Paul Mescal names the greatest Irish movie ever made: “My deep cut go-to”

Posted On December 18, 2025December 18, 2025

There’s a bit of controversy flying around about the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nomination given to Irish actor Paul Mescal recently for next year’s Golden Globes, namely that some think he should have been recognised for a lead role instead.

The film that has caused the buzz is Hamnet, the grief-ridden tale of William Shakespeare and his wife losing their son, which stars Mescal and Jessie Buckley, the latter being nominated for ‘Best Lead’ at the awards, thanks to her stellar work on the film.

In the same way that Ariana Grande and Stellan Skarsgård have also been nominated for supporting roles despite considerable screen time on Wicked and Sentimental Value, some believe that he plays the major role in the movie, but he is unlikely to concur, calling Buckley “extraordinary” and revealing that working with her caused him to tear up his acting rule book going forward.

Mescal is likely to become somehow even more famous over the next couple of years thanks to some high-level parts in some very big films indeed, not least taking the role of Paul McCartney in Sam Mendes’ forthcoming Beatles quadrilogy and the lead in an upcoming Richard Linklater film – although that comes with a caveat.

Merrily We Roll Along has been in production since 2019 and is an epic version of the Broadway musical of the same name. It is being made in the same fashion as Linklater’s award-winning Boyhood, but this time over a longer, 20-year period, with the director checking in on the actors every few years to make more of the film.

Linklater isn’t the only big director to choose Mescal to lead a film since his rapid rise to the top over the last few years. Of course, he’s balanced mega-movies like Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II with lower-budget but equally acclaimed films like 2022’s Aftersun, for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

Another example was God’s Creatures, from the same year, an Irish-made psychological drama set in a fishing village that saw Mescal play Emily Watson’s son, who gets accused of assault. It was a hit with critics and was one of a string of seven films the actor appeared in over the next three years.

Mescal retains close ties to his native Ireland and has spoken about his appreciation for Irish cinema, telling Buzzfeed: “(2007 drama) Garage is probably my favorite. I think it was Lenny Abrahamson’s first feature. That would be my kind of deep-cut go-to Irish film.”

Garage is an award-winning film that tells the story of a lonely petrol station attendant with learning difficulties who is helped out socially by a local teenager until an incident starts to unravel his life. It was shot in rural parts of Ireland and the capital Dublin, and won several international film festival awards, leading to future success for the director Abrahamson.

He would go on to direct the Brie Larson film Room from 2015, which picked up four Oscar nominations, including one for ‘Best Director’. Meanwhile, Mescal fans will have a long wait to see him in all four of the Beatles biopics, which aren’t due for release until 2028. The other members of the Fab Four will be played by another Irishman, Barry Keoghan, Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn, who appeared with Mescal in Gladiator II, and Babygirl star Harris Dickinson.

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