Risteard Cooper is an Irish actor, comedian, singer and writer and is one third of comedy trio Après Match.
Cooper graduated from the acting program at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College. He lived in New York for several years where he worked at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Irish Rep and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company (founded by, amongst others, John Malkovich) playing Mickey in the American premiere of Jez Butterworth’s Olivier award-winning play, Mojo directed by Ian Rickson.
In 2009, he played the role of Dmitri in Brian Friel‘s play The Yalta Game, directed by Patrick Mason for the Gate Theatre at the 2009 Sydney and Edinburgh International Festivals.
He played the leading role of Michael in the RTÉ/Element Pictures film Bitter Sweet for which he received a Best Actor nomination at the 2009 Monte Carlo Television and Film Awards.
He starred as Setanta de Paor in An Crisis, an Irish language satirical comedy series for TG4 for which he was also nominated at the 2010 Monte Carlo Awards, this time in the Best Comedy Actor category.
In 2011, he wrote and starred in a series of parodies on YouTube sponsored by sports betting agency Betdaq.
Later that year he played Henry Higgins in the Abbey Theatre’s first ever production of Shaw’s Pygmalion going on in 2012 to star as Joxer Daly with Ciarán Hinds (Boyle) and Sinéad Cusack (Juno) in O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock at the Abbey Theatre, before transferring to the National Theatre of Great Britain.
In 2013 he played Finbar in a production of Conor McPherson’s The Weir at The Donmar Warehouse, which transferred to the West End in 2014. It also starred Brian Cox, Dervla Kirwin, Ardal O’Hanlon and Peter McDonald and was directed by Josie Rourke.
In September 2014 he appeared as Sir Henry Coverly in the ITV drama The Suspicions of Mr Whicher “The Ties That Bind”, while in 2015 he portrayed Dermot Nally in RTÉ’s “Charlie” and most recently, the serial-killer Laurie Gaskell in the critically acclaimed eight-part comedy-drama “No Offence” for Channel 4.
Pauline Flanagan was a County Sligo-born Irishactress who had a long career on stage. American television audiences best knew her as Maeve Ryan’s sister, Annie Colleary, on the soap operaRyan’s Hope in 1979 and again in 1981. She later returned to the show as Sister Mary Joel.
She appeared in the play Summer, by Hugh Leonard at the Hudson Guild Theater, directed by Brian Murray. (Summer premiered at the Olney Theatre, Maryland, in August 1974.)
In 1997 she won the Barclays Theatre Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role in Jennifer Johnston‘s Desert Lullaby, at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. (The Barclays Theatre Awards are for outstanding regional theatre (including opera and dance) in the UK.)
She was nominated for the 1982 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for Medea in which she performed on Broadway in 1982. In 2001 she won an Olivier Award, Best Supporting Actress, for her performance in Frank McGuinness‘ Dolly West’s Kitchen at the Old Vic.
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Flanagan, Pauline (1925–2003), actress, was born 29 June 1925 in Sligo town, youngest child of Patrick J. Flanagan and his wife Elizabeth (née McLynn). Her paternal family, originally from Co. Fermanagh, were driven out by anti‐catholic pogroms and resettled in Sligo, where her parents managed a retail business. The family’s politics were strongly nationalist and republican; her father fought in the war of independence, spending much time on the run or in jail. Both her parents served as mayors of Sligo, her father as an independent republican in 1939, her mother (the first woman to hold the office) in 1945; Pauline’s uncle Thomas Flanagan served two consecutive terms as mayor (1904–5).
Educated in Sligo at the Ursuline convent school, Flanagan was drawn to acting while a schoolgirl, but faced some family objection to pursuing the interest as a career. After performing in amateur dramatics, she landed her first professional roles with the Garryowen Players during the 1949 summer season in Bundoran, Co. Donegal. In the early 1950s she spent three years in the renowned fit-up company of Anew McMaster (qv), in later life recalling fondly the constant travelling, cheap digs, hard work, invaluable experience, and wonderful fun. She played a great range of roles – support and lead, comic and tragic – in Shakespeare, ancient Greek drama, contemporary potboilers, and melodrama. Colleagues in the company included T. P. McKenna (qv), Patrick Magee (qv), Milo O’Shea (qv), and Harold Pinter.
While visiting a sister in New York in the mid 1950s, Flanagan took a job as understudy in a production of ‘The living room’ by Graham Greene. Thus began her long and distinguished career on the New York stage and elsewhere in America, including numerous appearances on and off Broadway. Her Broadway debut came in the first Main Stem production of Dylan Thomas’s play for voices ‘Under Milk Wood’ (1957); the cast included Tom Clancy (qv). Other early New York credits included ‘Ulysses in Nighttown’ (1958), an adaptation from the text of James Joyce (qv), directed by Burgess Meredith; Flanagan played both Molly Bloom and Mrs Dedalus among other characters, opposite Zero Mostel as Leopold Bloom. She appeared in two other stage adaptations with Irish settings: ‘God and Kate Murphy’ (1959), directed by Meredith and starring Larry Hagman; and ‘Drums under the window’ (1960), from the autobiographical work by Sean O’Casey(qv).
In the early 1970s Flanagan performed several major Broadway roles with the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center: the Female Chorus Leader in ‘Antigone’ (1971); Ann Putnam in a revival of Arthur Miller’s ‘The crucible’ (1972); and Bessie Burgess in O’Casey’s ‘The plough and the stars’ (1973), in a cast that included Jack MacGowran (qv) as Fluther Good, and Christopher Walken as Jack Clitheroe. She played Myra White in ‘Summer’ (1974) by Hugh Leonard (1926–2009), both in the original production at the Olney Theater in Maryland, and at the Olympia in the Dublin theatre festival. Pinter directed her on Broadway as Mrs Grose in ‘The innocents’ (1976), an adaptation of Henry James’s ‘The turn of the screw’, starring Claire Bloom and a young Sarah Jessica Parker.
Flanagan received a Drama Desk nomination for outstanding featured actress in a play for her Broadway performance as the First Woman of Corinth in an acclaimed production of ‘Medea’ (1982), supporting the Tony‐winning Zoe Caldwell in the title role. She appeared in the original Broadway production of ‘Steaming’ (1983), and with Keith Baxter and Milo O’Shea in the long‐running ‘Corpse!’ (1986). In her last Broadway role, she played Madge in a revival of ‘Philadelphia, here I come!’ (1994) by Brian Friel. Her many roles with the off‐Broadway Irish Repertory Theatre included Sean O’Casey’s mother in ‘Grandchild of kings’ (1992), adapted and directed by the noted impresario Hal Prince from O’Casey’s early autobiographies, for which she was nominated for best actress by the Outer Critics Circle. Other credits with the troupe included O’Casey’s ‘Juno and the paycock’ (1995) (as Mrs Boyle), and Leonard’s ‘A life’ (2001).
From the early 1990s Flanagan returned to the Irish stage with outstanding performances in some of the most important Irish plays and productions of the period. She was Mrs Grigson in Shivaun O’Casey’s production of her father Sean’s ‘The shadow of a gunman’, in both Dublin and off‐Broadway in New York (1991). In ‘The desert lullaby’ by Jennifer Johnston at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre (1996), Flanagan played Nellie, the housekeeper, friend, and confidante of the mistress of an old Wicklow country house (played by Stella McCusker); the performance, ‘all mothering minder and loving tender, yet never without due reserve’ (David Nowlan, Ir. Times, 1 Nov. 1996), won her the TMA Barclays Award for best supporting actress in UK regional theatre. She appeared as Mother in ‘Tarry Flynn’, adapted and directed by Conall Morrison from the novel by Patrick Kavanagh (qv), both in the Abbey Theatre premiere (1997), and in the warmly received London run at the Royal National Theatre (1998).
Flanagan appeared in two first productions by the Abbey company of plays by Marina Carr. In ‘Portia Coughlan’ (1996) she played Blaize Scully, the vicious‐tongued paraplegic grandmother of the eponymous character (played by Derbhle Crotty), directed by Garry Hynes. In another pungent work of earthy midlands gothic, she was (in Nowlan’s words (Ir. Times, 8 Oct. 1998)) ‘strikingly and effectively unpleasant’ as the ‘venomously selfish’ Mrs Kilbride in Carr’s ‘By the Bog of Cats’ (1998), opposite Olwen Fouéré; directed by Patrick Mason, she was nominated for best supporting actress in the Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards. She appeared as Nell in ‘Endgame’ (1999) by Samuel Beckett (qv), with Alan Stanford, Barry McGovern, and Bill Golding, which played Dublin’s Gate Theatre, the Melbourne Festival, and the Barbican Centre in London. Directed by Mason at the Abbey, Flanagan was superb as Rima West, the hard drinking, raunchy mouthed, but compassionate widowed matriarch in ‘Dolly West’s kitchen’ (1999) by Frank McGuinness, set along the Donegal–Derry border during the second world war. Receiving a Beckett Award as best actress in the 1999 Dublin theatre festival, she remarked: ‘At my age I should be saying my prayers and getting ready for the grave, but here I am winning awards’ (Ir. Times, 20 Oct. 1999). For the production’s run at the Old Vic (2000), she won an Olivier Award as best supporting actress on the London stage, which she described as the pinnacle of her acting career.
Primarily a stage actress, Flanagan did relatively little work in television or film. Early in her American career she performed in two worthy productions of television theatre: in ‘Juno and the paycock’ (1960) in a cast that included Walter Matthau and Liam Clancy; and in ‘Little moon of Alban’ (1964) by James Costigan, supporting Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer. She made several appearances on US television in the 1980s, and impressively supported John Hurt and Brenda Blethyn in the feature film Night train (1998), set in contemporary suburban Dublin, directed by John Lynch.
Flanagan’s last performances were among the greatest of her career. In a revival of Tom Murphy’s ‘Bailegangaire’ she played the physically and mentally demanding role of Mommo, a confused, bedridden old woman (on stage throughout the entire play), who night after night tells the same disjointed story without ever arriving at the conclusion: how a laughing competition resulted in the renaming of the eponymous ‘town without laughter’. Flanagan compared the role to a nightly ascent of Everest, the script being so tight that the performance must not only be word‐perfect and letter‐perfect, but every punctuation point must be perfectly placed. Directed by the playwright as part of the Abbey’s five‐play Murphy retrospective in the 2001 Dublin theatre festival, supported by Jane Brennan and Derbhle Crotty as Mommo’s two granddaughters, Flanagan was hailed for liberating the play from the legend of Siobhán McKenna (qv), who had originated the role in the Druid production of 1986. Fintan O’Toole praised Flanagan’s ‘exquisitely detailed’ performance, ‘not the baroque opera of McKenna, but a haunting chamber piece’ (Ir. Times, 5 Oct. 2001). As the role had been the swansong of McKenna’s career, so it was of Flanagan’s; the production’s reprisal at the Peacock in 2002 was her last appearance on an Irish stage. Though ill with lung cancer, she repeated the role with the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York, where Bruce Weber described her ‘captivating performance’ as ‘by turns comic, pathetic, and chilling in depicting the madness of old age’ (NY Times, 15 Oct. 2002).
Among the best Irish actors of her generation, Flanagan was strikingly featured rather than beautiful; Leonard remembered her ‘Nefertiti profile’ (Sunday Independent, 6 July 2003). Some thirty years old when she first hit the New York stage, she never played ingénue roles, and few leading ones, but excelled as strong supporting characters, with distinctive, often difficult or disturbed personalities, going from strength to strength in such parts as she aged. Michael Colgan of the Gate Theatre compared her legacy to the Irish theatre to that of Donal McCann (qv) and Ray McAnally (qv), remarking: ‘It takes such a long time in theatre to nurture that level of timing and talent’ (Ir. Times, 1 July 2003). Lauded by Murphy as ‘a superb woman, a lion-hearted woman’ (ibid.), she was eulogised for her kindness, generosity, and tolerance. She married (1958) George Vogel, an actor whom she met when he was writing a thesis on O’Casey; they had two daughters, and resided in New Jersey. She died of heart failure 29 June 2003 in New York
In 2011 and 2012, she toured Ireland again with Druid, playing the titular character in Big Maggie by John B. Keane and was consequently nominated for Best Actress in the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards.
She played the grieving mother who commits suicide in Six Shooter, playwright Martin McDonagh‘s Oscar-winning short film.[3]
She is familiar to Irish television audiences as Dr. Cathy Costello from Series 1 to Series 5 in the drama series The Clinic, a role for which she has won an Irish Film and Television Awards best actress award in 2008.
She had a leading role in the Channel 4 thriller Shockers (1999). She starred in Seasons 2 through 5 in Raw, an RTÉ drama portraying the lives of a restaurant staff, playing manager Fiona Kelly.
Dublin-born, he moved with his family to London at the age of ten. He is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and was also a successful property developer during the 1980s. He is the owner of the public house, the Lion and the Lobster, in Brighton and known for roles in television programmes Michael Collins, Dracula Untold and Beyond the Sea.
Valene Kane is best known for playing Rose Stagg, the ex-girlfriend of serial killer Paul Spector, in The Fall on BBC Two and for her role as Lyra Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. She is also known for her role in the BBC drama Thirteen. She starred as DS Lisa Merchant, described as “superb” by The Radio Times: “The former star of The Fall‘s scenes […] are among the show’s most intriguing, simmering with sexual tension and professional frustration.”
Kane won the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Supporting Performer for her role in The Stroma Sessions and her film Profile (in which she played a struggling undercover journalist who connects with a Jihadi through Facebook) won the Panorama Audience Award at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
Kane was cast in The Fading Light by the director Ivan Kavanagh after he spotted her in a short film, July, that was posted on YouTube. She was chosen partly for her successful experience with improvisation in the short film. 2013 saw her play Rose Stagg in the BBC‘s TV series The Fall, and Dara in the comic Irish thriller Jump. Also in 2013, Kane played the title role in Strindberg‘s Miss Julie at the newly founded Reading Rep.
