BBC Television. She stars in the title role of George du Maurier‘s Trilby (1976), in an adaptation for the BBC’s Play of the Month, with Alan Badel as Svengali. She also stars in the BBC mini-series North & South (2004, from the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell) as Mrs. Thornton. She stars in the BBC sitcom Home Again (2006) and appears in the TV series Camelot (2011), which runs for one season. She has featured roles in the mini-series The Deep (2014) and the series Marcella (2016), an eight-episode murder mystery.
Along with other actresses, including Paola Dionisotti, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter, Cusack contributes to a book by Carol Rutter called Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare’s Women Today (1994). The book analyses modern acting interpretations of female Shakespearean roles.
Cusack marries British actor Jeremy Irons in 1978, and they have two sons, Samuel James and Maximilian Paul. Prior to marrying Irons, she gives birth to a son in 1967 and places the boy for adoption. In 2007, a journalist for the Irish Sunday Independent, Daniel McConnell, reveals that Cusack is the mother of left-wing general election candidate and now member of Irish parliament Richard Boyd Barrett. The two have since been reunited.
Cusack is a patron of the Burma Campaign UK, the London-based group campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma. In 1998, she is named, along with her husband, in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the British Labour Party. In August 2010, she signs the “Irish artists’ pledge to boycott Israel” initiated by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
(Pictured: Sinéad Cusack reciting poetry for the British Library in October 2021)
Born on May 2, 1951, Dwyer is originally from Saint John’s Park in Tralee, County Kerry. His mother, Mary, outlives him. He has two sisters, Anne and Maria. As a young man in the early 1970s he takes part in the Tralee Film Society, for which he provides notes to The Kerryman. At this time, he is employed by the County Library in Tralee. He begins working for In Dublin followed by the Sunday Tribune and The Sunday Press.
Dwyer first travels to the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 and attends every one until 2009, months before his death. In 1985, he co-founds the Dublin Film Festival and directs it until the mid-1990s. In 2002, he co-founds the Dublin International Film Festival, of which he is the chairman. In later life he serves on the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
In the 1990s, Dwyer presents the film show Freeze Frame for public service broadcaster RTÉ. The show results from a friendship he had formed with Alan Gilsenan and Martin Mahon of Yellow Asylum Films. He is also known for his appearances on the radio shows Morning Ireland and The Marian Finucane Show. The editor of The Irish Times, Geraldine Kennedy, speaking after Dwyer’s death, says he was an “enthusiastic advocate” of both national and international cinema and had once said he was “one of those lucky people in life who was able to pursue his interests and call them work.”
Dwyer becomes unwell following a trip to the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009. He takes a break from writing for The Irish Times, returning in December 2009 to contribute his first, and what is to be his last ever, piece in six months to weekly entertainment supplement The Ticket. The article is a review of cinema in 2009 and of the 2000s, and in his contribution, he references the ill health which had haunted him for much of the previous year and which had prevented him from viewing any cinema releases between June and September.
A ceremony takes place at the Church of the Holy Name in Ranelagh where Dwyer lived. The event is attended by notable politicians, journalists, artists, actors, writers and musicians. RTÉ newsreader Aengus Mac Grianna, a colleague of Jennings, reads a tribute to Dwyer. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a very special tribute at the church service to his dear friend of over 20 years, calling for the Jameson International Dublin Film Festival to be renamed in Dwyer’s honour.
Dwyer is cremated after the funeral on January 5, 2010.
Harris is schooled by the Jesuits at Crescent College. He is a talented rugby player; however, his athletic career is cut short when he comes down with tuberculosis in his teens. After recovering from tuberculosis, Harris moves to Britain, wanting to become a director. Unable to find any suitable training courses, he enrolls in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) to learn acting.
Harris performs the role of King Arthur in the film adaptation of the musical play Camelot (1967). He continues to appear on stage in this role for many years, including a successful Broadway run in 1981–1982. In 1970 British exhibitors vote him the 9th most popular star at the UK box office.
Other film performances follow, among them a role as a reluctant police informant in the coal-mining tale The Molly Maguires (1970), also starring Sean Connery. Harris stars in Cromwell (1970), a film based on the life of Oliver Cromwell who leads the Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War and, as Lord Protector, ruled Great Britain and Ireland in the 1650s.
Harris’ film career collapses after the late 1970s and in the next decade he is rarely seen on screen, although he continues to act on stage. During his career Harris appears in two films which win the Academy Award for Best Picture. First, as the gunfighter “English Bob” in the Western Unforgiven (1992); second, as the Roman EmperorMarcus Aurelius in Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator (2000).
Harris is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in August 2002, reportedly after being hospitalised with pneumonia. He dies at University College Hospital in Fitzrovia, London on October 25, 2002, at the age of 72. He was in a coma in his final three days. Harris’ body is cremated, and his ashes are scattered in the Bahamas, where he had owned a home.
seamus dubhghaill 