Neil, an artist of many identities

He wants his novel, Mistaken, to be appreciated as literature. If it screamed “film me,” he says, it wouldn’t be a book.

No chance of a screen adaptation? “Well, somebody tried to buy the film rights — some Hollywood company — but they thought I would direct it and I couldn’t think about that,” he says. It’s hard not to think about film when thinking about Neil Jordan. While Mistaken takes him back to his first love, fiction, and while he has five other well-received titles under his belt, he is known to most as the director of such modern classics as Mona Lisa and The Crying Game, blockbusters like Interview with the Vampire, and the historical epic, Michael Collins.