“They had a difficult time – it was hard work, they were up early in the morning, working long hours and it was boring for them at times.” In an interview with TheJournal.ie, Colonel Pearse McCorley said the young men who took part in the film were “really great” and came from all over the country and from a variety of different professions.
#Is brave heart based on a true story movie#
This week, we’ve got some insights from the high-profile actors from the movie themselves about the filming in Ireland as well as a now retired Colonel who was charged with taking care of the soldiers and keeping them in line.
#Is brave heart based on a true story series#
THIS IS WHAT Hollywood actor Mel Gibson had to say about the 1,500 members of the Irish Defence Forces who played his army in the Oscar winning battle movie Braveheart.Īs part of our series on the 20th anniversary of the film’s production in Ireland, last week we showed you what it was like for the extras on set every day. Like any group of young men, they’re probably 75% smartasses but they’re okay. The real man surely lies in between.They’re terrific, you know, they’ve been really good, really professional. Fiona Watson, author of a biography of Wallace, said: "After 15 years, he's giving us the other version of the myth, the knuckles dragging across the floor one, which is equally untrue. Gibson’s remarks provoked debate in Scotland, with some academics and experts quick to accuse him of shifting his position on Wallace too far in the other direction. He said such romanticising was "the language of film", adding: "We kind of shifted the balance a bit because someone has got to be the good guy against the bad guy that's the way that stories are told." He was like what the Vikings called a 'berseker'."īut the 53-year-old Australian, whose own public image was tarnished when he delivered an anti-semitic rant on being arrested for drunk-driving in 2006, made no apologies for playing fast and loose with history. "He always smelled of smoke, he was always burning people's villages down.
Promoting a Blu-Ray release of Braveheart in Edinburgh, Gibson said: "Wallace wasn't as nice as the character we saw up there, we romanticised him a bit. It has been accused of racism and homophobia by some critics, and even the kilts the characters wear were invented 300 years after Wallace’s death. It creates a love affair between Gibson's hero and Queen Isabella, who was in fact two at the time. Its rabble-rousing sentiment and jingoistic portrayal of the English as cowardly and effeminate quickly made it a focus for nationalist sentiment, while its historical inaccuracies and simplistic morality led many to dismiss it as Hollywood schmaltz.īraveheart doesn't mention that Wallace was a member of the ruling elite, a privileged landowner. The stirring film seems to have been loathed and adored by Scots in equal measure since it was released in 1995.
Gibson, who directed and starred in the historical romp, told reporters in Edinburgh that the Scottish folk hero was really a "monster" and a "berserker". Fifteen years after he painted his face blue-and-white and wore a kilt for Braveheart, Mel Gibson has admitted his movie depicted a highly romanticised version of William Wallace.