Noel Pearson, the legendary Dublin born film and theater producer, will arrive in New York this month for the opening of his latest feel good film How About You, starring Vanessa Redgrave, Brenda Fricker, Imelda Staunton and Hayley Atwell. This week he talks to CAHIR O'DOHERTY about the making of the film in Ireland, and it's forthcoming U.S. premiere.

IRISH film producer Noel Pearson's resume reads like a who's who of Irish film and theater, but success hasn't spoiled him at all. This month he'll fly over to New York from his impressively stately country home in Wicklow to attend the opening of How About You, the feel good film of a well-known short story by the best selling author Maeve Binchy, starring Vanessa Redgrave, Brenda Fricker, Imelda Staunton and Hayley Atwell.

But for all his awards and high-flying achievements, Pearson's still a workingman from inner city Dublin. He's still ready to knock back a few pints and wax lyrical. He's what the Irish poet laureate Seamus Heaney would call "a nine to five man who's seen poetry."

His film credits include My Left Foot, which received five Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture), and won Oscars for Best Actor (Daniel Day Lewis) and Best Supporting Actress (Brenda Fricker). Pearson also produced the film version of John B. Keane's The Field, for which the late Richard Harris was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor.

Over the years Pearson has also produced the Broadway productions of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, which earned him a Tony Award for Best Play, and Frank McGuinness's Someone Who'll Watch Over Me. He was also the recipient of the 1994 Tony Award for Best Revival Play for An Inspector Calls.

Since producers have to convince the skeptical to part with large sums of money it's no surprise to discover that Pearson's a terrific conversationalist, as five minutes spent in his company will demonstrate. This week he told the Irish Voice about how he became involved with How About You.

"I'm a good friend of Maeve Binchy's and one night we had dinner together in Dublin to talk about her short story," says Pearson.

"Then I gave it to this young one Jean Pasley to write. That's how it happened." (Pearson had previously worked with Binchy on the 2005 film Tara Road).

The new film, originally titled The Hardcore after the elderly curmudgeons in an old folks home who have been abandoned by their long suffering relatives, was filmed in Ireland, and Binchy took the time to visit the set.

"She was amazed by all the fake snow for the Christmas scene, she couldn't believe you could create fake snow," says Pearson. "She was like a child on the set. She said to me, 'This is amazing,' and I said, 'I hope it's amazing because it cost ?50,000. It better be amazing.'"

Binchy, alongside being one of the world's best-selling writers, is also one of Ireland's most well-known atheists, a description that Pearson contests.

"Ah, she's an agnostic really. Do you know what Brendan Behan used to say? He was an atheist in the daylight but in the darkness of the night he'd reach for his rosary beads, you know?"

Pearson's affection for the writer is evident in his speech. As a legendary producer for two decades now he has brought the works of the best Irish writers to the stage and the screen, but it's his talent for friendship that may lie behind some of that deserved success - and the enduring loyalty of the Irish writers he works with.

"I love Maeve Binchy," he says simply. "She's one of the most modest women you could hope to meet. I mean she's sold 40 million books and she has so many achievements to her name, but she's completely unaffected by it all."

In How About You, Ellie (Atwell) is a fearless young woman left in charge of a dysfunctional residential home overrun with high maintenance oddballs. Over the Christmas holidays Ellie's inexperience brings her into sharp conflict with four distinctly grumpy old gals known as "the hardcore" - the retired screen beauty Georgia (Vanessa Redgrave), spinster sisters Hazel (Imelda Staunton) and Heather (Brenda Fricker) and the pompous reformed alcoholic judge Donald (Joss Ackland).

"When Vanessa Redgrave and Brenda Fricker got involved it all came together. Soon after we cast this terrific young one called Hayley Atwell (most recently seen as Lady Julia Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited). Their performances are very strong and film did well here in Ireland and was huge in Australia, and the early reviews in print in the U.S. - and the buzz on the blogs, which I gather is very important now - has been very good."

Pearson is known to take a keen interest in the filming of each of his productions, and he enjoyed watching the antics of these grand dames of the theater and screen among the locals.

Redgrave, the famous upper class beauty and siren of the British theater for over 50 years, had some quite surprising habits, Pearson reports.

"She was great, she did the work. She drank white wine from a bottle and went down to the chipper every day. She'd have a glass of wine in one hand and fish and chips in the other. The white wine communist who loved a good fry up, I swear to Jesus," he laughs.

Staunton, the celebrated character actress perhaps best known for her role as Mrs. Mead, the lunatic Irish nurse on the BBC comedy show Little Britain, also had her eccentricities.

"We used to sit around having a good few pints talking about the madness in Ireland. There's no cure for it you know. The Irish madness, which is a very positive madness, interested us both. Both her mother and father came from County Mayo. She's the best woman you ever met in a day's walk," Pearson says.

The scenic Carlingford Lough in Northern Ireland was selected for the outdoor locations for the film, a romantic landscape of wild natural beauty.

"We also shot scenes in President Mary McAleese's father's pub up North. The film is rooted in Ireland, as you'll discover."

How About You will open at the Paris Theatre on 58th Street and Fifth Avenue on November 14 before going on nationwide release.

"It's the first Irish film to ever play there and it's a very respected cinema. The talent we've lined up in this film made it a natural for them," says Pearson. "We're delighted that it's coming on there.

"Too many American distributors want your film for nothing. But nowadays we're focusing more on Europe these days because the penny has finally dropped. If you make good films you can recoup what you've spent in Europe."

Never one to rest on his laurels, Pearson has a new film in production that will start shooting in New York City in 2009. "I'm doing a film about Willie Mtolo, the man who won the 1992 New York City Marathon. Joe Drape, a sports journalist at The New York Times has written the most wonderful script. It's about racing, but it's about apartheid and politics too.

"I like stories that have a particular face but with a background behind it. You'll see that in How About You too."