Thursday, March 09, 2006

The War on Actors

In our account of his acceptance speech at the Oscars on Sunday night, we should have noted that Martin McDonagh mentioned that he had hoped to have one of the actors in Six Shooter with him, but that visa problems had intervened. In what counts as humility by State Department standards, the US Embassy is Dublin has acknowledged that there was a problem [Irish Times, subs. req'd]:

The US embassy in Dublin has said it "regrets any inconvenience" caused to actor RuaidhrĂ­ Conroy, who was denied entry to the US last week because he had overstayed a previous visa by two days.

Conroy had travelled to attend the Oscars ceremony on Sunday evening, but was denied admission to the US on arrival at Los Angeles.


Conroy had technically violated a previous visa with an overstay of 2 days, and therefore was required to apply for an entry visa for this trip, as opposed to the normal visa waiver that applies for European visitors to the USA. He faced the additional complication of having left from London, with the problem therefore only being caught upon arrival. Had he departed from Dublin or Shannon, the insult could have been delivered without him having to take two very long flights.

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