Directed by Ron Howard, Far and Away starred the recently married couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who had got together on DAYS OF THUNDER. It is interesting to note that the opening aerial shot of the film, flies over The School House from Ryan’s Daughter. Kidman, who played Shannon in the film, has ancestors from Dingle Peninsula, The Finns family. There is much talk of Cruise’s voice work as Joseph in the film, interestingly he was using new tech for the time with an electronic voice-enhancer to achieve the accent. 

At this point Ron Howard had done really well with films WILLOW and PARENTHOOD and his film BACKDRAFT was just being released when he began filming in Dingle in the summer of 1991. This film was a dream project for him. The film was inspired by Chieftain songs, set in the 1890s, a romantic historial piece with a score by John Williams and The Chieftains. 
Amazingly the film was shot on 70mm, only the second film in 22 years since Ryan’s Daughter. Filmed in Montana, the cameraman Mikhail Solomon, used Panavision, Arriflex Camera and shot at 100 FPS to achieve the spectacular slow motion scene with the 800 riders and 900 horses depicting the Oklahoma Land Rush. 

Other locations filmed in Ireland include, Temple Bar and Market Lane in Dublin city and Killruddery House just outside Bray. Irish actors, Colm Meaney and Brendan Gleeson, Niall Toibin (who also appears in Ryan’s Daughter) also star in the film.