Jimmy Boyle (born 1944 in Gorbals, Glasgow) is a Scottish sculptor, novelist and convicted criminal.
In 1967 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of another gangland figure, William "Babs" Rooney. During his incarceration in the special unit of Barlinnie Prison, he turned to art and wrote an autobiography, A Sense of Freedom (1977), which has since been filmed and starred David Hayman as Jimmy.
On his release from prison he moved to Edinburgh to continue his artistic career. He designed the largest concrete sculpture in Europe called "Gulliver" for The Craigmillar Festival Society in 1976. The following year he co-wrote the play The Hardman with Tom McGrath, premiered at the Traverse Theatre.
Boyle has also published Pain of Confinement: Prison Diaries (1984), and a novel, Hero of the Underworld (1999). The latter was adapted for a French film, La Rage et le Reve des Condamnes (The Anger and Dreams of the Condemned), and won the best documentary prize at the Fifa Montreal awards in 2002. He also has written a forthcoming novel, A Stolen Smile, which is about the theft of the Mona Lisa and how it ends up hidden on a Scottish housing estate; Disney reportedly bought the film rights.[1]
He lives between France and Morocco[2] with his second wife, Kate Fenwick, a British actress.[3][4][5] They married in Marrakech, Morocco, on 27 October 2007.
The character Nicky Dryden in the 1999 film The Debt Collector is loosely based on Boyle.
In 1998 he was named as a financial donor of the Labour Party.[6]