Cahir Castle has one quality that film companies value above almost anything else: it is a complete medieval castle rather than a ruin. You can point a camera at it without needing to build the missing half. That is why the same small town in Tipperary keeps turning up on screen.
Tristan and Isolt
The earliest of the well known productions brought Richard Burton to Cahir to film Tristan and Isolt, released in the United States as Love Spell. Irish actors including Geraldine FitzGerald and Neil Tobin appeared alongside him. It is the least remembered film on this page and the one that locals of a certain age remember best, because it was the first time the town saw a production of that size.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Stanley Kubrick used Cahir Castle in Barry Lyndon, where it stands in as the Prussian camp. Kubrick shot much of the film in Ireland, and the castle appears as a military setting rather than as itself.
Barry Lyndon is now regarded as one of the most beautifully photographed films ever made, so if you have seen it and thought the Irish locations looked unusually solid, this is part of why.
Excalibur (1981)
John Boorman's Excalibur is the one that put the castle in front of the largest audience. It took over 35 million dollars in America alone, and its cast reads like a roll call of careers about to begin: Nicol Williamson, Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson.
For a generation of viewers, Arthurian Britain looks like south Tipperary, which is a reasonable outcome for a castle on a rock in a river.
The Tudors
The television series The Tudors featured Cahir Castle in several scenes across its four series. It was shot largely in Ireland, and Cahir was one of a number of Irish castles standing in for the England of Henry VIII.
The Last Duel (2021)
Ridley Scott's The Last Duel, with Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer, used Cahir Castle as Argentan in Normandy, for the scenes in which Carrouges and Le Gris are reconciled.
The shoot has its own footnote. It was scheduled for Cahir in late March 2020 and was called off days beforehand as the pandemic closed productions across Europe. Filming resumed in late August and wrapped that October, which makes the Cahir scenes some of the first major studio work shot in Ireland after the shutdown.
Seeing it for yourself
The castle is open to the public and is in the middle of the town, so you can walk into most of what you have seen on screen. Cahir Castle has the history and the visiting detail, and things to do in Cahir covers the rest of a day here.
The Swiss Cottage downriver has not had the same screen career, which is surprising, because it looks more like a film set than the castle does.