BIOGRAPHY

Hugh O’ Connor is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and photographer.

He began acting as a child, playing the young Christy Brown in the Oscar-winning My Left Foot, and has gone on to star in films like Chocolat, The Young Poisoner’s Handbook and The Stag. After studying film at NYU as a Fulbright scholar, he wrote and directed several shorts with the Irish Film Board. His debut feature, Metal Heart, written by the Booker Prize-nominated Paul Murray, and his animated adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat, voiced by Cillan Murphy and Alfred Molina, were award-winners at their premieres at the Galway Film Flead in 2018.

More recently, his short animation Worry World, voiced by Florence Adebambo and Domhnall Gleeson, won the James Horgan Award at its premiere at the 2023 Galway Film Fleadh, and the Audience Award at the Newport Beach International Film Festival. Hugh has directed music videos for artists including the late Sinéad O’Connor, and was series director for Irish National Opera’s acclaimed 20 Shots of Opera. In 2019 he received the Maverick Award from the Irish Film Critics Circle, and the Jim Sheridan Award for Achievement in Irish Film at the Irish Screen America festival in Los Angeles. His photography has been exhibited at the RHA, the RUA, and is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Ireland.