The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is a 1987 drama film made by Handmade Films Ltd.

Handmade Films

HandMade Films is a British film production and distribution company. Through a series of sales, and acquisitions, the company now known as Handmade Plc owns all the rights and assets of the original HandMade Films Ltd...

 and United British Artists (UBA) starring Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...

 and Bob Hoskins

Bob Hoskins

Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday , and Mona Lisa , and lighter roles in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Hook .- Early life :Hoskins was born in Bury St...

. It was directed by Jack Clayton

Jack Clayton

Jack Clayton was a British film director who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.-Career:A native of East Sussex, Clayton started his career as a child actor on the 1929 film Dark Red Roses...

 and produced by Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson (actor)

Richard Johnson is an English actor, writer and producer, who starred in several British films of the 1960s and has also had a distinguished stage career. He most recently appeared in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.-Life and career:...

 and Peter Nelson with George Harrison

George Harrison

George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...

 and Denis O'Brien

Denis O'Brien

Denis O'Brien is an Irish businessman with international connections. An Arts graduate of University College Dublin, O'Brien has received a MBA in corporate finance from Boston College in 1982, and was later given an honorary doctorate by University College Dublin.O'Brien has involvement with...

 as executive producers. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 was by Peter Nelson from the novel Judith Hearne

Judith Hearne

Judith Hearne , was regarded by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore as his first novel. The book was published in 1955, after Moore had left Ireland and was living in Canada...

by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore

Brian Moore (novelist)

Brian Moore was a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The...

. The music score was by Georges Delerue

Georges Delerue

Georges Delerue , was a French film composer who composed over 350 scores for cinema and television. He won numerous important awards including Rome Prize , Emmy Award , Genie Award , ACE Award and Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1979 for A...

 and the cinematography by Peter Hannan.

The novel was written after Moore had left Ireland, partly because of the religious stranglehold on the country, and was living in Canada. The book was published in 1955 and began to be optioned for the stage and screen almost immediately. John Huston

John Huston

John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...

 optioned it, intending to film it with Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...

; Irvin Kershner

Irvin Kershner

Irvin Kershner was an American film director and occasional actor, best known for directing quirky, independent films early in his career, and then Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. -Background:...

 planned on Deborah Kerr

Deborah Kerr

Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...

. When finally somebody had the rights and the financing at the same time, Jack Clayton

Jack Clayton

Jack Clayton was a British film director who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.-Career:A native of East Sussex, Clayton started his career as a child actor on the 1929 film Dark Red Roses...

, a Catholic himself, was chosen to direct. "Clayton is a felicitous choice to direct a character study film about a woman's rage against the Church for her wasted life. His first feature was Room at the Top with Simone Signoret

Simone Signoret

Simone Signoret was a French cinema actress often hailed as one of France's greatest movie stars. She became the first French person to win an Academy Award, for her role in Room at the Top...

 and he made The Innocents with Deborah Kerr and The Pumpkin Eater

The Pumpkin Eater

The Pumpkin Eater is a 1964 British drama film starring Anne Bancroft as an unusually fertile woman and Peter Finch as her philandering husband....

with Anne Bancroft

Anne Bancroft

Anne Bancroft was an American actress associated with the Method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg....

 - he knows how to show women's temperatures and their mind-body inter-actions. Maggie Smith becomes the essence of spinster - she makes you feel the ghastliness of knowing you're a figure of fun."

The film stars Maggie Smith as Judith Hearne, Bob Hoskins, Wendy Hiller

Wendy Hiller

Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE was an Academy Award-winning English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. The writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took...

, Marie Kean

Marie Kean

Marie Kean was an Irish actress of stage and screen whose career spanned over 40 years.Kean grew up in the village of Rush, County Dublin and was educated at Loreto College, North Great George's Street, Dublin...

, Ian McNeice

Ian McNeice

Ian McNeice is a prolific English screen, stage, and television character actor.-Early life:McNeice was born in Basingstoke in Hampshire. McNeice's acting training started at the Taunton School in Somerset, followed by two years at the Salisbury Playhouse...

, Alan Devlin, Prunella Scales

Prunella Scales

Prunella Scales CBE is an English actress, known for her role as Basil Fawlty's long-suffering wife in the British comedy Fawlty Towers and her award-nominated role as Queen Elizabeth II in the British film A Question of Attribution.-Career:Throughout her long career, Scales has usually been cast...

, Sheila Reid

Sheila Reid

Sheila Reid is a Scottish actress, best known for her performance as Madge Barron in Benidorm.-Career:Reid has had a long and distinguished career in theatre, film and television, and worked with Laurence Olivier at the Royal National Theatre. In 1980, she played the long-suffering wife of Trevor...

 and Aidan Gillen

Aidan Gillen

Aidan Gillen is an Irish stage and screen actor and television presenter. He is known in Ireland for his role in Love/Hate, in the UK for his role in Queer as Folk and in the US for his role in HBO's television series The Wire in which he plays Tommy Carcetti and for his role in Game of Thrones as...

 in his first film appearance. Although the novel is set in Belfast, filming took place in Dublin.

A radio drama adaptation was produced by BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 in 1995, directed by Michael Quinn.

Awards

Maggie Smith won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress

BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role

Best Actress in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to recognise an actress who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.- Winners and nominees :...

. She also won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actress (tied with Billie Whitelaw

Billie Whitelaw

Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...

 for The Dressmaker). Bob Hoskins won the Best Actor award (also for Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...

)