Other film work Still Early, a short film which premiered at the Galway Film Festival. Kane’s work for the BBC in 2016 includes taking the lead in BBC3 drama Thirteen, the third series of The Fall, and an episode of Murder. Also that year, she played Lyra Erso, the protagonist’s mother, in the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Kane has been seen on stage as Nance, in the Finborough Theatre‘s production of Autumn Fire, The Love in Punchdrunk‘s production The Black Diamond, which sold out “in mere minutes” and Lady Lydia Languish in The Rivals. She also played Girleen in Martin McDonagh‘s The Lonesome West in which one reviewer said “Kane gives Girleen a schoolgirl reality, her confident swagger and challenge covering the only genuine feelings for anyone else that the play possesses”.
Kane’s radio drama work for the BBC includes The Demon Brother and Stroma Sessions for which she won Best Supporting Performer.
In 2018 Valene Kane played journalist Amy Whittaker who investigates the recruitment of young European women by the ISIS in the 2018 thriller film Profile by Timur Bekmambetov. The film takes place entirely on computer screens. It premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Panorama Audience Award.
2019 saw Kane in Anne Sewitsky‘s Sonja: The White Swan which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and in BBC TV Movie Counselin which she played the “an alpha female barrister [who] complicates her professional and personal life when she takes on a young client”
Kane could also be heard on the Monobox Speech Share podcast reading from Marina Carr‘s “Portia Coughlan”
Lorraine Pilkington was born 18 April 1974 & is an Irish actress from Dublin, who is best known for her role as Katrina Finlay from Monarch of the Glen.
At age 18 she moved to London where she was given a part in a Miramax film which eventually fell through. After returning to Dublin, Pilkington appeared in films including Human Traffic and My Kingdom, a retelling of King Lear.
In 2000, she was cast as Katrina Finlay, a schoolteacher in a Scottish village in the BBC television series Monarch of the Glen. After leaving the show at the beginning of the third season, she appeared in various other television productions such as Rough Diamond and Outnumbered.
She married Simon Massey, the director of Monarch of the Glen, in 2001. They have three sons, Milo, Luca and Inigo.
In 2008, she appeared in a short film by Luke Massey Within the Woods, with James Chalmers.
In 2016 she voiced the lead role in a Paramount animation, Capture the Flag.
McNulty was born to an Irish father and a Canadian mother. She is from Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. McNulty is a natural blonde, contrary to the widespread public belief that she is a redhead. She dyed her hair red for her role in Anne with an E.
Patrick Colbert was born on November 20, 1897 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland. He was an actor, known for Shipmates o’ Mine (1936), The Mikado. He died in 1971.
In 2002, he appeared as Dan Moody in the I’m Alan Partridge episode “Bravealan”. A scene where Alan repeatedly shouts “Dan!” at Dan from a distance in a car park, while Dan pretends not to notice him, was named the second best moment from the series by Metro, and in 2014 Mangan said that he has “Dan!” shouted at him by passers-by almost every day.
Mangan played Guy Secretan in the BAFTA-winning British sitcom Green Wing. In Channel 4’sThe World’s Greatest Comedy Characters, Guy was voted 34th. He starred as Keith in Never Better, a British television sitcom on BBC Two. He plays a recovering alcoholic Keith Merchant and Kate Ashfield is his long-suffering wife Anita. The series was written by Fintan Ryan for World Productions.
In 2009, Free Agents, a romanticblack comedy starred Mangan, Sharon Horgan and Anthony Head. Originally a pilot for Channel 4 in November 2007, the series began on 13 February 2009. It spawned a short lived US remake, which was cancelled after just four episodes aired, although four more were later released on Hulu.
He played the title role in Dirk Gently, a British comedy detective drama TV series based on characters from the Dirk Gently novels by Douglas Adams. The series was created by Howard Overman and co-starred Darren Boyd as his sidekick Richard MacDuff. Recurring actors included Helen Baxendale as MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan Harmison, Jason Watkins as Dirk’s nemesis DI Gilks and Lisa Jackson as Dirk’s receptionist Janice Pearce. Unlike most detective series Dirk Gently featured broadly comic touches and even some science fiction themes such as time travel and artificial intelligence. He has said that he was “bitterly upset” at the BBC’s axing of the series after four episodes due to a freeze on the licence fee.
He appeared in Episodes, a British/American television comedy series created by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik and produced by Hat Trick Productions. It premiered on Showtime in the United States on 9 January 2011 at 9:30 pm and on BBC Two in the UK on 10 January 2011.
The show is about a British husband-and-wife comedy writing team who travel to Hollywood to remake their successful British TV series, with disastrous results. On 11 December 2013, it was announced that Showtime had renewed Episodes for a fourth season. Episodeshas received positive reviews by critics, with many singling out Mangan, Tamsin Greig, and Matt LeBlanc‘s performances.
In 2018 Stephen Mangan played the lead role in a comedy British TV Series Bliss that was aired on Sky One.
He appeared opposite Keira Knightley in the 2002 short New Year’s Eve, and played the leading role in SuperTex (2003), a Dutch film, filmed in English and directed by Jan Schütte. He played a comedian in Festival is a 2005 British black comedy about a number of people at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe directed by Annie Griffin. The general shots of the festival were filmed during the 2004 event. Mangan was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA for his performance.
Marie O’Neill was born in 1886 and was an Irish actress of stage and film. She holds a place in theater history as the first actress to interpret the lead character of Pegeen Mike Flaherty in John Millington Synge‘s controversial stage masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World (1907).
Born Mary Agnes Allgood at 40 Middle Abbey Street, Dublin, she was one of eight children of compositor George and french polisher Margaret (née Harold) Allgood,[2][3]she was known as “Molly”. Her father was sternly Protestant and against all music, dancing and entertainment, and her mother a strict Catholic. After her father died in 1896, she was placed in an orphanage. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker. One of Allgood’s brothers, Tom, became a Catholic priest.
Maud Gonne set up Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) in 1900 to educate women about Irish history, language and the arts, and Allgood and her sister Sara joined the association’s drama classes around 1903. Their acting teacher, Willie Fay, enrolled them in the National Theatre Society, later known as the Abbey Theatre. Maire was part of the Abbey Theatre from 1906-1918 where she appeared in many productions.[9]In 1904 she was cast in a play by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy called Katie Roche where she played the part of Margaret Drybone, there were 38 performances in this production.
Marie O’Neill
In 1905 Molly met Irish playwright John Millington Synge and they fell in love, a relationship regarded as scandalous because it crossed the class barriers of the time. In September 1907 he had surgery for the removal of troublesome neck glands, but a later tumour was found to be inoperable. They became engaged before his death in March 1909. Synge wrote the plays The Playboy of the Western World and Deirdre of the Sorrows for Allgood.
Under her professional name Maire O’Neill, she appeared in films from 1930-53, including Alfred Hitchcock‘s film version of Seán O’Casey‘s play Juno and the Paycock(1930). She made her American debut in New York in 1914 in the play General John Regan at the Hudson Theatre.
In June 1911 she married G. H. Mair, drama critic of the Manchester Guardian, and later Assistant Secretary of the British Department of Information, Assistant Director of the League of Nations Secretariat in Geneva, and head of the League of Nations office in London, with whom she had two children. He died suddenly on 3 January 1926. Six months later she married Arthur Sinclair, an Abbey actor. They had two children but divorced.
Her life suffered a full share of tragedies; she was crushed by her brother Frank’s death in World War I in 1915, her fiancé Synge died before they married, her beloved husband died after 15 years of marriage, and their son died in an air crash in 1942. Her sister Sara’s husband and baby died of influenza during the Spanish flu. Sara died two years before her; they had become estranged.
She died in Park Prewett Hospital, Basingstoke, England, on 2 November 1952, aged 66, where she was receiving treatment after being badly burned in a fire at her London home.
Joseph O’Connor‘s 2010 novel, Ghost Light, is loosely based on Allgood’s relationship with Synge.
Paul was born and grew up in Dublin. He studied and worked in Belfast and now lives in West London. You might recognise him from Dr Who, the multi BAFTA winning Three Girls or as Johno in the award winning Irish cop show Red Rock, now on the BBC.
Paul has worked extensively in British and Irish Theatre, including at the RSC and many appearances at both the Royal Court and the National Theatres. Film and TV includes, Fr Ted, Whitechapel, Dr Who, Red Rock, Inspector Lynley, Three Girls, Saving Private Ryan
Finneran was born in Oldham, Lancashire on 27 April 1966 to Irish immigrant parents. As a child Finneran was always drawn to the performing arts and was a fan of the celebrated English comedian Eric Morecambe, recalling that “as a little girl I wanted to be Eric Morecambe. Not to be like him but to actually be him”. After studying a theatre studies course, she was in cast in her first major role as Rita in the 1987 film Rita, Sue and Bob Too. Kate Muir, chief film critic at UK newspaper The Times described the characters of Rita and Sue —two teenagers who both have a sexual affair with the older, married Bob (George Costigan)— “as raunchy, cheeky, unstoppable schoolgirls played with relish by Siobhan Finneran and Michelle Holmes. Between August 1989 and March 1990 Finneran appeared as factory employee Josie Phillips, in the long running ITV1soap operaCoronation Street. The character of Josie is best remembered for her on-off employment, and difficult relationship, with her boss, Mike Baldwin.
Finneran continued to appear regularly on UK television, making guest appearances in numerous drama series including Heartbeat(1993, 1994, 2003), Peak Practice (1995), Out of the Blue (1996), Where The Heart Is (1997), Hetty Wainthrop Investigates (1998) and The Cops (1999). Finneran also established herself in comedic roles including episodes of Josie (a 1991 comedy series starring Josie Lawrence), Cannon and Balls Playhouse (1991)[17] and as a regularly appearing cast member in ITV1‘s production of The Russ Abbot Show (1995–96). Whilst having performed frequently in comedy, Finneran credits her performance as “a very damaged mother” in Out of the Blue in 1996 in triggering a shift towards more dramatic roles. From the late 1990s Finneran began to consciously cut back her acting work to raise her two children as her husband, the actor Mark Jordon, (whom she married in August 1997) was regularly away from home filming as a series regular in Heartbeat.
Between 2000 and 2002 Finneran appeared as Julie O’Neill in three series of the BBC1 drama series Clocking Off. Subsequent roles in the early 21st century include the ITV1 Russell T Davies drama series Bob & Rose (2001), Sparkhouse (2002) –a modern re-telling of Wuthering Heights scripted by Sally Wainwright– and the two-part thriller Passer By (2004) starring James Nesbitt. In 2005 Finneran appeared as the female lead, Alice Holmes, in the original stage production of On the Shore of the Wide World at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Finneran’s performance earned her the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. In 2006 Finneran was cast as a series regular in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (2006). Her character, Beverley Clarke is an established partner in a law firm who is inspired to launch a career in politics by her experience of the titular Ros Pritchard, and ultimately becomes an MP.
In 2007 Finneran appeared as Kelly in the British Independent film Boy A. Also In 2007 Finneran appeared as part of the original regular cast in the British sitcomBenidorm which details the experiences of holidaymakers and employees at the fictional Solana hotel in Benidorm, Spain. Finneran described her character Janice Garvey as “feisty, foul-mouthed and quite fantastic”. Over the course of the series, Janice struggles to keep her family unit—comprising Janice’s mother Madge (Sheila Reid), her husband Mick (Steve Pemberton) and their own children and grandchild—under control. A television correspondent at the Sunday Mirror described the character as a “fiercely protective lioness, humorous, straight-talking, and saucy” inclined to “let-it-all-hang-out” with a wardrobe comprising “skimpy, mutton-dressed-as-lamb outfits”. Finneran found elements of the shoot embarrassing — including the requirement to be filmed in swimwear— and one scene which involved her character “snogging” a young barman played by an actor in his early twenties. In spite of the outlandish elements of the sitcom, Finneran notes that the cast “tried to find the truth in each character, to make them a real person – not a stereotype.” In 2008, Finneran explained that as the series was filmed on location in Benidorm, her parents stepped in to help with childcare back home, with the children visiting during half-term.
Finneran would ultimately remain with the series, through to its 7th series, which aired in 2015. Discussing the enduring appeal of the series in 2013, Finneran stated that the series’ fan base had become firmly established by the fourth series and that viewers were attracted to the “banter” and recognisable family dynamics that take viewers “to the extremes”. She also felt that the contrasting summer setting and typical winter air date also provided a form of escapism for the UK audience. After discussing their intent to leave Benidorm during filming of the sixth series (2014), Pemberton and Finneran announced their join departures ahead of the 7th series (2015). Both actors wanted to spend less time filming abroad, and neither wanted to leave on their own. Finneran found filming her last scenes “heartbreaking” noting she was in “a terrible state” upon bidding farewell to co-stars and crew with whom she had forged a close relationship.
Alongside her role in Benidorm, Finneran continued to star in original drama series’. In 2008 she portrayed Sister Ruth, a Vatican nun drawn to investigate a priest who performs exorcisms, in five episodes of the supernatural thriller Apparitions. In 2009 Finneran appeared as a main cast member in the three part ITV1 thriller Unforgiven as Izzie Ingram, a family lawyer who aids convicted murder Ruth Slater (Suranne Jones) track down her long lost sister. George Costigan, who appears in Unforgiven and first worked with Finneran in 1987 cited the mini-series as an illustration of Finneran’s versatility, and justification of his appraisal of her as an acting “hero” and personal inspiration, stating that “she has no background in it and she just goes there. It’s extraordinary. Those are the actors that electrify you.”[31] Also in 2009, Finneran appeared in episodes of The Street, and Blue Murder, and the straight-to-DVD soap opera spin-off Coronation Street: Romanian Holiday. ‘She’s worked since she was probably 14 or 15 years old, and has basically sacrificed her entire life to somebody else, for the good of their life and their home — it’s no wonder that she would get frustrated or angry about things.” “
In 2010 it was announced that Finneran had been cast in Downton Abbey, a period drama depicting the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants. Upon its transmission, Downton Abbey received extensive critical acclaim, and strong viewing figures in both the UK and America. Finneran’s character, lady’s maidSarah O’Brien serves as an archetypal villain in the series’ narrative, whose schemes affect both her employers and her colleagues. The role was Finneran’s first in a costume drama. To become O’Brien, Finneran was required to wear “frumpy black” servants attire, a wig— which Finneran described as having “poodle curls” and “one bit [that is] proper bouffant” and spend around an hour in make-up each day to look less attractive. Though screenwriter Julian Fellowes did not give her a backstory to work with, Finneran imagined that O’Brien was both traumatised by past experiences and, had accumulated anger, frustration and resentment issues from having worked in service all her life. In 2012 Finneran stated that she enjoyed the response to the character noting that viewers “love that she’s a nasty piece of work” and “love to dislike her”.
