The new Jim Sheridan film, The Boxer, has received three major nominations for the Golden Globe awards - presented annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and regarded as a good indication of the Oscar nominations that follow in spring.
In Los Angeles yesterday, The Boxer received nominations for best film (drama), best director to Sheridan and best actor to Daniel Day-Lewis. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles on New Year's Eve and goes on release in Ireland on February 6th.
Filmed in Dublin during the summer, The Boxer, written by Sheridan and Terry George, features Day-Lewis as Danny Boy Flynn, a Belfast boxer who got involved with the IRA in his late teens and ended up serving 14 years in a British prison.
Returning to Belfast and determined to change his life, Flynn makes a comeback in the ring. The film is set in the early 1990s against a backdrop of tensions within the IRA on seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict.
Day-Lewis describes his character as a quiet man. "He feels that, through the decisions he has made, a large part of his life has been thrown away," he told The Irish Times. "And he wants to do something to set the record straight for himself, just to feel he's done something in his life that's okay and has some value to it."
The Boxer is Jim Sheridan's fourth feature film as a writer-director and his third with DayLewis in the leading role. Their first collaboration, My Left Foot, earned Day-Lewis the best actor Oscar in 1990 for his portrayal of Christy Brown. Their second film together, In the Name of the Father, in which Day-Lewis played the wrongly convicted Gerry Conlon, received seven Oscar nominations in 1994.
In the major Golden Globe category for best film (drama), The Boxer is on the shortlist with Steven Spielberg's Amistad, James Cameron's Titanic, Curtis Hanson's LA Confidential and Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting. The nominees for best director are Jim Sheridan, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Curtis Hanson and for As Good As It Gets, James L. Brooks.