Irish Eye on Hollywood:
Aidan Gillen to Play James Joyce

By Tom Deignan, Contributor
October / November 2017

Irish actor Aidan Gillen – best known for key roles in cable dramas such as The Wire and Game of Thrones – will get in touch with his inner Dubliner when he plays James Joyce in an upcoming film about the acclaimed Irish writer and his troubled daughter. Entitled James and Lucia, Gillen will play the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man author as he struggles to write his avant garde classic Finnegan’s Wake. At the same time Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, brought on, in part, by a tumultuous affair with Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Lucia Joyce was a professional dancer and Joyce’s child by wife Nora Barnacle (the inspiration for Molly Bloom from Ulysses). Lucia struggled once she was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the 1930s. James and Lucia will be directed by British-born Robert Mullan. Gillen will also appear in the next installment of the Maze Runner movie franchise (due in 2018) as well as the next season of the BBC drama Peaky Blinders, about Irish immigrants and gangsters in post World War I England. Previous seasons of the gritty Peaky Blinders can currently be seen on Netflix. ♦

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