During her time on the show, the Downton Abbey cast won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2012 (for series 2), and were nominated also in 2013 (for series 3). Finneran announced her departure in March 2013, ahead of the fourth series, explaining that she had been signed for only three series and did not wish to extend her contract, adding: “When I stop loving something, I stop doing it.” BbLater that year, when asked by the Radio Times how her character’s abrupt exit would be handled, Finneran retorted: “I’m hoping she’s flung off the roof of the Abbey”.
In 2013 Finneran starred in the second series of The Syndicate on BBC1, portraying Mandy, a hospital worker and domestic abuse victim who wins the national lottery with her colleagues. Finneran was attracted to the role because of the suspense of her character’s storyline, and the challenge of keeping the abuse scenes as true-to-life as possible. Also in 2013, Finneran portrayed Mrs Swift in The Selfish Giant an independent film inspired by both Oscar Wilde‘s short story of the same name and screenwriter and director Clio Barnard‘s personal experiences of the socially fragmented northern English underclass. Finneran’s character is a troubled yet loving mother, who she describes as “not quite the full shilling”. In spite of the tough subject matter of the film Finneran enjoyed the filming process noting that she felt “safe and secure” in the hands of Barnard, who she felt to be a calmer director than any other she had worked with. For her portrayal, Finneran was nominated for the 2013 British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2014, Finneran appeared in the French-Language film Un Illustre Inconnu (Nobody from Nowhere). In her private life, 2014 saw Finneran obtain a divorce her husband, Mark Jordan.[2]
Also in 2014, Finneran portrayed recovering heroin addict Clare in BBC One‘s Happy Valley—a crime drama that centres on the personal and occupational struggles faced by Clare’s cohabitant sister, sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire)—to general acclaim. Whilst eulogising the series’ feminist credentials Gerald O’Donovan of The Daily Telegraph praised Finneran’s “quietly compelling performance” and the character’s “gritty wisdom” and stated viewers were unlikely to witness “a more believably crafted female character” that year. A second series aired in 2016, which gave more focus to Clare’s backstory, interpersonal relationships and struggles with alcoholism. Reviewing an episode of the second series, Jack Seale of The Guardian described Finneran as “brilliant” in her depiction of both Clare’s “jittery vulnerability” and portrayal of “a snarling addict who has relapsed”. In spite of the series’ subject matter, Finneran claimed that as an inept cook, she found having to peel carrots and act simultaneously the hardest part of filming. She blamed being given a faulty vegetable peeler by the props team in having to “hack” at the vegetables and opined that the end result of filming “looks like I’m digging a hole in the road.
By the time of Happy Valley‘s second series, Finneran had known Lancashire for over 30 years. Both their on-screen partnership and the depiction of middle-aged women in general in Happy Valley have been lauded as two of the series’ most distinctive elements by television journalists and critics. Reflecting on the series’ popularity, Finneran stated she felt viewers had taken the show to their hearts because the cast “reflected them” and “looked like real human beings with authentic emotions and flaws”. Radio Timesreviewer Alison Graham stated in 2016 that Finneran and Lancashire “should share every acting award going”. Happy Valley won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series in Both 2015 and 2017. Finneran was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category in 2017. Though correctly predicting that she would not win the award, Ben Lawrence of The Daily Telegraphidentified her as who he felt to be the deserving winner praising the “subtle, unfurling power” of her depiction. A third and final series of Happy Valley is expected to enter production, though not before Autumn 2018.
Between December 2014 and February 2015, Finneran appeared in the stage drama 3 Winters at the Royal National Theatre in London. In Autumn 2015 Finneran played a supporting role in the three part supernatural drama serial Midwinter of the Spirit.
In 2017, she portrayed real-life Detective Constable Christine Freeman in two-part drama The Moorside, a depiction of the 2008 disappearance of Shannon Matthews told from the perspective of the local community. Upon reading the script, Finneran felt that The Moorside told a necessary story that illuminated truths that had been distorted by media coverage.
Finneran’s next television role in 2017 was as Detective Chief Inspector Lauren Quigley, one of the protagonists in six-part ITV drama The Loch, a crime mystery set on the banks of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Quigley is an ambitious English career detective drafted in to investigate a serial killer and acts as a foil to the other protagonist, working mother and local woman DC Annie Redford (Laura Fraser). Finneran was keen to star in the series after reading the first three scripts and finding both her character and the small community setting intriguing, in addition to the prospect of working with a former Downton Abbey director (Brian Kelly) and Laura Fraser, whose acting she had long admired. Finneran based herself in Glasgow during the filming shoot and enjoyed “the buzz, the architecture, the social life”,describing the city as “one of my favourite places to ever work
In 2017, she played Nikki Kirkbright in ITV’s Cold Feet.
Jessie Buckley is an Irish singer and actress, who came in second place in the BBC talent show-themed television series I’d Do Anything, and subsequently played Anne Egermann in the West End revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Most recently, Buckley appeared on three BBC television series, as Marya Bolkonskaya in BBC’s adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, as Lorna Bow in Taboo and as Honor Martin in The Last Post.
Buckley was born in Killarney, County Kerry, the eldest of five children. Her mother, Marina Cassidy, encouraged her to sing and coached her. She has a brother and three sisters. Buckley went to Ursuline Secondary School, an all-girls convent school in Thurles, County Tipperary, where her mother works as a vocal coach and where she performed in school productions. She played a number of male roles at school, including the male lead role of Jets gang founder Tony in the musical West Side Story and Freddie Trumper in Chess.
She has achieved Grade eight in piano, clarinet and harp with the Royal Irish Academy of Music. She is also a member of the Tipperary Millennium Orchestra. Buckley also attended The Association of Irish Musical Societies (AIMS) workshops during the summer, to help improve her singing and acting; it was where she was then recognised as a talented actress and was encouraged to apply for Drama School in London. Just before she auditioned for I’d Do Anything, she was turned down by two drama schools, including one the day before her first audition for the show. In 2008, Buckley won the AIMS Best Actress award for her portrayal of Julie Jordan in the Killarney Musical Society production of Carousel.
Buckley competed in I’d Do Anything, a search for a new, unknown lead to play Nancy in a London West End stage revival of the British musical Oliver. Buckley reached the final on 31 May 2008, finishing in second place behind Jodie Prenger. Before the final vote was announced in Show two of the final, Graham Norton asked the panel who they each thought was Nancy. Three of the panel said Buckley and two Prenger. John Barrowman and Denise van Outen said “Jodie”, while Barry Humphries, Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber said “Jessie”. However, the public voted for Jodie.
uckley performed at the Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Birthday in the Park show in Hyde Park, London on 14 September 2008, singing “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” as a solo and “Light at the End of the Tunnel” from Starlight Express with fellow I’d Do Anything finalists Keisha Amponsa-Banson, Niamh Perry, Rachel Tucker as well as Any Dream Will Do finalists Daniel Boys, Lewis Bradley, Ben James-Ellis and Keith Jack. On 18 September she and Aoife Mulholland performed with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra at an Andrew Lloyd Webber evening at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. On 26 August 2008 Buckley performed on Denny Street in Tralee, Co. Kerry where the first ever Millionaire raffle was broadcast live on RTÉ Radio 1. After this, Jessie performed at a charity concert in Tipperary, where she announced that she would be starting rehearals for A Little Night Music in London the following Monday.
Buckley was offered the opportunity to understudy Nancy, but turned it down in favour of another production: on 10 October 2008 it was announced that Buckley would be appearing in a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music, in the role of Anne Egerman, at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a fringe Studio Theatre, in London from 22 November 2008 to 8 March 2009. She appeared alongside Maureen Lipman and Hannah Waddingham in the production, which was directed by Trevor Nunn. A Little Night Music transferred from the Menier Chocolate Factory to the Garrick Theatre in London’s West End on 7 April 2009 (previews from 28 March – 6 April). A Little Night Music was Buckley’s West End debut. The show closed on 25 July 2009. Since then, she has appeared in a number of concerts nationally, including a Christmas concert alongside Maria Friedman, Cantabile – the London Quartet and Tim Rice, and in February 2010 appeared alongside Daniel Boys (and Night Music co-star Kelly Price) in a series of Valentine musical concerts.
Irish actor Rory Keenan has worked extensively in theatre and film. He performed leading roles on the London stage, he has also appeared in TV and film projects such as Peaky Blinders, War & Peace, Birdsong, The Guard, and soon Versailles. Rory resides in London, England where he continues to work regularly in theatre.
Moe Dunford is an actor, known for Vikings (2013), Patrick’s Day (2014) and Gridlock(2016). Named as one of European films’ Shooting Stars by European Film Promotion. [2015] In 2015, he received an IFTA in the category of Best Actor in a Lead Role in Film for Patrick’s Day. He grew up in Dungarvan, County Waterford, Ireland. In 2016, he received an IFTA in the category of Best Actor in a Supporting Role in TV Drama for Vikings.
Initially starting out in theatre, he changed his name to Killian Scott to avoid confusion with Cillian Murphy, another Irish actor. He earned fame in Ireland for the role of Tommy in Love/Hate, which first started airing in 2010. During the next few years, Scott appeared in small roles in films including ’71 and Calvary, as well as starring in 2013’s Black Ice.
After Love/Hate finished, Scott appeared in his first lead role in Irish thriller film Traders in 2015. Scott joined Ripper Street for series four and five in 2016, portraying Assistant Commissioner Augustus Dove. The same year, he appeared in Trespass Against Us. In 2017, he appeared in Strike as D.I. Eric Wardle. The same year, he was cast as the lead in Damnation, replacing Aden Young, who departed the show due to creative differences. Due to Young’s departure, Scott filmed the pilot episode within a week of being cast in late 2016. The series was picked up by USA Network in June 2017, with filming beginning the following month. Damnation was cancelled after its first season ended in January 2018. He starred in The Commuter with Liam Neeson in 2018, and described the film as a “genuine career highlight”.
In 2019, Scott starred alongside Sarah Greene in Dublin Murders, based on the Dublin Murder Squad book series by Tana French. He portrays lead character Detective Rob Reilly and adopted an English accent for the role. The series was filmed in Belfast and Dublin over seven months.
Made his debut at 13 years of age in Family, directed by Michael Winterbottom. The following year he appeared on stage for the first time in Buddleia as part of Dublin Theatre Festival before transferring to Donmar Warehouse in London’s West End. He has since starred in 20 theatrical productions. Soon to be seen as Sawyer in Britannia and as Barry in Save Me, both for Sky Atlantic, and as Gordon Close in feature film Maze.
Denise Gough is an Irish actress. She has received a number of accolades for her work in theatre, including two Laurence Olivier Awards as well as a nomination for a Tony Award.
Born in Wexford and grew up in Ennis, Co. Clare, daughter of an electrician, Gough is the seventh of eleven siblings. One of her younger sisters is the actress Kelly Gough. She trained as a soprano before leaving Ireland for London at 15. She was awarded a grant to study at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA) in Wandsworth aged 18, and graduated from ALRA in 2003.
James Greene was born on May 19, 1931 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an actor and writer, known for Sherlock Holmes (2009), RocknRolla (2008) and Albert Nobbs (2011).
Damien Molony (born 21 February 1984) is an Irish actor now based in London. He is best known for his television roles as Hal in BBC Three’s Being Human, DC Albert Flight in the BBC’s Ripper Street and DS Jack Weston in Channel 5’sSuspects.
Molony’s casting as vampire Hal in the BBC Three series Being Human[2] brought him his first television credit. In an interview with SFX magazine, Molony revealed that when approaching the role of Hal he did research on drug addicts and alcoholics.[3] He has previously starred in the short film When the Hurlyburly’s Done,[4] filmed in Germany.[5]
After the filming of series 4 of Being Human, Damien played the lead role of Motl Mendl in the National Theatre production of Travelling Light alongside Sir Antony Sher. Following the London run, the play toured England before returning to the National Theatre in late April 2012.[6]He returned to the National Theatre in January 2015 to play Spike in Sir Tom Stoppard‘s The Hard Problem, which ran until 17 May 2015 and was broadcast live to cinemas across the world via NT Live on 16 April 2015. Both plays were directed by the then Artistic Director of the National Theatre, Sir Nicholas Hytner.
The fifth and final series of Being Human was screened in February–March 2013. At the same time Molony starred in the play “If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep” at the Royal Court Theatre.[7]
Damien’s television slate grew when he joined the cast of Victorian BBC show Ripper Street in series 2 as Detective Constable Albert Flight. He appeared in 7 of 8 episodes, airing November-December 2013 on BBC One in the UK and February-April 2014 on BBC America. The crime drama was set in London’s Whitechapel in the period following the Jack the Ripper murders.
Molony has starred alongside William Gaminara in the play The Body of an American by Dan O’Brien in January-February 2014 at the Gate Theatre (London) about the conversation of a war photographer and a struggling playwright. [8] Molony then starred as Detective Sergeant Jack Weston in innovative crime procedural Suspects. The drama is shot in a documentary style, using fly-on-the-wall filming techniques. Series 1, comprising 5 episodes, aired in February-March 2014 on Channel 5 in the UK. Series 4 has been announced for late 2015.
Molony was cast as Ross in the feature film Kill Your Friends, adapted from the novel by John Niven, set in the music industry in the Britpop era. The film is due for a UK and Ireland release in November 2015.
He subsequently went on to film Tiger Raid in the deserts of Jordan, alongside Brian Gleeson and Sofia Boutella. The feature film, a dark thriller about a tiger kidnapping in Iraq, is set to premiere at a film festival in late 2015. Molony’s also been cast as Robert Putnam in an upcoming HBO pilot, The Devil You Know, created by Jenji Kohan and directed by Gus Van Sant. The story is set in 17th century New England and focuses on the Salem witch trials.
