Top 5 Irish actors we argued over for this top 5 St. Patrick's Day post

List by Jolene, Natalie and Tosca

"If you're lucky enough to be Irish, you're lucky enough!"
- Irish Saying

Happy St. Patrick's Day! My favourite day of the year, when I worked at the Manukau Library branch, was St. Patrick's Day - all day long you were guaranteed to have Irish customers pop in to email home and, if there's one thing I've always loved, it's an Irish accent. This post is little more than a quick St. Patrick's Day salute :)

Late yesterday afternoon three of us were kicking around the idea of an Irish-related blog post that, somehow, got derailed. One thing we absolutely agreed on was that it should be about Irish actors. Once we'd named Liam Neeson - and argued about Gerard Butler's national identity (he's Scottish - who knew?) - we ran out of names. A quick Google-fu session later and we had a whole heap more. What we couldn't decide on was which actor belonged at what number. Some *very* intense discussion later, it ended up somewhere around here:

Jolene: And Michael Flatley!
Tosca: What? He's not an actor! *adopts scathing tone* He's a dancer.
Natalie: He's Lord of the Riverdance.
Jolene: He's more than a dancer! And I think he should be on this list.
Tosca: No. He's not an actor. And anyway, riverdance is synchronised swimming without the water.
Jolene: *silent for a moment* Fine. I'm making my own list and it'll be called 'MY top 5 list of naff Irish people that Tosca wouldn't let me put on her list including Westlife and Michael Flatley.' *smug look*

For the sake of the list we haggled and bartered and traded and, generally, argued rather loudly (poor Tony who has to sit in our open plan office). And finally we had our list of top 5 Irish actors (with links to some of their films we've enjoyed).



Honourable mention

Kenneth Brannagh:

Roman Strauss in Dead again [DVD videorecording] (1991)

Benedick in Much ado about nothing [DVD videorecording] (1993)

Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets [DVD videorecording] (2002)

Sir Alistair Dormandy in The boat that rocked [DVD videorecording] (2009)

Ciaran Hinds:

Captain Wentworth in Persuasion [DVD videorecording] (1995)

Gaius Julius Caesar in Rome [DVD videorecording} (2005)

Joe in Miss Pettigrew lives for a day [DVD videorecording] (2008)

Pierce Brosnan:

Remington Steele in Remington Steele. The complete first season [DVD videorecording] (1985)

Colin Farrell

Ray in In Bruges [DVD videorecording]

Bullseye in Daredevil [DVD videorecording] - based on the Marvel Comic Book character.

Daniel Day-Lewis

Christy Brown in My left foot [DVD videorecording] (1989)

Hawkeye (Nathaniel Poe) in The last of the Mohicans [DVD videorecording] (1992)

Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting in Gangs of New York [DVD videorecording] (2002)

Daniel Plainview in There will be blood [DVD videorecording] (2007)

Guido Contini in Nine [DVD videorecording} (2009)

Gabriel Byrne

Dean Keaton in The usual suspects [DVD videorecording] (1995)

Bolek in Polish wedding [DVD videorecording] (1998)

Cillian Murphy

Jackson Rippner in Red eye [DVD videorecording] (2005)

Capa in Sunshine [DVD videorecording] (2007)

Robert Fischer in Inception [DVD videorecording] (2010)

Liam Neeson

Qui-Gon Jinn in Star wars. Episode I, The phantom menace [DVD videorecording] (1999)

Daniel in Love actually [DVD videorecording] (2003)

Godfrey de Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven [DVD videorecording] (2005)

Henri Ducard in Batman begins [DVD videorecording] (2005)

Bryan Mills in Taken [DVD videorecording] (2008)

Colonel Hannibal Smith in The A-team [DVD videorecording] (2010)