Irish actor Chris O’Dowd has said he feels overwhelmed by the amount of success he has had recently, following the announcement this morning that he has been nominated in the Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA) Rising Star category.
Roscommon-born O’Dowd has also been nominated this week for the Bafta equivalent of the Rising Star award and that nomination comes from the public.
In addition he got engaged at Christmas to television presenter Dawn Porter, is filming a television series based on his own life in his hometown of Boyle and has just been commissioned by NBC to write a comedy.
“The awards stuff, the engagement stuff and getting to shoot in Boyle on a show that I have written is pretty extraordinary. I’ll never forget. It has been a very overwhelming couple of weeks I have had. I feel very, very lucky at the moment. It has all come at once.”
O’Dowd said he was “surprised and delighted” by the nominations for Rising Star awards on both sides of the Irish Sea.
“I feel very chuffed. I certainly feel too old for them. I feel I could have fathered the other nominees,” he joked.
After first coming to prominence in the Channel 4 series The IT Crowd, O'Dowd's career has entered a new trajectory in the last year.
His first major role in a feature film, Bridesmaids, has taken nearly $300 million (€235 million) at the box office.
He has been nominated for an IFTA in the best supporting role for his turn as Officer Rhodes in Bridesmaids.
O'Dowd said he only found out last week that Bridesmaids was the top grossing film in Ireland last year, taking €4.31 million at the Irish box office.
"I knew it had done well, but to beat things like Harry Potter and all those huge budget films is incredible. I'd say it is very little to do with me. It's a great film."
He has a third IFTA nomination in the television category for playing the lead in the BBC drama The Crimson Petal and the White.
O'Dowd said making Moone Boy, which is loosely based on his own childhood in Boyle, has been an emotional experience.
“People have been on dozens of jobs but they have never felt the warmth and spirit coming at the production. People have been turning up on location with boxes of Roses and barbers have been giving us the keys to their shops when they were on holidays so actors could wash their hair.”
The six part series is due to be broadcast on Sky One in June.
The IFTA Rising Star award winners have all gone to greater things. Previous winners were Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, the writer/director Tomm Moore and Michael Fassbender. He has been nominated for a Bafta for his role in the film Shame.
John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard, is also a double Bafta-IFTA nominee.
He received a Bafta nomination for best original screenplay and has also been nominated in the IFTA Rising Star category.
“Given that I am pathologically competitive, this nomination will mean nothing to me if I don't win,” he joked.
He said of his Bafta nomination: "It's interesting to note that the other films in this category are all comedies – apart from The Iron Lady of course which is obviously a horror story. It's nice to be rewarded for trying to bring some fun and joy into people's lives – unlike Lady Thatcher who was rewarded for doing the exact opposite."
Actor Emmet J. Scanlan, who starred in the film Charlie Casanova, described his nomination as the “stuff of fairy tales”.
The fourth nominee in the category of IFTA Rising Star is Rebecca Daly, the writer/director of the film The Other Side of Sleep.