A young dramatic actor began acting at the age of eight in the TV show “The Irish RM” (RTE). He went on to appear in “Rawhead Rex” and “Fear of the Dark” as well as radio dramas and stage shows like “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” O’Conor was still a relative unknown pre-teen when he co-starred with Liam Neeson in the British-made feature “Lamb” (1985). O’Conor played the ten-year-old Owen, a lonely epileptic boy who is temporarily rescued from a violent and oppressive children’s home by Brother Sebastian (Neeson). It was three years before the actor landed another major film role, that of the youthful version of the Martin Sheen’s narrator (seen in flashbacks) in the 1988 film adaptation of Hugh Leonard’s heartwarming Tony-winning play “Da.”
His next film was his biggest hit to date, the Daniel Day Lewis tour de force “My Left Foot” (1989). Directed by Jim Sheridan, the film told the story of the severely handicapped writer Christy Brown. Once again, O’Conor played the lead as a child, but this was a much more demanding and widely-seen performance. Much lighter in tone was the big-budget remake of “The Three Musketeers” (1993), in which O’Conor played the Boy King Louis, who is protected from assassination by the title characters. The film, which included a bit of updated wisecracking by its stars Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris O’Donnell, got a mixed reception. O’Conor’s first starring role came with Ben Ross’ dark British comedy “The Young Poisoner’s Handbook” (1995), in which he was an amateur toxicologist unwisely paroled from prison after testing his theories on family and friends, with fatal results. Based on a true story, it was a thoroughly unpleasant bit of work, yet found an appreciative audience. The following year, O’Conor played a teen trying to form a rock band in 1959 Russia in “Red Hot.”
Jeananne Crowley (born 18 December 1949) is an Irish actress and writer, remembered for her collaborations in British film and television. She appeared in the film Educating Rita and is possibly best known for her role as Nellie Keene in the BBC drama series Tenko.
Crowley is also a prolific writer; she has written two plays, one of which was performed at the Royal Court Theatre, and has also been a regular contributor to national newspapers, including the Sunday Times, The Observer, The Guardian and the Irish Times. In 2002, she was a judge for the Irish Novelist of the Year competition.
Sarah is originally from Cork and trained in Dublin where she graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting in 2006.
Sarah played Helen McCormick (Slippy Helen) opposite Daniel Radcliffe as Billy Claven in Martin McDonaghs’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, directed by Michael Grandage at the Cort Theatre on Broadway,NYC. Sarah was nominated for a TONY award (Best Actress in a Featured Role) 2014 for her performance in this show, one for which she was already nominated for an Olivier Award in 2013 during it’s West End run and for which she was awarded the 2014 World Theater Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut.
Other theatre includes Rough Magic’s production of PEER GYNT for Dublin Theatre Festival 2011 her acclaimed performance as Alice in thisispopbaby’s and the Abbey Theatre’s hugely successful production ALICE INFUNDERLAND in 2012. She also appeared in ELLEMENOPE JONES both directed by Wayne Jordan at The Project Arts Centre, Dublin in 2011. Sarah appeared as Sorcha in Paul Howard’s play BETWEEN FOXROCK AND A HARDPLACE at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin and Cork Opera House. She played Ismene in Rough Magic’s production of PHAEDRA by Hilary Fannin, directed by Lynne Parker as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Sarah appeared as Amber in Guna Nua’s award winning and highly acclaimed production of LITTLE GEM which won the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and led to a remounting of the production in New York as well as tours across the UK and Ireland. Other previous productions have included: Danti Dan for Galloglass, The Death of Harry Leon for Ouroboros, The Year of the Hiker and The Playboy of The Western World, The Empress of India, and most recently Big Maggie, all with Druid Theatre Company and directed by Garry Hynes. Sarah stars as Christina Noble alongside Deirdre O’Kane, Liam Cunnigham and Brendan Coyle in Stephen Bradley’s feature NOBLE and has already won awards Jury and Audience awards at the Boston Film Festival, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Newport Beach Festival, Nashville and Dallas Festivals.
In 2014, Sarah was cast alongside Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller in The Weinstein’s ‘Untitled John Wells Project’ and joined the cast of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful playing Hecate Poole.
Other film and television includes: RAW RTE/Ecosse Films, EDEN/Samson Films, SPEED DATING/RTE, BACHELOR’S WALK/Samson Films/RTE. She played the leading role of Cathleen in the Canadian/Irish feature LOVE AND SAVAGERY directed by John N. Smith. MY BROTHERS (Treasure Films) and THE GUARD (Element) opposite Brendan Gleeson. She most recently appeared as Judith in three episodes of VIKINGS (History Channel/MGM).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: The Lisa Richards Agency
The above IMDB Entry can also be accessed online here.
“Guardian” obituary by Michael Coveney from Oct 2014:
The Irish actor Gabrielle Reidy, who has died of cancer aged 54, made her first appearance at the Abbey theatre in Dublin as a child and her last, four years ago, as Bessie Burgess in an acclaimed production of Seán O’Casey’s masterpiece about the Easter Rising, The Plough and the Stars. In between, she had a varied career in television, film and on the stage, which included playing mother to both Scarlett Johansson and Daniel Radcliffe, respectively, in the film Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) and the West End revival in 2007 of Peter Shaffer’s Equus. In the latter, she was a flaky, Bible-thumping teacher and it was typical of her that she made the small role vivid and memorable without being self-aggrandising. Fiery and determined in life, with a broad open face and strong presence on stage, she was always asked to play the sort of tough maternal roles for which, ironically, she was now, in late middle age, best suited.
She was the youngest of three daughters, raised in Malahide, Co Dublin, of Robert Reidy, a pilot with Aer Lingus, and his wife, Patricia. Still a schoolgirl, Gabrielle appeared at the Abbey in 1971 in O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman. Joining the Trinity College Players the minute she went to the university, she performed in the Irish premiere of Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls aged 17 and is remembered, too, for an emotionally powerful version of Racine’s Phaedra.
Her career gathered momentum when she appeared in Graham Reid’s first play, The Death of Humpty Dumpty (1979), at the Abbey, a searing study of sectarian violence in Belfast, with Colm Meaney and Liam Neeson; 10 years later, she was in Michael Harding’s strange and disturbing Una Pooka, also at the Abbey, a play about homicide and impersonation, with Sean McGinley and Barry McGovern. Also in 1989, she filmed an Abbey solo show, Fragments of Isabella, the diary of a Holocaust survivor, which she also played in French at the Avignon festival. The previous year she had appeared at the Gate in Frank McGuinness’s fine version of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, directed by Patrick Mason. She moved to London and appeared in Julian Garner’s The Awakening (1990) at Hampstead theatre, embodying a sort of aphrodisiac to loneliness, a remarkable performance, in a story of redemption and child abuse on a remote Norwegian farm; and as an Irish writer revisiting her childhood in Geraldine Aron’s Same Old Moon (1991) at the Globe (now the Gielgud) in the West End.
She was in Women of Troy directed by Annie Castledine at the National Theatre (1995), Much Ado About Nothing (2004, as Borachio) directed by Tamara Harvey at Shakespeare’s Globe, and, significantly, García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba (1998) and Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms (1995), both directed by Polly Teale for Shared Experience. In the latter, she met her future husband, the actor Gary Lilburn; as Abbie, a rural giant whose body is a symbolic battlefield, Reidy hit the heights in a storming display of fierce sexual yearning. And she became a regular on popular television series such as The Bill, Peak Practice and Holby City.
Her last appearance in an English production was in Andrew Sheridan’s Winterlong (2011), directed by Sarah Frankcom at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and the Soho theatre in London, a strange but talented play asking how best to express love in an apocalyptic climate. Her Bessie Burgess in Dublin (a 2012 Abbey theatre production of The Plough and Stars also toured in Ireland and the UK), a Protestant fruit vendor who expresses grief and sorrow in the Troubles and is shot in the back for her pains, linked her indelibly to the great Abbey tradition she so loved; the great Siobhán McKenna’s performance in the role had changed her life when she saw it as a child.
Other movies included Alan J Pakula’s IRA terrorist thriller The Devil’s Own (1997), starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford, and Joel Schumacher’s Veronica Guerin (2003), in which Cate Blanchett played the campaigning Irish journalist. Gabrielle’s last major television work was playing a mother superior in this year’s BBC series The Musketeers. She had lately taken up, and much enjoyed, teaching at the Mountview drama school in London.
She is survived by her sisters, and by Gary, and their teenage son, Finn.
• Gabrielle Mary Reidy, actor, born 23 July 1960; died 13 October 2014
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Ned Dennehy (born 8 December, 1965) he is an Irish actor, who has appeared in British and Irish films and television. His most notable film role to date is Tommy in Tyrannosaur. He has also appeared in Blitz, he played Alderton in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, – Part 1 and the independent British feature film Downhill. His television work includes RTÉ’s Damo and Ivor and BBC dramas Parade’s End, Luther, Peaky Blinders, and the Leading role of Letters Malloy in Banished and Dickensian.
Frank Kelly will always be remembered as “Fr Jack” in the classic cult TV series “Fr Ted”. He died in 2016.
“Telegraoh” obituary:
Frank Kelly, who has died aged 77, was the actor best known for playing the irascible, foul-mouthed Father Jack Hackett in the sitcom Father Ted, which was broadcast on Channel 4 from 1995 until 1998.
Kelly’s acting career spanned some 60 years and he was already well known in his native Ireland for his work on the satirical television comedy show Hall’s Pictorial Weekly
(1971-1980), before his role as Father Jack brought him to a wider audience. Father Ted followed the hapless adventures of three priests who have found themselves exiled – for various misdemeanours – on Craggy Island, a fictional island off the west coast of Ireland, along with their chaotic and batty housekeeper, Mrs Doyle.
Much of the success of the series lay in the fond irreverence of the writing (by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan) and the interaction between the amiable but somewhat wayward Father Ted Crilly (Dermot Morgan – who died in 1998, shortly after the series ended), the doltish Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O’Hanlon) and Kelly’s Father Jack, best known for his liberal use of the word “feck” (as well as “arse”, “girls” and “drink”).
With his wall eye, wild grey hair, alcoholic incoherence and occasional lapses into mindless violence, Father Jack delighted viewers and became something of a cult figure. The reason behind his enforced exile was, as with his fellow priests, somewhat unclear, but seemed to be connected to his behaviour at a wedding. Once ensconced on Craggy Island, however, he was always treated with benign tolerance by Fathers Ted and Dougal.
Despite his appalling antics (including, in his attempt to get hold of some “drink”, downing both Toilet Duck and Windolene), Father Jack somehow retained a grandfatherly presence in the series. Kelly later said that he was occasionally approached by young priests who would tell him that they too were taking care of a much older man. “They’ll say, ‘how do you know about ours?’” he explained in 2015. “[He’s] not without foundation in reality.”
Kelly himself could not have been less like his character. Softly spoken, genial and conservative in temperament, he was modest about his own achievements in the show (“Every raised eyebrow is in the script”) and did not seem to mind that other professional achievements were often overshadowed by his role as the outrageous old priest. He treasured one particular page of the script, which he kept for years after the show ended. It read: “Caution. It is very dangerous to approach Father Jack.”
Frank Kelly was born Francis O’Kelly in Dublin on December 28 1938, one of six children of the Irish cartoonist and satirist, Charles E Kelly, and educated at Blackrock College, where he was a schoolboy opera star, before going on to read Law at University College, Dublin. He was called the bar at King’s Inns but decided to switch to acting as a career.
His first film role was as a prison officer in The Italian Job (1969), and from 1968 until 1982 he appeared in the RTÉ children’s series Wanderly Wagon. His work on Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, made his name in Ireland. The show’s satirical take on the country’s politics was such that it was said to have played a part in bringing down the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition government in 1977.
From 1999 to 2001 Kelly starred in the RTÉ series Glenroe. Other parts included a role in 2003 as John Smith, leader of the Labour Party, in the Stephen Frears drama The Deal.
In 2010, he joined the ITV soap Emmerdale, but left after five months because he missed his family and Ireland. He also appeared as the judge in Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie.
He married Bairbre Neldon in 1964. She survives him with their seven children.
Frank Kelly, born December 28 1938, died February 28 2016
Anita Sharp-Bolster was born on August 28, 1895 in Glenlohan, Ireland. She was an actress, known for The Lost Weekend (1945), Scarlet Street (1945) and Saboteur(1942). She died on June 1, 1985 in North Miami, Florida, USA.
Arthur Cox was born in April 1934 in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland. He is an actor, known for Aria (1987), Hope and Glory (1987) and Jewels (1992).
One of 34 performers that have acted in both the 20th Century Doctor Who and the 21st Century Doctor Who.
Dunning was head of development at the now defunct website www.screenwritingonthenet.com. He wrote two books on screenwriting. He also wrote the screenplay for The Lorelei, directed by Terry Johnson, BBC Screen Two. He has developed several works for TV. He is currently writing a play with the Gate Theatre, Dublin, and developing a screenplay with a freelance TV and film director.
Dunning attended a private school in London and a comprehensive school in Leicester.[2]
Dunning has been married to Lise-Anne McLaughlin since 1992. Their children are Kitty and Phoebe. He lives in Dalkey, Dublin.[2]
Marcus Hutton was born on April 1, 1964 in Limavady, Northern Ireland. He is an actor and director, known for Made in Dagenham (2010), Brookside (1982) and Framed(2014).
Art Parkinson (born October 19, 2001) is an Irish actor, based in Moville, County Donegal. He began his professional acting career at the age of seven. He is best known for his role as Rickon Stark on the HBO series Game of Thrones.
Nathan O’Toole (born 17 March 1998)[1] is an Irish actor, known for playing the part of young Bjorn Ironside in the first two seasons of the 2013 TV series Vikings. He also played in the series The Borgias as Vincenzo and in “Penny Dredful”. He lives inDunshaughlin.[1
Michael Smiley was born in 1963 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an actor, known forPerfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), The World’s End (2013) and Kill List (2011). He is married to Miranda Sawyer. They have one childIn 1993 he was a runner up at the So You Think You’re Funny competition at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Was a cycle courier before he moved into the entertainment business, where he is perhaps best known as a Stand-Up comedian.
2014 article in “Belfast Telegraph”:
If you don’t already own a bicycle then be prepared to want to rush out and buy one after you hear how the star of stand-up, TV and film enthuses about them
The Holywood-born comic and actor believes bicycles are THE best invention of the past 100 years.
