Cate Blanchett as: Veronica Guerin

Director: Joel Schumacher
Selected Cast: Gerard McSorley, Ciarán Hinds, Brenda Fricker & Colin Farrell
Written by: Carol Doyle
Release Year: 2003
Genre: Biopic / Crime / Drama / Thriller
MPAA Rating: R

 

 

 

 

 

IMDb | Photos | Videos | Official Site

Based on a true story, this is about the Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, a reporter for ‘The Sunday Independent’, who exposed some of Dublin’s most powerful crime barons and drug lords in 1996. But later that year she was gunned down by assasins hired by the same criminal drug lords she exposed.

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Artwork; Behind the scenesRelated Videos

Quotes from Cate Blanchett

• “I think a spirit like Veronica’s [Guerin] only graces the planet once every 100 years or so. She was a phenomenal life force. It’s a gift, I think, that Veronica was such a complex, passionate, extraordinary human being first and foremost, and a journalist second.” (RTE, March 2002)
• On how does she see Veronica Guerin and the attraction to the project: “People talk about the beating and how could a woman continue after she’d been punched in the face to do what she does, after her son’s been threatened. But, the paper gave her the option that you can either write the story or press charges and she chose the less public option to press charges. She took him to court and they let him off. So, what’s a girl to do? On a moral, existential level, what is she saying to her son? That it’s ok? What kind of world am I creating for my son on one level. But also, the only way to really protect herself and to protect other people from suffering the same fate was to do something about it. I really think that in terms of heroism, and I was talking to my husband the other day about this and, quite rightly, we’re living in cowardly times. When to actually stand up and say ‘I think this’ and ‘I’m prepared to fight for this’, we just think ‘what an idiot’. And I think that it’s such an inkblot test as to how or what we think is important. The heroes that we see in films are people that get away with things, and they’re naughtily pleased that they get away with things. And now anyone, particularly a woman, who stands up and fights for what she believes in is considered fool hardly and reckless and irresponsible.”
• “When you play someone who lived and breathed and who has become so iconic within Irish culture… I mean, there, everybody knows what she looked like, she got so many radio and television interviews. Of course, there is a sensitivity one has to have as a human being in the fact that the grief surrounding her death is so real and present for her family. They were very generous in sharing some of their memories and anecdotes.” (The Early Show, October 2003)
• “I don’t get nervous usually before those things [screening]. But knowing all the family and friends are tehre, and knowing that they have a much more intimate knowledge of her than I do, and here I was pretending to be her, I was really nervous. And they all stood up at the end.” (The Daily Telegraph, July 2003)
• “I was most nervous of them seeing it. I felt this responsibility to them, because of course they’re still grieving over the loss of this incredible member of their family. They told me I’d captured her essence, which is the best you can hope for. I think her motivations, the reasons she kept putting herself in danger, were pretty obscure2, even to herself. There’s a certain level on which everyone’s unknowable.” (You, July 2003)
• “I found the Ireland that one experiences in literature and in picture-postcards is not the Ireland that Veronica Guerin dealt with, and so I found it revelatory that she was co-existing in [what was] once a village, but also in this terrible, complex morass of this underworld that had a much broader reach than beyond Irish shores. And because the case was just being re-opened when we started to film, it was a really kind of a quite dangerous and volatile time to be making it; but what I found perplexing was that the questions that I got asked when we did the publicity was ‘How do you feel about what Veronica did as a mother; how could she do that as a mother?’ You think – what she was doing was profoundly important, and she was chasing a story the way any good male investigative journalist was doing it. So I think she was groundbreaking, not only in what she achieved in her very short lifetime, but also groundbreaking as a woman. You do think that it is 20 years now, and that those questions are still being asked of war correspondents.” (Irish Independent, June 2016)

Quotes from Others

• Joel Schumacher on how he sees Veronica Guerin and what attracted him to the project:
  — “Well, I thought she had real balls. And I think that one of the things that all story tellers do, which is my job, and the reason we go to movies and plays, and read novels and hear stories is that I think we’re constantly wanting to see stories about people who do things that maybe we wouldn’t do. Or don’t do. And, I hate bullies and I love the fact that she just wouldn’t step down from these thugs who constantly tried to silence her. And also I thought that I’d love to know her, as she seemed to be mischievous and have a sense of humour, and not think of herself as a saint or a martyr and she had an ego, and she was a real human being.”
  — “We were in awe the way she would do a very demanding, emotional and stressful role with the perfect Irish accent, and then run off the set and be mom. Because it took a long time getting where she is now, she is kind of unpretentious — not someone who stands in front of a mirror making.”

Trivia & Facts

• Filmed in Ireland.
• Cate Blanchett was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes, more accolades here.
• The dance scene where Veronica dances with her family to ‘Everlasting Love’ was added in on the spot by Cate Blanchett.
• Cate Blanchett and Ciarán Hinds also worked together in Oscar and Lucinda (1997).
• Cate Blanchett was the Joel Schumacher and Jerry Bruckheimer’s first choice for the role of Veronica Guerin.
• Disney wanted the scene in the film where Veronica didn’t know what she’d gotten for her son’s birthday, because she was so busy writing about drug dealers that she wasn’t attentive enough. Joel Schumacher also said that it was Cate Blanchett’s idea.

Cambridge Film Festival Special Screening, 12 July 2003; Cate Blanchett with Bernie Guerin, Veronica Guerin’s mother, at the Los Angeles premiere, 8 October 2003