The Irish Film and Television Academy (Ifta) is to honour the contribution of Dublin born producer Morgan O’Sullivan to the Irish entertainment industry at its awards ceremony next month.
O'Sullivan, whose credits include Braveheart, Angela's Ashes and The Count of Monte Cristo, is to receive Ifta's Outstanding Contribution to Industry Award on February 12th.
Ifta chief executive Áine Moriarty said O’Sullivan (65) had strived to position Ireland “amongst the world’s foremost filiming locations” and that without him the industry here would “not exist as it does today”.
A former child actor, O’Sullivan began making documentaries and commercials with Dublin’s Rex Roberts Studios after leaving school in the 1960s. He also worked with Gael Linn newsreel before emigrating to Australia where he worked for the ABC and Channel Three networks.
He began working in radio on his return to Ireland in the 1970s but having seen the success the filming of television series Hawaii Five-O brought to the tiny Pacific Ocean island O’Sullivan turned his attention to developing a larger film and television industry here.
O'Sullivan worked on Joel Schumacher's Veronica Guerin, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced King Arthur, Jane Austen biopic Becoming Jane and a film adaptation of Cecilia Ahern's book PS I Love You and television series The Tudors.
Minister for Culture Mary Hanafin said he had made a “serious contribution to the economic viability of our film and television industry”, which her department was keen to protect.