While Michael’s acting career has seen him star in a long and impressive list of movies and TV dramas, last year he landed his dream job when BBC Northern Ireland asked him to hop on his bike and visit many of his old stomping grounds around the province for a new three-part series.
Beginning tonight, Something To Ride Home About sees Michael indulge his infatuation for cycling, giving his own unique comic insight into the places and the people who share his zeal for two wheels.
It was his love affair with bikes which led to his acting debut when a friend created a character for him – Tyres O’Flaherty, the bicycle riding raver who starred in two episodes of the cult Channel 4 sitcom Spaced.
It was based on Michael’s days working as a cycle courier in London before he got his big break on stage as a stand-up comic.
Currently in Kerry filming sci-fi romance The Lobster with Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, Smiley is very open when I ask him about all aspects of his life and career.
Strikingly, even though he has lived in London for the last 30 of his 51 years he hasn’t lost an ounce of his strong Northern Irish accent. Nor is there a hint of a superstar ego, despite his considerable success and fame as both a comic and actor.
Married twice and a father of four, Michael and his first wife Merilees – whom he describes as his childhood sweetheart – left Northern Ireland in 1983 to start a new life in London.
The couple, who are still best friends, have two children, Dillon (30) and Jasmine (26).
Michael’s second wife, meanwhile, is journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer, with whom he has two children, Patrick (8) and Frankie May (3).
Incidentally, Merilees is godmother to his two younger children. He says: “We all get on great and are best mates.”
Michael grew up in Redburn in Holywood and recalls the story of his birth which he says his late parents were often fond of telling him: “I was born in my mum and dad’s bedroom in the winter of 1963.
“The snow was up to the window ledge and my poor dad had to walk to my granny’s house in Belfast to get milk and coal. It was that winter everyone references as one of the worst and my first cot was a bottom drawer in my mum’s dresser.
“I was the baby of the family. I have a brother, John, who lives in America and a sister, Collette, who still lives in Holywood. My mum passed away three years ago and my dad seven years ago and my big sister is great, she has always been there for me.”
Growing up he describes himself as “a wee tearaway” who was “always chasing girls, blowing smoke and drinking cider”.
Mum Alice was a seamstress and dad Frank a post office engineer, and they worked and saved hard to give their youngest a good education, paying for him to go to boarding school from the age of 11 until 16.
“Unfortunately it didn’t really work,” says Michael. “I wasn’t an ideal pupil. I was a bit skittish and had a short attention span and was really hyperactive. I still haven’t settled down.
“After boarding school I went to college in Belfast but I felt slightly disjointed and in the Eighties there was nothing really happening in Northern Ireland apart from the Troubles.
“There was a bit of a music scene in Belfast but no big bands were really coming to the city and I didn’t know any creative people back then, no writers or actors or musicians.”
He decided to move to London when he was 20 with no real career goal.
He did various jobs working on building sites and spent some time on the dole before getting a job as a cycle courier.
It was a friend who recognised his natural talent for making people laugh and persuaded him to go on stage at an open mic night in London in 1993.
“He used to drag me to comedy clubs and one night persuaded me to take a slot which I did and my life changed,” recalls Michael.
“It was amazing. I got up on stage and I was so excited and nervous and that night I couldn’t sleep. I just felt this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
“I started to write material and for the next 20 years I did stand-up all over the world.”
He was writing and performing one-man shows in Edinburgh when he got the chance to make his acting debut in 1999 in a role that was specially written for him.
“Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson were writing Spaced for Channel Four and they based the character Tyres O’Flaherty on me from my time as a cycle courier. They asked me to play him and I jumped at it.”
Two series of seven episodes of Spaced each were broadcast in 1999 and 2001 on Channel 4, and became an instant cult hit, not only for the witty dialogue and numerous pop culture references, but also the ‘will they, won’t they?’ relationship of the two leads.
A long list of acting roles followed including playing Jordan, a former member of the Parachute Regiment, in 2008 horror film Outpost, as well as a Tyres-like zombie cameo in old pal Pegg’s movie Shaun Of The Dead.
In 2003, he guest starred in the Doctor Who audio drama Creatures Of Beauty and in 2004 appeared in an episode of Hustle as Max the forger.
He has also appeared in all three series of The Maltby Collection on Radio 4 as Des Wainwright, an eccentric security guard who keeps repeating himself and reminding people he was in the SAS. In 2010, he reunited with his Spaced co-stars for a major role in the film Burke And Hare and further cemented his cult credentials in 2011 after starring in the graphic and bleak British horror film Kill List.
The film received critical acclaim, and earned him the Best Supporting Actor award at the 2011 British Independent Film Awards.
Last year he appeared in an episode of BBC1’s Ripper Street as George Lusk, and the critically acclaimed Channel 4 shows Utopia, as Detective Reynolds, and Black Mirror, as Baxter.
The list of credits goes on and on and this year he has been just as busy, playing Micky Murray in BBC Four’s The Life Of Rock and filming one of the first episodes of the eighth full series of Doctor Who, playing a character by the name of Colonel Blue. While he is enjoying great success and increasing recognition, Michael remembers all too clearly what it was like to be unemployed. “I spent a long time not knowing what I wanted to do and being fearful of life and worrying about not being able to support my wife and family,” he says.
“It wasn’t a happy time for me, but I am blessed with good friends and beautiful relationships in my life.
“It took other people to see the talent and I think that for many people it takes those who love you to help you.
“At school I never settled and was always the class joker. Now I’m older I realise that exams at school give you the ability to concentrate.
“Its only now that I am capable of doing that, although there is still a wee part of me that wants to run around and blow raspberries.
“Real success takes work. It has taken me 20 years to be an overnight success.
“You have to work hard; it doesn’t just drop in your lap. Each time you learn from your mistakes and so the next time you can do it better.
“It’s like an education for my soul. I feel like I am learning every day now when I wasn’t as a child.”
Although he does return home from time to time to see his sister, his new BBC series filmed last year was his first chance to spend some quality time at home since he left for London 31 years ago.
The fact that he got to spend it indulging his passion for his beloved cycling was incredible to him, and it’s obvious he loved every minute.
He lifts cycling onto a whole new plain as he extols its many virtues. “I’ve always had a love affair with cycling. Bicycles are by far the best invention of the past 100 years, they save your life.
“People in villages were able to escape and find work through bicycles and were able to shop for food at markets and get their kids to school.
“Cycling helps you get fitter and it also helps the planet. It calms the body and dispels depression.
“If you are feeling p****d off, just cycle for five minutes and I can guarantee you that you won’t be feeling that anymore.
“You meet other cyclists and it lifts your spirits. It’s not like being stuck in a gym – you are out in the countryside, smelling our cows*** and freshly-cut grass and feeling the sun on your face and the rush of fresh air. You meet a better class of people and as HG Wells said, ‘When I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair of the human race’.”
On his travels with the series he rides some of our most stunning local scenery, tries some alternative cycling disciplines and meets a number of local enthusiasts including a world record holder, and Newtownards-born cycling world championship gold medallist – and BBC NI Sports Personality of The Year 2013 – Martyn Irvine.
“The fact it wasn’t studio-based really appealed to me, I loved it,” says Michael.
“Chris Jones of Green Inc had the idea for the series and I just thought it was fantastic.
“When I left Northern Ireland in the 1980s I remembered it as being very parochial back then.”The show made me realise there were three types of people in Northern Ireland during the Troubles – the ones who left and never came back, the ones who left but came back and the people who stayed. To me the people who didn’t leave are the real heroes”Despite all the rubbish that was going on they stayed and educated their kids and did what they could under difficult circumstances. It was incredible to get the chance to talk to these people and to get a bit of the Northern Ireland craic. “No one has a turn of phrase like we have here, or the humility.
“I got to talk to Isobel Woods in her home. Isobel set and held Irish records for cycling which were not broken until about six years ago. “She still holds seven records no one has broken. “She broke my heart, she is my hero, and I just fell in love with her.” The show has renewed Michael’s love for his home country and has given him a new goal – to buy a camper van and tour Ireland with his children. “Sadly I haven’t got back home much over the years, mainly for funerals,” he says. “I am going to change that next year and buy a Mazda Bongo and take my children touring the north and south of Ireland.”
Michael Smiley: Something To Ride Home About begins on BBC1 Northern Ireland tonight at 10.20pm
In Something to Ride Home About, Michael begins his journey in Belfast and visits St George’s Market, before meeting one of only six Penny Farthing owners in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, viewers also get a sneak peek behind the doors of a community cycle workshop which provides repairs and servicing for bikes in the city. And after a visit to his home town of Holywood, Michael gets to meet keen cyclist, acclaimed photographer and one of his own personal heroes, Bill Kirk, in Newtownards.
He also experiences a hairy moment with a ladies cycling club in Armagh, drops in on a world record holder in Lisburn, puts himself on trial against the clock in Dungannon and meets a fellow comic on the banks of the Foyle. Producer Chris Jones, from Green Inc, says: “In my opinion, Smiley is our finest actor and funniest comedian. “We were thrilled to be working with him on this series that lets Michael revel in two things he’s brilliant at: cycling and telling funny stories.
“It’s his first outing as a presenter on a BBC NI series and you won’t need to be a cyclist to enjoy it. Yes, although Smiley is a keen cyclist he didn’t cover the full length and breadth of Northern Ireland but he certainly brings us to some breathtaking and interesting places and we get to meet some very fascinating people with great stories to tell with a lot of laughs guaranteed along the way with Michael. Maybe it might inspire some people to get on their bike!”
The above “Belfast Telegraph” article can also be accessed online here.
Phyllis was born in Dublin in 1920. At the age of 13 she was accepted into the Abbey School and at 14 made her Abbey debut in Denis Johnston’s play The Moon and the Yellow River. In 1937, at 16 she played ‘Brigid’, the lead, in Paul Vincent Carroll’s play Shadow and Substance, directed by Hugh Hunt, and was then recommended for membership of the Abbey Company. With the appointment of Ernest Blythe as the Abbey’s managing director, Phyllis left the company and pursued a successful freelance acting career. By that time, 1944, she had performed in over 28 Abbey and Peacock productions and worked with the greats of Irish theatre including Eileen Crowe, Cyril Cusack, Barry Fitzgerald, F.J. McCormick, Ria Mooney and Shelah Richards.
Phyllis moved into theatrical management in 1956 and set up Orion Productions. Then, in 1958, she formed Gemini Productions with the actor Norman Rodway. The company was based for many years in the Eblana Theatre (at Busáras) and established itself very quickly as a leading producer of new Irish writing. Gemini had very important and successful relationships with many leading Irish writers including Hugh Leonard and John B. Keane. In the mid 1960s, Gemini had huge commercial success with The Field(Ray McAnally as Bull McCabe) and Big Maggie (Marie Kean as Maggie). Also, in the 1960s she produced world premiere productions of Eugene McCabe’s King of the Castle, Máiréad Ni Ghráda’s An Triail (English language version On Trial) and Tom Murphy’s The Orphans. Gemini produced many world premieres of Hugh Leonard plays, often in association with the Dublin Theatre Festival. Her most significant Leonard production was Stephen D at The Gate for the 1962 Dublin Theatre Festival which, following a capacity sellout run in Dublin, travelled to the West End and launched T.P. McKenna and Norman Rodway’s careers in the UK.
In the mid-1970s, Phyllis was instrumental in setting up the state funded Irish Theatre Company and was its first Artistic Director. ITC was founded “to present plays and theatrical entertainments of a high standard round Ireland”[1]. ITC had also a remit to give employment to actors and throughout Phyllis’ producing career she was a significant employer of actors and was especially keen to spot new acting, directing and playwriting talent.
Phyllis produced more that 100 plays and revues over her long career in theatre of which about 40 were new plays or adaptations. For many years in the Eblana Theatre, Gemini produced revues with some of Ireland’s leading theatre names including Des Keogh, Rosaleen Linehan and Fergus Linehan. The Black Rosie revue, written by Fergus Linehan, is considered to be one of Gemini’s Productions’ highlights.
In later years Phyllis made a return to acting and worked on a number of productions with director, Michael Scott including his Cuchulain Cycle.Phyllis’ final stage performance was in 2000 in Deborah Warner’s production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw for the Abbey Theatre.
Phyllis received a number of awards including honorary life membership of Irish Actors Equity and in 2002 she was recipient of the Special Tribute Award at the Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards. She wrote and published her memoire, The Company I Kept, in 1996.
Phyllis married Sean Colleary in 1941 and had two children Jacqui and Graham (Gregg). Phyllis died on 7th June 2011.
The above biography can also be accessed online here.
Martin Crosbie (1911 – 10 February 1982) was an Irish tenor and older brother to Paddy Crosbie of The School Around the Corner.
Martin, who was affectionately known as “The Miller’s daughter”, a song he made his own, started in show business in his early 30s
The eldest in a family of four, he was christened John Martin but was known as Mossy to his family and friends. His mother and father came from Wexford town. His father, Martin Crosbie, was a foreman-fitter and turner on the Permanent way, that is the tracks section, of the old Dublin United Tramways. Before coming to Dublin, he had earned quite a reputation in his native town, both as a singer and comedian. He won the Wexford Feis gold medal in 1904 in the tenor competition. Martin’s paternal grandmother was a Bolger. She was reputed to have had a three-octave voice, and used sing in Bride Street Church in Wexford.[1] So, quite a history of singers in his family.
Before his singing career began Martin worked as a fitter / mechanic in CIE’s Summerhill depot.[2]
“One night in the late 1930’s himself and the legendary Billy Morton went to a show in the Olympia. In the bar during the interval Billy and other friends talked him into singing a song. One song led to another and soon there were more people in the bar than in the audience. The manager came in and said if he could keep an audience away from the show he should be able to keep them in their seats the following week. That’s how he joined Lorcan Bourke Productions. Martin caused a bit of stir the next Monday night when he cycled to the Olympia, walked through the stage door, hung up his bicycle clips, and went straight out on stage to sing. I didn’t know anything then about using dressing-rooms and make-up he had laughed.” [3]
His CIE supervisor, recognised a genuine talent and gave him a couple of months leave of absence, and pretty soon Martin was a star of variety at the Royal and the Capitol where the “Miller’s Daughter” legend was born in 1942.
