As far as twists go, you've got to go some way to beat the shock of "The Crying Game" (1992) when actor Jaye Davidson gives Stephen Rea a big suprise.

But lulling an audience into a false sense of security is a hobby for writer/director Neil Jordan, who won the Oscar for his "Crying Game" screenplay, as well as being nominated for 'Best Director'.

Indeed, there are few more eclectic film makers than Jordan. The 50-year-old from County Sligo, Ireland, has made it his quest to direct a variety of movies - from the biopic of political activist "Michael Collins" (1996) to a bloodsucking Tom Cruise in "Interview With the Vampire" (1994).

In fact, intially, there was more pressure on Jordan to follow in the footsteps of his mother and two sisters and become a painter. He decided instead to pick up a pen, making his mark in the industry after being drafted in as a script consultant on John Boorman's "Excalibur" (1981).

Since "Mona Lisa" (1986) (his breakthrough film as writer/director) he has flitted successfully between big-budget Hollywood and his homeland, paying the bills with visually lush, offbeat star vehicles like "Interview With the Vampire" and "We're No Angels" (1989), starring Sean Penn and Robert De Niro.

Yet while his Tinseltown sojourns have sometimes resulted in commercial failure, he always maintains the ability to surprise. His casting of Cruise as the Vampire Lestat raised eyebrows among the film fraternity, but his intuition paid off with Cruise delivering a sexually-charged, enigmatic performance.

More recently, Jordan's movies have got even darker, with such films as the chilling thriller "In Dreams" (1998) and "The Butcher Boy" (1997) an adaptation of Patrick McCabe's gruesome novel.

This year, the father of six once again set the box office and the Academy alight with his version of Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair", starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore.

If nothing else, this lustrous war-torn love story proved that no matter how hard you try, Neil Jordan truly is one film maker who's impossible to pigeonhole.