As Ireland’s actors, directors and writers take centre stage in this year’s Oscar nominations, we look at the top 10 Irish moments in Academy Award history.

1. Cedric Gibbons

Ireland’s most successful Oscar winner ever was Cedric Gibbons. Who, you say? The Dubliner was nominated a whopping 37 times and won 11 for his art direction in films from the 1920s onwards. Oh, yes.. and he only designed the Oscar statuette into the bargain.

2. Brenda Fricker

Ireland’s favourite big-screen mammy Brenda Fricker warmed the heart of an entire nation when she became the first Irish actress to win an Oscar for her best supporting role as Christy Brown’s mother in My Left Foot in 1989. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

3. Daniel Day Lewis

Daniel Day-Lewis wins the best actor Oscar for Lincoln
(Chris Pizzello/Invision)

When movie titan Daniel Day Lewis collected his third Oscar for Lincoln in 2012, securing Academy history as the only man ever to scoop three lead actor role statuettes. But is he really Irish? Yes – he’s an Irish citizen, his Da is from Co Laois and Daniel lives in Co Wicklow. Case closed.

4. Neil Jordan

Sligo-born Neil Jordan has won a slew of awards for his work as a film director, screenwriter and novelist. But his most famous red carpet moment was in 1992, when he took the Oscar for best original screenplay for the six-times nominated Troubles-era thriller The Crying Game. What a twist at the end.

5. Barry Fitzgerald

Most widely remembered for his Michaleen Oge Flynn in The Quiet Man, Barry Fitzgerald was a revered character actor. He made Oscar history when nominated in 1944 for both best actor and best supporting actor for the same role – Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way. He won the latter award and the rules were changed thereafter to make sure a double nomination didn’t happen again.

6. Maureen O’Hara

The late Maureen O’Hara, a true darling of Hollywood, waited until 2003 to be recognised when she was awarded an honorary Academy Award. She also took credit for making John Wayne sexy.

7. Peter O’Toole

Connemara-born Peter O’Toole was another honorary Oscar winner. Probably better known for being referred to as a hell raiser, he was an eight time nominee beginning all the way back in 1963 for the epic Laurence of Arabia and ending in 2007 when he lost out to Forest Whitaker. The Academy got their house in order in 2003.

8. Glen Hansard

As if stage and screen isn’t enough, the soundtrack to Once, Falling Slowly, scooped an award for Glen Hansard in 2007 and became a worldwide hit. It was so popular, the famous Walton’s music shop in Dublin had to ask musicians to stop practising it on the in-store instruments.

9. Terry George

Belfast’s Terry George is behind many of the big screen’s most memorable Troubles movies, including Some Mother’s Son, The Boxer and In The Name of the Father, for which he was nominated by the Academy. Also nominated for Hotel Rwanda, he finally got his dues in 2012 with an Oscar for his short film The Shore.

10. Jim Sheridan

Jim Sheridan is the daddy of Dublin cinema. His slate of Oscar nominations would easily slot into an Irish top five – My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father leading the charge. But how could his work on Christy Brown compete in front of an American judging panel watching Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July and Dead Poets Society. In 1990, Tom Hanks’ Philadelphia put paid to any hopes of an Oscar for his take on the injustice of the Guildford Four.

Among the other also rans are Northern Ireland’s Kenneth Branagh, a five-time nominee, and Liam Neeson, a nominee for Schindler’s List. Another screen legend who never made it to the podium was Richard Harris despite two nominations, including for the The Field. Maybe the Bull McCabe’s infamous “go home Yank” put the judges off…