Irish Oscar Winners: From Shaw to Murphy – A Complete List
The Irish film and television industry is poised for a potentially historic night at the Academy Awards, with Jessie Buckley nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Hamnet. A win for Buckley would mark a first for an Irish woman in the category, adding to a growing list of accolades for Irish talent on the global stage.
Buckley’s nomination caps a remarkable year for Irish representation at the Oscars. She is joined by a cohort of nominees including Dublin visual effects supervisor Richard Baneham, recognized for his work on Avatar: Fire and Ash, and producers Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, part of the team behind Best Picture nominee Bugonia. Maggie O’Farrell is also nominated for Adapted Screenplay for Hamnet, and John Kelly is in the running for Animated Short Film for Retirement Plan.
The nominations reflect a sustained period of success for Irish filmmakers and performers. Looking back, Ireland’s Oscar history, while not extensive, is rich with notable achievements. The first Irish Oscar win came in , with Dublin-born playwright George Bernard Shaw taking home the award for writing Pygmalion. Shaw’s win was particularly noteworthy as he already held a Nobel Prize in Literature, making him one of only two people to have won both an Oscar and a Nobel – the other being Bob Dylan.
The decades that followed saw a steady, if infrequent, stream of Irish Oscar wins. Barry Fitzgerald broke ground in , winning Best Supporting Actor for Going My Way, and uniquely earning nominations in both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for the same role – a feat the Academy no longer allows. Brenda Fricker followed in , securing Best Supporting Actress for her poignant performance in My Left Foot, a film that remains a landmark achievement for Irish cinema.
Beyond acting and writing, Irish talent has also excelled in technical categories. Michèle Burke, from Kildare, was a pioneer in makeup artistry, winning Oscars in for Quest for Fire and again in for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Josie MacAvin, an Irish set decorator, won for Out of Africa in , building on a career that included earlier nominations for Tom Jones and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. More recently, Richard Baneham has become a leading figure in visual effects, winning Oscars for both Avatar in and Avatar: The Way of Water in .
The success of Irish filmmakers extends to directing and screenwriting. Neil Jordan won the Original Screenplay Oscar in for The Crying Game, a film that had a significant international impact. Martin McDonagh followed in , winning the Live Action Short Film Oscar for Six Shooter, foreshadowing his later success with feature films like In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Banshees of Inisherin.
The short film category has proven particularly fruitful for Irish filmmakers, with wins for Benjamin Cleary’s Stutterer in and Tom Berkeley and Ross White’s An Irish Goodbye in . The latter win was particularly memorable for the impromptu singalong led by Berkeley and White on stage, celebrating a birthday for one of the film’s stars.
While often associated with his British citizenship, Daniel Day-Lewis’s Irish heritage is significant, holding Irish citizenship through his Laois-born poet father, Cecil Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis has won a record three Best Actor Oscars, for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Lincoln, cementing his status as one of the greatest actors of his generation.
The Oscars saw Cillian Murphy add another chapter to Ireland’s Oscar story, winning Best Actor for his portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer. His win, following years of acclaimed work in films like 28 Days Later and the television series Peaky Blinders, was a moment of national pride.
As Jessie Buckley awaits the results on , she carries the hopes of a nation eager to see an Irish woman finally claim the Best Actress Oscar. Her nomination, alongside the other Irish contenders, underscores the continued vitality and growing international recognition of Irish film and television talent.