Dan Ireland
Date of Birth
Dan Ireland was a producer and director best known for helming The Whole Wide World, starring Renée Zellweger and Vincent D'Onofrio, and Jolene, starring Jessica Chastain. He was also the co-founder of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and was a producer and executive at Vestron Pictures and Cineville.
Ireland worked primarily in feature films, including contributions to the movies Midnight Crossing, starring Faye Dunaway; The Crew, with Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Sisto; The Velocity of Gary, with D’Onofrio and Salma Hayek; and Passionada, with Emmy Rossum.
Additionally, Ireland directed a 2000 episode of the sci-fi series The Outer Limits, titled “Skin Deep.” In the same year, he helmed an episode of 2gether: The Series, about a fictional boy band. In 2008, he directed a Lifetime television movie, Living Proof, starring Harry Connick Jr., Tammy Blanchard and Amanda Bynes. The telefilm followed the story of a doctor who devoted his life’s work to finding a cure for breast cancer.
Dan Ireland was a producer and director best known for helming The Whole Wide World, starring Renée Zellweger and Vincent D'Onofrio, and Jolene, starring Jessica Chastain. He was also the co-founder of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and was a producer and executive at Vestron Pictures and Cineville.
Ireland worked primarily in feature films, including contributions to the movies Midnight Crossing, starring Faye Dunaway; The Crew, with Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Sisto; The Velocity of Gary, with D’Onofrio and Salma Hayek; and Passionada, with Emmy Rossum.
Additionally, Ireland directed a 2000 episode of the sci-fi series The Outer Limits, titled “Skin Deep.” In the same year, he helmed an episode of 2gether: The Series, about a fictional boy band. In 2008, he directed a Lifetime television movie, Living Proof, starring Harry Connick Jr., Tammy Blanchard and Amanda Bynes. The telefilm followed the story of a doctor who devoted his life’s work to finding a cure for breast cancer.
Born in Vancouver, Ireland left Canada when he was still in his teens and moved with a friend to Seattle, where the two restored an old movie theater and ultimately went on to found SIFF in 1975. Ireland ran the film festival through 1986 and was responsible for staging world premiere screenings of films including Alien, The Empire Strikes Back and Poltergeist. In 1986, he moved to Los Angeles to become the head of film acquisition for Vestron Pictures.
He made his own directing debut in 1996 with The Whole Wide World, starring Zellweger as a schoolteacher in one of her first films.
Ireland died April 14, 2016, in Los Angeles. He was 57.
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