Do we like Neil Jordan?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A long, clean record with no harmful campaigning, marked down a notch for a few tone-deaf comments about The Crying Game.
Neil Jordan is one of Ireland's best-known filmmakers. He spent his early years in Sligo and Dublin, was taught briefly by the writer John McGahern, and came up through experimental theatre and fiction before directing. His debut feature Angel (1982) was a critical hit, followed by The Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa and The Crying Game.
The Crying Game won him an Oscar for best original screenplay in 1993, and it's still the film everyone asks about. Its twist centres on Dil, a trans character, and Jordan says the aim was to avoid the villain trope. In his words, he presented “a trans character that the world fell in love with, basically.” Some trans viewers found parts of the film distressing, and he has said it's surprising that fiction can traumatise people.
That's the one mark against him. His wording has been a bit blunt, and he has told Queerty the film is of its time and a remake today would be very different. He also recalled that Jaye Davidson, who played Dil, told him he was just a gay man. It's a defensive streak, not a campaign: nothing we found has him attacking anyone's rights.
On the harm check, the record is clean. No sources we read show him pushing conspiracy theories, going after trans people, or lining up with culture-war grifters. His recent work is mostly with Liam Neeson, on Marlowe (2022) and the long-announced The Trainer, and nothing we found ties those projects to harm.
On the gossip front, there's not much. In his 2024 memoir Amnesiac he says former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald expected payment for a column praising Michael Collins. FitzGerald's son rejected that, saying there was no conceivable way his father would have done it. That's one man's word against a family's, so take it as a stoush, not a fact. Separately, Jordan settled a 2017 High Court claim over a fall in front of a Dublin bus, which the defendants had contested.
Lately he's been talking up Interview with the Vampire for its 4K release. He called the backlash to Tom Cruise's casting “kind of stupid” and said he found the film's gay subtext “appropriately homoerotic.” He credits David Geffen's backing and loyalty to the novel for keeping it intact. That's a filmmaker who didn't shy away from queer material when it wasn't safe.