It was when he was playing Belfast with Harry Bailey that he met (his wife) a young girl, just left school, called Thelma Ramsey. When he came back to the Royal in Dublin, Thelma was the accompanist. Pretty soon they were “walking out”
They toured with some of showbiz’s big names, including famous comic Max Miller. They missed out on playing the London Palladium with Max as he was allowed to bring only one other act. A halfpenny was tossed and they lost. “Imagine losing the Palladium with a halfpenny… wouldn’t have minded had it been half-a-crown!” [4]
He was a regular in the Clontarf Castle Cabaret from 1964 where he continued to perform six nights a week even when his health started to fail him in the early ’80’s. In 1979, he received the Variety Artists’ Trust Society award for his contribution to Irish show-business.[5]
He made numerous Television appearances, some of which still survive on R.T.E. and Ulster Television etc. He was a member of Equity and appeared in small parts in most of the Films made in Ireland at that time.
The above entry from “Wikipedia” can also be accessed online here.
Niall MacGinnis is not as well known outside of Europe, but he was a wonderful character actor whose variety of roles matched his great gift for characterization and the look beyond just makeup that he projected. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and Trinity College, Dublin. He obtained a basic medical education which qualified him as a house (resident) surgeon during World War II in the Royal Navy. But after the war he decided to pursue acting. He worked in stage repertoire and stock companies and moved on to do significant stage work at the Old Vic Theatre in London, where John Gielgud was director and Shakespeare has a particular focus. MacGinnis had the burly look of a farm hand with a large head and curly hair falling away from a progressively receding hairline. He could portray a broad enough accent – or little at all, as the case might be – which could entail any part of the British Isles.
He moved on to film work in 1935 when British sound cinema was hitting its stride. He met young but well experienced director Michael Powell, who was eager to sell his script for an intriguing film to be shot on the furthest island from the north coast of the UK, Foulda. Alexander Korda was impressed and optioned the production of this script forThe Edge of the World (1937), and MacGinnis got the nod as the central protagonist, Andrew Gray. Soon after in 1938, MacGinnis worked with Old Vic mentor and director Gielgud for a role in an early TV production of the play “Spring Meeting” (1938). As the war years ensued and before his own service, MacGinnis did several war effort films, most notably asked by Powell to take the role of a German U-boat cook in 49th Parallel(1941). The film sported a great ensemble cast, including Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey, and was shot in Canada where the drama unfolded, but it lacked the drive to keep the story vital. MacGinnis shone as the good-natured peasant who loved food and had no use for Nazi strictures and warring on the world. Luckily for Powell, the movie with its flag waving spirit was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
By the late 1940s, MacGinnis was donning historical garb for what would be some of his most familiar roles. Olivier remembered him and gave him small but standout roles in both his Henry V (1944) and Hamlet (1948). At about that time MacGinnis began associations with American film actors and production money coming over to Britain, the first being with Fredric March and his wife Florence Eldridge in Christopher Columbus(1949). He finally came to American shores with an appearance on Broadway in “Caesar and Cleopatra” in late 1951 through April of 1952. In 1952 back in England, he had a supporting role as the Herald in a screen version of the story of Thomas a’ Becket titledMurder in the Cathedral (1951). Interestingly, he was also in the much better known and Hollywood-financed Becket (1964), as one of the four murderous barons. When MGM came back to England to follow up its previous visit and subsequent huge hit, Ivanhoe(1952), with Knights of the Round Table (1953), MacGinnis had a brief but again noticeable role as the Green Knight, bound by loss of combat to Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe. The next year brought one of his rare lead roles, an exemplary one in every measure. As Luther in Martin Luther (1953), MacGinnis joined a mostly British cast in a US/West German co-production and American director Irving Pichel with West German and historical scenery topped with a first rate script with American and German co-writers. It received two Oscar nominations.
Into the later 1950s, MacGinnis held to a steady diet of sturdy movie roles, usually supporting but always memorable because of his great acting skill. Historically, he went further back in time with several films of epic Ancient Greece, first as King Menelaus inHelen of Troy (1956), an American/Italian co-production with Robert Wise directing. That same year he stayed on the continent for another epic, this time Alexander the Great(1956) with American director Robert Rossen in an US/Spanish co-production that enlisted another first tier British cast, centered on box office idol Richard Burton, along with former co-star Freddy March. MacGinnis finally made it to Mount Olympus – that is, playing Zeus – in the rousing US/UK co-production of Jason and the Argonauts (1963), certainly best remembered for the stop motion animation magic of Ray Harryhausen.
Yet, MacGinnis’ perhaps best remembered role – certainly to discriminating fans of horror/fantasy – was that of two-faced Dr. Julian Karswell, jocular magician – but deadly serious cult leader and demon conjurer (loosely based on the outrageous English social rebel and occultist Aleister Crowley). The film Curse of the Demon (1957) (the American cut was renamed “Curse of the Demon”) was a stylishly atmospheric and convincingly spooky outing directed by Val Lewton, the protégé of Hollywood veteran film directorJacques Tourneur, best known for Cat People (1942). Based on M.R. James‘ Edwardian ghost story, “Casting the Runes,” the film is now considered a classic of the genre with MacGinnis, sporting a devilish goatee, having fun with his split personality but also effectively betraying his inward fear of the powers he has unleashed. He easily stole the show from co-star Dana Andrews, as the stubborn American psychologist almost done in by the demon he does not believe exists.
Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, MacGinnis kept to up a fairly steady stream of varied historical and contemporary movie roles, always noticeable, and in some of the high profile films of the period, including: Billy Budd (1962), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and the Cinerama adventure Krakatoa: East of Java (1968). There were some TV spots as well to showcase his character-molding talents into the year of his passing to round out a body of over 75 screen appearances.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: William McPeak
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Townsend was born and brought up in Dublin. After attending Wesley College, Dublin, he studied mathematics and civil engineering at Trinity College. While there he joined the Dublin University Players, the college’s Amateur Dramatic Society. He later co-founded co-operative theatre company Rough Magic with writer/director Declan Hughes and theatre director Lynne Parker, performing in numerous productions includingThe Country Wife, Nightshade, andSexual Perversity in Chicago. He subsequently went on to perform in several productions at The Gate and The Abbey Theatres in Dublin. In London, he has worked with such directors as Sam Mendes in The Plough and the Stars, Richard Eyre in Guys and Dolls and Rufus Norris in Under the Blue Sky. Theatre appearances at the Royal Court include The Alice Trilogy directed by Ian Rickson and Shining City directed by Conor McPherson, for which he won an Irish Theatre Award and was nominated for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor in 2004.[1]
Career
Townsend’s television work began on a number of shows for RTÉ in Dublin. Since moving to London, television appearances have included Spooks, The Commander, Hustle, Waking the Dead, and Omagh Bombing.
James McCaffrey was born in 1959 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an actor and producer, known for Rescue Me (2004), Max Payne (2001) and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003) Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland; he was raised in Albany, New York. Attended the University of New Haven on a football, baseball, and Fine Arts scholarships.After graduating from college, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he earned a living as an artist, graphic designer, and commercial art director. He also worked as a bartender at Gatsby’s Restaurant on Boylston Street. Has been a member of ‘The Actors Studio’ since 1987, and co-owned ‘The Workhouse Theatre’ in Tribeca, New York City from 1992-99.
Antonia Campbell-Hughes was born in 1982 in Northern Ireland. She is an actress and writer, known for Albert Nobbs (2011), Bright Star (2009) and The Canal (2014)
Born to an Irish mother and English father, Antonia grew up in USA, Germany and Switzerland. She was named one of Screen Internationals Stars of Tomorrow in 2011, and was awarded the Berlinale Shooting Star award in 2012.
Warren Christie was born on November 4, 1975 in Belfast, Northern Ireland as Hans Warren Christie. He is an actor, known for Apollo 18 (2011), This Means War (2012) andAlphas (2011). He has been married to Sonya Salomaa since 2007.
Clive Standen is a British actor, he was born in1981 in a British Army base in Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland, and grew up in the East Midlands in England. He went to school at King Edward VII School (Melton Mowbray) followed by a performing arts course at Melton Mowbray College. In his late teens Standen was a international Muay Thai Boxer and later Fencing gold medalist. He married his wife Francesca in 2007 at Babington House. They live in London with their three children, Hayden, Edi and Rafferty.
His first experience of stunts and sword fighting was at the tender age of 12 when Standen got his first job working in a professional stunt team in Nottingham learning to Ride, Joust and sword fight. His sword fighting skills are seamless, he is left-handed but learned to fight with his right hand in his early years making him uniquely ambidextrous in the craft. At the age of fifteen Clive was both a member of the National Youth Theatre and the National Youth Music Theatre performing lead roles in plays and musicals in West End and at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. He then won a place at the London Academy of Dramatic Art LAMDA on their three year acting course.
He is best known for playing the battle hardened warrior ‘Gawain’ a series regular in the Starz networks TV series ‘Camelot’ and also ‘Archer’, the swashbuckling brother of Robin Hood in the BBC TV series Robin Hood; a role which brought Standen much critical acclaim with many of the national press comparing Standen’s charming but edgy performance and seemingly effortless sword fighting Skill to Errol Flynn. It was much speculated at the end of the 3rd season that after his brothers death “Archer” would pick up the mantle of Robin Hood and become the shows new hero. Clive is also known for a previous recurring role as Private Harris in the British sci-fi show Doctor Who.
Prior to his role in Camelot & Robin Hood Standen appeared in 3 episodes of Doctor Who,the crime thriller “Waking the dead”,the Second World War drama documentary “Ten days to D-day”, three episodes of “Doctors” and “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, the acclaimed ITV adaptation of the book by Thomas Hughes. He also played the lead role of Major Alan Marshall in the Zero Hour TV dramatization of the SAS mission in Sierra Leone known as operation Barras. Standen took a lead role in the mainstream Bollywood film “Namastey London” alongside Katrina Kaif and Akshay Kumar. Clive was also the face of Evian water 2008.
In 2012 Clive landed a lead role in the Vertigo films feature “Hammer of the Gods” and the new series “Vikings” produced by MGM/History both slated to be released in spring 2013
Francis Magee was raised in Ireland and on the Isle of Man. He spent eight years as a fisherman before becoming an actor and has also been a member of several music groups including Namoza – who released four singles and an album – and Disco D’Oro. He studied acting at the Poor School at London’s Kings Cross and made his television debut as Liam Taylor in ‘East Enders’, a role he played on and off for two years. Since then he has been a regular face in many television series, notably ‘No Angels’ and ‘City of Vice’.
She was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.[1] She first started acting in Dublin and made her first appearances at the Abbey Theatre in 1939. She remained there for most of the 1940s. In the 1950s she performed at the Gate Theatre, after which she made her first appearance on Broadway.In 1960 she took part in the highly successful Abbey touring production of The Playboy of the Western World. In the mid-1960s she was resident and performed in a number of plays at the Old Vic, including Henry V, Othello, All In Good Time and The Rivals.[1]Although primarily a stage actress, she appeared in a number of TV series and motion pictures, including Shake Hands with the Devil, Dementia 13, and others.
Eithne Dunne
Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Dunne, Eithne (1919–88), actress, was born 30 October 1919 in Market St., Belfast, daughter of Patrick Dunne, case maker, and Mary Dunne (née McDonnell). She began her theatrical career with the Abbey school of acting and established herself as a versatile performer alongside Cyril Cusack (qv), F. J. McCormick(qv), and Ria Mooney (qv) in the first productions of plays by Paul Vincent Carroll (qv) and George Shiels (qv). Although Francis Stuart’s ‘Strange guest’ was not well received on its production in 1940, her performance was praised, while in 1943 she acted in ‘Thy dear father’, the first play of Gerard Healy (qv) at the Abbey; she had married Healy in 1942. As well as her performances in the Abbey during the early 1940s, she appeared in Noel Coward’s ‘Blithe spirit’ as Elvira, and Cathy in a stage adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’. Early in 1945, she left the Abbey with a group of players, including Healy and Liam Redmond (qv), who were dissatisfied with the policies of the national theatre, which they regarded as neglecting indigenous playwriting talent. They subsequently formed the Players’ Theatre for the production of new Irish plays and achieved great success in the Cork Opera House and the Gate with Healy’s ‘The black stranger’; Dunne took the leading role. They had a disappointing following season, however, which saw the company’s demise.
The highlight of her subsequent career was probably her performance as Pegeen Mike in ‘The playboy of the western world’ by J. M. Synge (qv), opposite Burgess Meredith on Broadway in 1946–7. She received rave reviews and the production was staged at the Mercury Theatre, London, to further acclaim in 1948. From the mid 1940s through the 1950s her staples were part-time positions with the Radio Éireann Players and Longford Productions, the company founded by Micheál MacLiammóir (qv) and Hilton Edwards (qv). Opposite MacLiammóir’s Hamlet, she played a highly regarded Ophelia in their production at Elsinore (1952). She was praised for her portrayal of St Joan in Jean Anouilh’s play, ‘The lark’, directed by Edwards and MacLiammóir (1955), and she toured the Mediterranean with their company in 1955–6. She spent much of the 1960s with companies in Bristol and Nottingham, never becoming a regular on the London stage, although she was outstanding in a London production of Edna O’Brien’s ‘Cheap bunch of roses.’ In the 1950s and 1960s she augmented her stage career with work in cinema and television. Her first film performance was perhaps her best in No resting place (1950) with Noel Purcell (qv). Other screen appearances came in the risible stage-Irish production, She didn’t say no! (1958) and James Cagney’s Irish revolution thriller, Shake hands with the devil(1959). She returned to the Abbey in 1971 to take part in a Dublin theatre festival production of Tom Murphy’s ‘The morning after optimism’, for which she received good reviews as the prostitute Rosie.
She and Healy had one daughter, Anne. After playing to an enthusiastic audience in Hugh Leonard’s ‘Stephen D’ in London in 1963, Healy collapsed in the theatre and died. Eithne Dunne died 21 December 1988 in a London hospital
In Manchester, she appeared in Eugene O’Neill‘s one-act play Before Breakfast, directed by Bill Gilmour. She played Mistress Quickly in Terry Hand’s 1975/76 production of Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Oweb Moore was born in Fordstown Crossroads, County Meath, Ireland, and along with his brothers Tom, Matt, and Joe (1895–1926), and sister Mary (1890–1919), he emigrated to the United States as a steerage passenger on board the S.S. Anchoria and was inspected on Ellis Island in May 1896. All went on to successful careers in motion pictures in Hollywood, California. He died in 1939 in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 52.
