IRISH FILM DIRECTOR MICHAEL CREAGH has been nominated for the Short Film (Live Action) category of this year’s Academy Awards for The Crush.

Creagh’s 15-minute debut film about a schoolboy’s intense crush on his teacher was screened at the Tribeca film festival in New York, the Chicago Irish Film Festival and the Belfast Film Festival in 2010.

Creagh told media magazine the Independent that the idea came to him on the train home from work one night.

He said he cast his son Oran as the 8-year-old main character in The Crush because he’d promised him he’d put him in a film and couldn’t back out. Luckily, he said, “he turned out to be amazing”. The film received independent funding.

Multiple nominations

The King’s Speech leads the Academy Awards nominations this year, with nominations for 12 categories including Leading Actor, Supporting Actress and Best Film.

Colin Firth and Natalie Portman, who picked up Golden Globes for Best Leading Actor and Actress earlier this month, are both in the running for an Oscar.

Portman’s nomination is just one of five for Darren Aronofsky’s thriller Black Swan.

Oscar ceremony host James Franco is nominated for Leading Actor for his role in 127 Hours, which has six nominations overall. Other multiple nominees include The Social Network with eight nominations and True Grit with ten.

Former award winners Halle Berry, Jeff Bridges, Marisa Tomei and Sandra Bullock will participate in this year’s awards ceremony by presenting winners with their statuettes.

This year’s awards are scheduled for Sunday, 27 February, and will be co-hosted by Anne Hathaway and Franco.

Earlier this month, rumours that Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes were planned to boycott the Oscars over a comedy sketch Hathaway made about Holmes were denied by the couple. A spokesperson for Cruise said they had not intended to attended the awards show before Hathaway’s Saturday Night Live sketch mimicking Holmes.

Check out the full list of nominees for this year’s Oscars >