EEK! Big Stars. Proper stars. Hollywood stars. Like, everywhere. Look! Tom Berenger complete with leadingman quiff, beaming wife and cherubic baby daughter. And over there! Patrick Bergin (y'know, the guy who isn't Gabriel Byrne), fashionably down at heel in moustache and trenchcoat, so keen to come across as a ordinary decent bloke that he turned up nursing a mild flu and proceeded to borrow hankies off everyone in sight. Swoon!
Sorry, got a tad carried away there. Truth is, the aforementioned pair were the only genuine matinee idol types to show at the world premiere of big budget Mexican war drama One Man's Hero - in which they play central roles - at the Irish Film Centre on Wednesday night. But, golly, did they ever bring a showbiz atmosphere with them.
Perhaps the broiling ambience had something to do with the presence of a brace of real-life, bruise-if-you-punch-'em Hollywood moguls in the form of producer/ director siblings Conrad and Lance Hoot who revealed that they plan to follow up this genre-defining, stereotype challenging, windswept account of an Irish battalion which fought for Mexico in its 1846 war against the US with, er, Crocodile Dundee III. Be afraid, ve-r-ry afraid. Other Hoot movies include Flipper (another Paul Hogan laughathon), and Kevin Bacon vehicle The Air Up There.
The evening was hosted by the Mexican embassy with ambassador Daniel Dultzin there with glamorous US embassy couple Earle Scarlett (deputy chief of mission and number two to ambassador Michael Sullivan), and his wife, Barbara Scarlett.
Patrick Bergin has just finished a movie with archetypal quirky blonde Cameron Diaz. He couldn't tell us much about Invisible Circus, except that it was shot in Portugal and Paris and is slated for an autumn release in the US. Donning his "serious artist" cap, he also spoke of his ongoing attempts to bring three W. B. Yeats plays to the big screen. And Tom Berenger? Er, well, he was looking a bit worse for wear after making a frantic dash from his hotel ere and wasn't all that keen to chat. He did manage to muster a decent smile for the cameras with wife Trish and 14-month-old daughter Scalp-Riley. Cheers, Tom!
Young Cork thesp Gregg Fitzgerald, last seen in the movie Flesh and Blood, turned up fresh from auditions for the Abbey's new production of Mapmaker's Sorrow. Stuart Graham from Belfast took time out from his turn in the Lyric Theatre's production of Frank McGuinness's The Carthaginians. He came with wife Laine Megaw, last seen in Divorcing Jack and Sunset Heights, and playwright pal Gary Mitchell, currently working with the BBC on a TV movie adaptation of As the Beast Sleeps, which premiered to great acclaim at the Peacock last year.