Kieran Creggan was born on April 29, 1964 in Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He was an actor, known for I’ll Be There (2003), Holy Cross (2003) and The Bill(1984). He died on March 1, 2009 in London, England.
Actor, father, motorbike fanatic: Charley Boorman is the epitome of the modern adventurer in pursuit of fresh challenges away from the success of his personal life. Choosing two wheels as his preferred mode of transport, Charley harnessed the challenges of a ’round the World trip with Ewan McGregor. Now his sights are set on the unyielding sands of the desert.
Charley Boorman has been riding motorcycles since he was seven years old. The son of renowned film director John Boorman, he grew up on a farm in Ireland and used to ride through the fields on his first motorbike and took part in schoolboy motor cross and Enduro races. The bike bug remained with Charley and, for four years, he ran a motorcycle race team and spent the years riding with David Jeffries and Matt Llewelyn.
In 2004, Charley and his best mate Ewan McGregor came up with the madcap idea of circumnavigating the globe on motorbikes. After months of intense preparations when at times, it looked like the project would not get off the ground, the pair set off from London in April 2004.
Over the next three grueling months, they traveled through three continents and fifteen countries. Long Way Round (2004) was the realisation of a dream born out of two friends’ love of motorbikes, the freedom of the open road, and the adrenaline rush of an extreme challenge. Their entire journey was filmed for Long Way Round (2004), a unique television series that was broadcast on Sky One in the UK and Bravo (USA) and spawned a best-selling DVD, book and CD soundtrack. It has now sold the world over into many territories including Australia, Canada, Japan, France, Spain, and Italy.
Following the overwhelming success of Long Way Round (2004), Charley has become an icon in the motorcycling world. On the Long Way Round (2004), UK Tour Charley visited motorcycle and adventure exhibitions plus BMW dealerships across the UK to talk about his adventures. Each event was a sell-out as crowds flocked to catch a glimpse of Charley and have their book or DVD signed. A similar tour of the southern hemisphere is to take place this winter.
Next up, Charley is taking on the desert with one of the World’s harshest challenges: the Lisbon-Dakar Rally. This is not just a race out of Europe via the Iberian Peninsula and down through West Africa. This is one of the most physically and emotionally demanding battles across inhospitable terrain, alone, to achieve the impossible. But for Charley, it is, as for many others, one of the most romantic and dangerous races known to man.
It remains the only race open to both amateur and professional bikers and for a first time participant like Charley, finishing the race in Dakar will be the ultimate goal.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Marcus Agar Communications
The above IMB entry can also be accessed online here.
Phil Burke attended the American Academy Of Dramatic Arts in New York, on a Board of Trustees Scholarship. He graduated with an Associates Degree in Fine Arts in 2003. Burke continued his acting training at various performing workshops and studios throughout New York. On stage, Phil Burke holds a noticeable list of leading-roles to his credit while holding mixed work in leading and supporting roles on the screen. Burke’s screen debut was in 2005 and since that year, he has performed in various films and on numerous television series. Notable television series of the latter 2000s include The Good Wife (2009) and Hell on Wheels (2011) on which he held a recurring role. Burke’s film work includes the direct-to-video, horror film Zombie Town (2007), then, direct-to-video Sci-Fi adventure thriller 100 Million BC (2008) and then a romantic comedy film short Mike and Lucy (2008).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Westernado
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Brendan Grace obituary in “The Irish Times” in 2019.
For 40 years, Brendan Grace, who has died aged 68, was Ireland’s most popular live comedian, delivering sell-out performances at venues big and small all over the country. Though his material was rarely subtle, his gag-per-minute ratio was very high, and archive film invariably shows his audiences in complete hysterics.
He was an imposing-looking man, powerfully-built and bearded, and there was often a slight air of menace behind the bonhomie. Within a fairly narrow range, he expertly presented several well-defined Dublin characters in his act, notably Bottler the bold schoolboy, a drunken father of the bride stumbling through a wedding speech, and Fr Michael McGillicuddy, the Singing Priest. Of himself and his audiences he once said: “We have the best sense of humour on the planet and there’s a good reason for it. It’s because none of us is the full shillin’. And I mean that in a good way.”
An elderly fan reinforced his appeal: “He was just so funny. He was a likeable slob but he had great charm. His humour was simple and he had his finger on the pulse of ordinary, everyday living. I saw him live in Macroom and it was the best show I was ever at. We were in howls, and came out reeling!”
In some respects Grace bridged the gap between the old Paddy-the-eejit comics like Hal Roach, Noel V Ginnity and Jimmy Cricket and the new breed of observational stand-ups starting in the Dublin comedy clubs in the 1990s. He was never as urbane or analytical as the slightly earlier Dave Allen, for example, but Grace was no fool. And he was clearly the kind of man who could easily deal with anyone who thought him one. volume is gedempt
He was, though, born on April Fool’s Day in Dublin’s Liberties, under the shadow of the Guinness brewery, to Séamus and Chrissie Grace, in 1951. Séamus worked at various jobs to keep a roof over the family’s head – barman, ambulance man – and Brendan left school at 13 to become a messenger boy. “Bottler is based on myself,” he said years later. “We didn’t know what a recession was because we lived in one. We were so poor we thought knives and forks were jewellery. And Bottler came out of all that.”
The personality of Bottler may have been forged in the Liberties in the 1950s but the format originated during the great days of variety, where there were many acts in which a supercilious schoolmaster received cheeky/ignorant answers to his questions.
Teacher: “Who invented the thermometer?”
Bottler: “Freddie Mercury!”
Always interested in music, at 18 he formed a folk group, The Gingermen, which had some success touring Ireland as a support to showbands. One night two of the group failed to turn up for a gig and, with the crowd getting restive, Grace started talking from the stage about his life and times, throwing in witty and sharp comments and any gags he could recall. This went down so well that he realised he might have a future making people laugh.
He was a fine singer, though, and once established in comedy recorded many songs, some of them traditional ballads. In 1975 his version of Combine Harvester (a big success in the UK for The Worzels, and a parody of American folk singer Melanie’s The Rollerskate Song, 1971) was a Number One in the Irish charts.
In 1973 Brendan Grace married Eileen Doyle and the couple went on to have four children. In an RTÉ documentary about his life broadcast in 2018 he said: “My very best friend is Eileen. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her and there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for me, and that’s how it’s been for the past 45 years. Doing nothing for each other.”
The family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, and Grace spent much of his time there, with yearly Irish live tours. He had appeared on stage with Frank Sinatra, who admired him, and the singer opened up several opportunities in the US for Grace.
The geographical dislocation led to a certain lack of visibility for a new generation, to whom he had become just a name their parents sometimes mentioned with a smile. But that changed in 1996 when he was cast as the deeply unpleasant Fr Fintan Stack in New Jack City, an episode in the second series of Channel 4’s Father Ted. Brought in to cover for Fr Jack, who is in a nursing home, Stack starts drilling holes in the walls of the Parochial House and plays Jungle Music at top volume through the night. “God, Ted,” says Dougal. “I’ve never met anyone like him. Who would he be like? Hitler or one of those mad fellas.”
Stack goads a group of visiting priests who are watching a school sports day on television: “Yeah? Lots of young fellas runnin’ around in shorts . . . that’s the kind of thing you like lookin’ at, is it? Young fellas runnin’ around a field in shorts?”
Co-writer (with Arthur Mathews) Graham Linehan said: “You can’t really forget Fintan Stack, or the wonderful way Brendan Grace played the character. It was especially interesting how he interpreted his lines. We had written them as angry lines, but he played the part in a light, delicate, almost effeminate way, which makes the character far more threatening.”
Grace himself said: “When Father Ted first came on, I wasn’t really a fan. I’m not sure I had watched it at all, but there was a part on offer so I went along for the reading. Some very well-known actors went along, but mine was picked up because of the way I portrayed him. I put a different spin on Fr Stack, making him more passive/aggressive.”
For the rest of his life, wherever he was in the world, fans would approach and recite Fr Stack lines back at him, or ask him to record the lines himself on their phones.
A year earlier, he played a straight supporting role as bar-owner Murphy in the Irish-German movie Moondance, which was directed by Dagmar Hirtz and based on a Francis Stuart story. It starred Ruaidhrí Conroy, Ian Shaw and Marianne Faithfull.
Grace also owned a pub at Killaloe, Co Clare.
His last few years were marred by severe health problems, though he continued to tour. He suffered a stroke and soon afterwards was diagnosed as diabetic. An accident hampered his walk and balance, and he was obliged to perform most of his act from a chair, wearing slippers, getting up only occasionally to show audiences how he had been affected. He said: “My fear was always that people would think ‘this guy has had a few bevvies,’ so what I did was, I made a virtue of my leg problem and built it into the act.”
In July 2019 he had to cancel his summer tour after receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer while in hospital being treated for pneumonia. When the news came out there was an outpouring of sympathy from his old fans and some fellow-stars. Dara O Briain described him as “a proper legend” and Marty Whelan said he was “one of the nicest fellas I ever met.”
He is survived by Eileen, daughters Melanie and Amanda, and sons Bradley and Brendan Patrick.
Aaron McCusker was born in 1978 in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. He is an actor, known for Shameless (2004), Shooting for Socrates (2014) and Murder (2002).
Richard Dormer (born 11 November 1969) is an Northern Irish actor, playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Beric Dondarrion in the HBO television series Game of Thrones and Dan Anderssen in Sky Atlantic‘s Fortitude.
Dormer was born in Portadown, Northern Ireland. He studied at the RADA school of acting in London. After living and working in London, he returned to Northern Ireland. He lives in Belfast and is married to director Rachel O’Riordan.
Since, Dormer has written a number of plays including The Half and Gentleman’s Tea Drinking Society which were produced through Belfast’s Ransom theatre company. In 2012, Dormer was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre to write a production. Set in Brooklyn in the summer of 1969, Dormer’s Drum Belly gives an insight into the dark edgy underworld of New York’s Irish gangsters and opened April 2013 to mainly positive reviews and was published by Bloomsbury Publishing Dormer has also provided the voices for over twenty BBC Radio 4 plays, documentaries and advertising campaigns.
Following a run of film castings playing secondary characters, he was cast as the lead in the 2012 Good Vibrations which tells the story of Northern Ireland personality and punk rock visionary Terri Hooley. The film premièred at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, was awarded Best Film at the Galway film awards, best screenplay, Dinard and nominated for the Outstanding Debut award at the 2014 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. The film was well received by critics gaining consistent reviews, most of which highlighted Dormer’s performance as a strength. Dormer’s portrayal of Terri Hooley saw him nominated in the Best Actor award in the 2013 Irish Film and Television Awards. He has since played roles in Yann Demange‘s critically acclaimed film ’71 alongside Jack O’Connell and forthcoming Gerard Johnson directed Hyena, 2014.
Richard Dormer
Dormer has become a well known television actor, more recently playing key roles in the Cinemax drama series Hunted and BBC One‘s Hidden.[16][17] 2012 also saw Dormer taking over the role of Lord Beric Dondarrion, known as the “Lightning Lord”, the leader of the “Brotherhood Without Banners” for Season 3 of HBO series Game of Thrones. In 2016, Dormer reprised his role as Dondarrion in the sixth season of the series and returned for the seventh season, airing in 2017 as well as the eighth and final season, airing in 2019.[19]
Dormer is the voice of the Dad on the children’s animated series Lily’s Driftwood Bay. The series aired in May on Nick Jr. in the UK and on Sprout in the US. It also airs on RTÉ in Ireland, ABC Australia, KiKa in Germany, MTV in Finland, NRK in Norway, SVT in Sweden, and HOP! in Israel. Broadcasters in Australia and the US are keeping the original voices to the series.
In 2014, Dormer began filming on Sky Atlantic’s Fortitude. Described as “their most ambitious project to date”, he takes the role of Sheriff Dan Anderssen and stars alongside Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston and The Killing‘s Sofie Gråbøl. Fortitude aired on 29 January 2015. The series is set in the fictional Arctic Norwegian settlement of Fortitude. On 9 April 2015, Sky Atlantic recommissioned the show for a second series consisting of 10 episodes.
Also in 2015, Dormer starred in the BBC drama We’re Doomed! The Dad’s Army Story as TV producer David Croft. The comedy drama retells the creation of the popular BBC sitcom Dad’s Army as well as the relationship between Croft and Jimmy Perry who became successful TV comedy writers.
Padraic Delaney is best known for his performance as ‘Teddy O’Donovan’ brother of Cillian Murphy in “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” directed by Ken Loach in 2006.
He was born in Wexford in 1977. He also featured on TV in “The Tudors”, “Eden” and “Raw”. New movies include “The Man Who Knew Infinity” and “The Witness”.
Eileen Peel was born on November 9, 1903 in Dublin, Ireland. She was an actress, known for In Which We Serve (1942), Asmodée (1952) and The Divorce of Lady X (1938). She died on March 22, 1981 in London, Ontario, Canada.
Eileen Walsh was born in 1977 in Cork, Ireland. She is an actress, known for The Magdalene Sisters (2002), Janice Beard (1999) and Eden (2008). She has been married to Stuart McCaffer since 2003.
Delia Murphy Kiernan (16 February 1902 – 11 February 1971) was a singer and collector of Irish ballads. She recorded several 78 rpm records in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. In 1962 she recorded her only LP, The Queen of Connemara, for Irish Prestige Records, New York, on the cover of which her name appears alongside the LP title. This has caused confusion in the minds of some people who think she is known as Delia Murphy, The Queen of Connemara. The LP title is taken from one of the songs on the album.
During World War 2, she aided Vatican official, MonsignorHugh O’Flaherty, in saving the lives of 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews, while her husband, Dr. Thomas J. Kiernan, was the Irish Ambassador in Rome 1941–1946.
