Fresh from his victory at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, Wicklow-based actor Daniel Day-Lewis will be flying into Dublin for the European Premiere of Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln at the Savoy Cinema on Sunday night.
Spielberg and Sally Field, Day-Lewis’s co-star, will also be at the event, which benefits the Wicklow Hospice Association.
Following the screening, the actor is to host a “Lincoln Ball” at the Burlington Hotel, during which props and memorabilia from the film will be auctioned to raise funds for a new hospice facility.
In an unusual move, Spielberg made the items available as a personal favour to Day-Lewis. The premiere will be among the flashiest in Dublin for quite some years.
Day-Lewis, who plays Abraham Lincoln in the historical epic, is currently odds-on favourite to win the best-actor Oscar in February and become the first man to take home three such awards.
There were, however, surprises elsewhere at the Golden Globes ceremony. Just three days after underperforming at the Oscar nominations, Ben Affleck’s Argo and Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables bounced back to take the prizes for, respectively, best dramatic picture and best comedy or musical.
Despite topping the nominations chart, Lincoln won no further Globes. Affleck took home best director for his thriller about the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. Hugh Jackman grabbed best actor (comedy or musical) for his lead performance in Hooper’s adaptation of the hit stage show.
When, last Thursday, neither Affleck nor Hooper received an Oscar nomination for best director, many concluded that their films had no chance of winning the best picture gong. Out in front with 12 nods from the Academy (including a mention for director), Lincoln looked to have best picture sewn up.
In truth, the Golden Globes results do not radically alter those predictions. Voted for by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a small body of entertainment journalists, the Globes have a very patchy record of predicting best film at the Oscars.
Over the past eight years, only two films have triumphed at both awards. No movie since Driving Miss Daisy in 1989 has won best picture at the Academy Awards without being nominated for best director. Messrs Spielberg and Day-Lewis can, thus, travel to Dublin safe in the knowledge that the Oscars are still theirs to lose.
The biggest talking point of the ceremony had nothing to do with the year’s movies.
Accepting an award for lifetime achievement, Jodie Foster confirmed an open secret by acknowledging, albeit obliquely, that she had long been in a same-sex relationship. Describing Cydney Bernard, her former companion, as “one of the deepest loves of my life, my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but heroic soul sister in life”, Ms Foster finally offered a dignified response to often-undignified gossip.