‘Mary the magnificent’ – Former president Mary Robinson attends garden party in LA ahead of Oscars

Mrs Robinson recently featured in a short film about climate change, ActNowFilm, in which young people and environment experts express their frustration about the slow process in tackling global emissions and protect life on earth.

The film was launched at COP28 by Mrs Robinson and features young people from Lesotho to London in candid conversation with world figures, including the former President.

Marcella Smyth, Ireland’s Consul General to the South Western United States told an ensembled crowd, including Oscar nominees Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Robbie Ryan from Poor Things, that she was honoured to have them and Mrs Robinson at the event.

“President Robinson, during her time, in that role and I know now still was a massive champion of Irish culture and recognising the power of storytelling, the power of cultural exchange, in bringing together communities, that allow of an exploration of differences that truly culminate in understanding, and it’s a legacy she has left us with,” she said.

“We have a film industry in Ireland that is just brimming with creative talent, with imagination, determination, ferocity, and a deep well of stories, that captures who we are, warts and all. It fills us full of pride, when the skill and the talent that it takes to give those stories, universal meaning is then embraced, is then recognised,” added Ms Smyth.

Ireland’s Ambassador to the US, Geraldine Byrne Nason , acknowledged the achievements of the Irish makers of Poor Things, which has 11 Oscar nominations, as well as a Best Actor nod for Cillian Murphy.

“We are here to put wind in the sails of our great Academy Award nominees, we wish them absolutely all the best,” she remarked.

“We are also here to celebrate in our own way that we are riding a great green wave at the moment, a wave of tremendous growth and success in the screen industry.

“As Ireland’s ambassador to the United States, I have to say I’m so so proud of what we are doing in the screen industry right now.”

Ms Byrne Nason said it was a “personal privilege” to have Mrs Robinson at the function.

She said that when the two of them were at an event the previous evening on Sunset Boulevard, Mrs Robinson was called ‘Mary the magnificent’.

“You will forever be for so many of us ‘Mary the magnificent’,” she proclaimed, with Mrs Robinson (79) giving a small bow in acknowledgement.

“We are on the eve of International Women’s Day and what you did Mary, to transform the island I love best, in terms of the future of young women, I was one of them at the time, is inestimable.

“But you have gone beyond that, as far as most of us are concerned, and your clarion voice in favour of human rights, sustainability, climate, justice, is just incomparable. We are so so proud of you.”

She added that people in the film industry are expressing the “modern, diverse, inclusive Ireland that I am paid to represent”.

“That is not the country I grew up in, it’s the country you helped to transform Mary,” she stressed. “But it is who we are now, on the island of Ireland and off it., and the way you express that on the big screen, is just so extraordinary.”

The ambassador confessed she is now constantly being asked about Irish film and TV work.

“I often say I’m as likely to be asked about the Derry Girls or An Cailín Cúin, as I am about Yeats and Joyce now,” she added.