She was born in Ardroe, Roundfort, County Mayo, Ireland. Her family was regarded as being wealthy. Her father, John Murphy, from nearby Hollymount, made his fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush. While in America, he married Ann Fanning from Roscrea, County Tipperary. They returned to Ireland in 1901 and purchased the large Mount Jennings Estate in Hollymount. John encouraged Delia’s interest in singing ballads from a young age. He also allowed Irish travellers to camp on the estate. According to her own account, the young Delia learned her first ballads at their campfires.[1]
Delia was educated at Presentation Convent, Tuam; Dominican College, Dublin; and University College Galway (UCG), where she graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. In UCG she met Dr. Thomas J. Kiernan, and they married in 1924, on her 22nd birthday. Kiernan then joined the Irish diplomatic service. His first posting was to London. While there Murphy sang at many venues including gatherings of Irish exiles and became quite well-known.[2] In 1939 she recorded The Blackbird, The Spinning Wheel and Three Lovely Lassies for HMV.
In 1941 Kiernan was appointed Irish Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See in Rome. The Irish legation was the only English-speaking legation to remain open after the United States entered the war. Murphy became one of those who assisted Hugh O’Flaherty (the “Vatican pimpernel”) in hiding Jews and escaped allied soldiers from the Nazis. In 1943, when Italy changed sides, many escaped POWs were helped by the legation to leave Italy.[3]
Kiernan later served as Irish High Commissioner and later first Ambassador in Australia, and later in Bonn, Ottawa, and Washington, D.C.. In 1961, while she was living in Ottawa, Murphy made the recording of “The Queen of Connemara” produced by Kenny Goldstein. Murphy and Kiernan bought a farmhouse in Jasper, Ontario, near the Rideau Canal where she spent most of her time, even after Kiernan was posted to Washington.[5] Tom Kiernan died in December 1967. Delia Murphy was the guest on Desert Island Discs on 15 April 1952; her selected luxury was a still for making poteen.
By 1969 Murphy’s health was in decline. In November of that year she sold her farmhouse in Canada and returned to Ireland. She lived in a cottage in the Strawberry Beds, part of the suburbs of Chapelizod, in Dublin. Murphy died of a massive heart attack on 11 February 1971. She had recorded upwards on 100 songs.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Dictionary of Irish Biography
Murphy, Delia (1902–71), ballad singer, was born 16 February 1902 at Ardroe, Claremorris, Co. Mayo, second of eight daughters of John (‘Jack’) Patrick Murphy of Mayo and Anna Agnes Murphy (née Fanning) from Tipperary. Her father worked in the gold mines in Klondike, where he met and married Anna; they returned to Ireland in 1901 and after residing for two years at Ardoe they purchased Mount Jennings House, Hollymount, Roundfort, near Claremorris, the local ‘big house’ and farm. Delia was educated at the local primary school, then at the Dominican convent, Eccles St., Dublin, where she was taught singing by Mother Clement Burke along with her contemporary Margaret Burke Sheridan (qv). She dated her introduction to traditional Irish ballads from her primary school days to the ballads she learned from Tom Maughan, a local tinker boy who taught her to sing ‘If I were a blackbird’. While studying for a commerce degree at UCG she sang at student concerts and later at private parties and minor concerts. She married (24 February 1924) T. J. Kiernan(qv), civil servant. Shortly afterwards, Kiernan was appointed secretary to the Irish high commission in London, and during their time there their four children were born: Blon, Naula, Colm, and Orla. In 1935 the family returned to Dublin where Kiernan took up the post of director of broadcasting at Radio Éireann, which he held on secondment till 1939. During these years Delia’s singing career reached its heights, when she recorded almost 100 songs with HMV. From this time till the mid 1950s she was the most important exponent of Irish ballad singing to reach an audience on an international scale. She broadcast numerous times from Radio Éireann, becoming a household name among people starved for Irish music. She wrote many of the songs herself and attributed much of her inspiration to tinkers’ songs. Among other songs she made famous were ‘The spinning wheel’, ‘I’m a rambler, I’m a gambler’, and ‘Three lovely lassies from Bannion’.
She accompanied her husband on all his postings. In 1941 Kiernan was appointed Irish minister to the Vatican. The family was there when the Germans took over and later when the allies arrived. The Irish legation, situated at San Martino della Battaglia, was converted by Delia into a refuge for clergy, seminarians, and women religious. She kept open house, holding wartime ‘musical’ evenings every Thursday night. Unknown to her husband she was an accomplice of Mgr Hugh O’Flaherty (qv) in smuggling escaped prisoners of war and other allied personnel into the Vatican City, often using the legation’s car to drive escapees through checkpoints. The British war office recommended after the war that she be decorated; the honour was reluctantly turned down. In 1946 the Holy See made her a Dame of the Holy Sepulchre. 1946 saw the Kiernans posted to Canberra, Australia; 1952, Bonn, West Germany; 1957, Ottawa, Canada; 1961, Washington, DC, USA. Delia did not spend a lot of time in Washington, and lived on the family farm in Ottawa. It was while they were in Washington that Delia recorded her last record, The queen of Connemara, the only LP she made. When her husband died (December 1967), Delia stayed in Ottawa and it was there that she gave her last concert, at Camp Fortune in the Gatineau Hills. In November 1969 she sold the farm and returned to Dublin, where she purchased Liscannor Cottage, Chapelizod. In January 1971 she made a surprise appearance on the ‘Late late show’ on RTÉ. She died in St Kevin’s Hospital, Dublin, on 12 February 1971. In 1981 a memorial in her honour was erected by ‘neighbours, relatives, and friends’ at Annefield Crossroads, near Mount Jennings House
Barry Keegan was born on September 12, 1922 in Dublin, Ireland as John Barry Keegan. He was an actor and writer, known for Billy Budd (1962), King of Kings (1961) and Glencannon (1959). He died in September 1977 in London, England.
Padraic Killeen’s article in “Irish Examiner” in April 2014:
Belfast native Marty Rea relishes playing Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde’s comedy An Ideal Husband, says Pádraic Killeen.
MARTY Rea has become one of Irish theatre’s most admired actors. Having graduated from RADA in 2002, the Belfast native traded the London boards for Dublin’s and the move has paid dividends. Rea is a regular at both of Ireland’s most illustrious houses, the Abbey and the Gate, while his recent work with Druid Theatre Company has confirmed his place at the forefront of a new crop of leading men.
This month, Rea is back in the Gate, playing Lord Goring, the brilliantly self-possessed, quip-spouting star of Oscar Wilde’s comedy, An Ideal Husband. It’s a part that the Belfast man has been sizing up since playing a smaller role in the same play, at the Abbey in 2008.
“Mark O’Halloran played Goring then and it looked like such great fun,” says Rea. “So my appetite for the part was really whetted by that, and it’s proven to be as enjoyable as I suspected it to be.”
Having seen O’Halloran’s version, is there a challenge to make the role his own? “You’d think there is,” he says. “But then you realise that just because you’re a different person, it’s already going to be different. Like any part, it’s filtered through the sieve of the person who’s playing it. Something will have a different resonance for me than it would for someone else. It’s all about interpretation.”
Lord Goring is fascinating. He’s a dandy, an idler, and the epitome of Wildean wit, which allows Rea to deliver killer lines like ‘to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance’. And yet, beneath all his seductive frippery Goring is also a rock of integrity, the model of the simple, humane values that Wilde himself espoused.
The character subverts the values of Victorian society, says Rea.
“That society — and we’re not all that different now — had decided what a person is supposed to be. There are ‘rules of etiquette’ and they believe if you hit all those marks then you are absolutely 100% a good person. Which is bullshit — because it means that as long as you show a good face publicly, you can do whatever you like behind closed doors. So Goring turns that on its head. He says ‘I’ll deliberately appear to be idle and careless, self-important and vain’. And, because he does, people think that he’s just senseless, that he can’t understand life or take it seriously. And they don’t perceive him as a threat. But, actually, he has the strongest grasp of what humanity is. He’s a massive humanitarian — way before his time. He’s willing to speak about people’s psychology and their drives and to try to understand why people do what they do, rather than just judge and condemn.”
Though it’s a sparkling comedy, the plot of An Ideal Husband revolves around murky themes of corruption and blackmail. Wilde himself was being blackmailed when he was writing the play, his homosexuality being used as a weapon against him. His fateful arrest for ‘gross indecency’ took place just a short while into the play’s first run in 1895.
Inevitably, then, there are many resonances between the story in the play and Wilde’s own situation.
“I’ve a line where I tell Lady Chiltern that ‘in every nature there are elements of weakness or worse than weakness’,” says Rea. “That’s certainly coming straight from the heart of the writer. And the plot itself involves the idea of a husband and wife going through a potentially huge public disgrace. And that is what the Wildes ended up having to suffer. So there’s a terrible soothsaying in that.”
Rea’s knowledge of Wilde’s life and work is extensive and he enjoys researching a role. In fact, a thirst for knowledge predates his interest in acting. Rea became involved in drama when he was 15 years old, eventually earning a scholarship with RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) in London.
But his study of drama was bolstered by an underlying interest in history, which was first nurtured in him by his working class family in Andersonstown, West Belfast.
In that predominately nationalist area, culture was considered important and Rea can recall his grandfather frequently getting him up to “name all the counties in Ireland, and then all the glens of Antrim, and then name the rivers in the glens”.
“My first love was natural history and particularly marine biology,” he says. “That was essentially what I wanted to do. My mother was very nostalgic for bygone days. She was always watching older films and we were always being taken to see things to do with how ‘people used to live years ago’, especially anything to do with the Famine.
“My da also had a great interest in history. And he liked Dickens and Mark Twain and was a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. But books weren’t around so much — it was more TV and film than reading. It was when I realised that you could find all these things in books that I got into Shakespeare. I bought my first Shakespeare Collected Works in a second-hand bookshop in Belfast. It was about £7.50. I remember thinking, ‘I thought Shakespeare was for posh people’. I had thought it would have to cost $500 to buy all those works of Shakespeare. I didn’t realise they knocked them out left, right and centre.”
What good fortune for Rea — and for all of us, among the great unwashed — that they do. If nothing else, it keeps theatre at least a little honest, something Oscar Wilde would have approved of, no doubt.
Award winning actor Kevin Ryan was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1984. He comes from a family of eighth-generation stonecutters, and although Kevin completed his apprenticeship as a young man, his own interests leaned more towards the arts, where he harbored a love of Shakespeare, dancing and sports. During the early years of his career, Kevin worked as a dancer which led him to appear on one of Ireland’s top television shows, and while successful, Kevin’s true passion was in acting.
Encouraged to follow his thespian path, Kevin moved to Hollywood where he continued to nurture his chosen craft, training heavily in the Stanislavski system of method acting. It was not long before Hollywood recognized Kevin’s natural talents and after several lead roles in a variety of independent movies, he was cast in his first major American role, as the lead in the thriller The Guru & the Gypsy (2014) directed by award winning directorPhilippe Caland (Boxing Helena (1993), Ripple Effect (2007) ). The 2012 feature film is based on improvisation and required Kevin to give his performance with a flawless American accent.
His latest feature film is the edgy Irish romantic comedy Songs for Amy (2012) in which he plays one of the leads as an international pop-star. The movie was filmed in New York and Ireland, and also stars James Cosmo and Patrick Bergin .
Hailed as Ireland’s newest emerging star, and voted one of Ireland’s sexiest Irish men for two consecutive years, Kevin can be seen starring in the award winning RTE One TV drama Raw (2008). The show, now in its fourth season, is produced by Octagon Films.
In 2012, Kevin began filming on the highly anticipated BBC TV drama series Copper(2012), created by Oscar winning director Barry Levinson, multiple Emmy winner Tom Fontana and Academy Award nominee Will Rokos. He plays Detective Francis Maguire alongside British actor Tom Weston-Jones with season 2 airing summer 2013
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Liz Rodriguez –
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor was born in 1977 in Dublin, Ireland. He is an actor, known forBecoming Jane (2007), Love/Hate (2010) and Foxes (2011). He has been married to Claire Cox since September 5, 2010. They have one child.
Caitriona Balfe was born in Monaghan, Ireland. She started modeling at the age of 19 after she was scouted by an agent while she was collecting money for charity at a local mall. She has both walked the runway and been featured in advertising campaigns for many top fashion brands, including: Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, DKNY, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, H&M, Marc Jacobs, Valentino, Cacharel, Roberto Cavalli, Givenchy, Hugo Boss, Armani, Dries van Noten, Calvin Klein and Chanel; she averaged 26 fashion shows per season in the early 2000s. She has also graced the covers of magazines such as Vogue and Elle. At the time she was scouted, Balfe was studying drama at the Dublin Institute of Technology, hoping to become an actress.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Gary Hollywood was discovered at the age of twelve by the drama department of Scottish Television and cast in a major role in the popular detective series Taggart (1983). He has worked extensively in television ever since, and stars in the popular Scottish soap operaHigh Road (1980). Hollywood completed his first American film, playing the young John Muir in Lawrence R. Hott‘s biopic about the Scots-born founder of Yosemite Park, The Boyhood of John Muir (1998).
Tony Rohr is an actor, known for Les Misérables (2012), Leap Year (2010) and High Spirits(1988). Made his television debut in “Adam Adamant Lives” in 1966.
Has a daughter Louise with Pauline Collins. Pauline gave her up for adoption when she was penniless and a single mother at the age of 23. The pair were reunited 22 years later. Pauline’s book, Letter To Louise, documented these events. Tony Rohr died in 2023 at the age of 84.
The Guardian obituary in 2023:
Tony Rohr obituary
Actor known for screen roles in The Long Good Friday and Harry’s Game, and as a stalwart of the Joint Stock Theatre Group
The character actor Tony Rohr, who has died of prostate cancer aged 84, was frequently cast as villains on screen. In the lauded 1980 British gangster film The Long Good Friday, he played O’Flaherty, one of the IRA members on London’s streets posing a threat to an underworld property developer, Harold Shand, played by Bob Hoskins.
Rohr appeared in only one scene of the writer Barrie Keeffe’s thriller, but it was particularly memorable for its brutality. The besuited O’Flaherty and his boss believe they are being bought off with £60,000 in a briefcase by the East End crime overlord, but end up being blasted by a double-barrel shotgun, their bodies crashing through plate-glass windows.
Two years later, in the taut, three-part TV thriller Harry’s Game, based on Gerald Seymour’s novel, Rohr was a cool, calm IRA brigade commander behind the murder of a British cabinet minister. When the assassin (played by another Long Good Friday actor, Derek Thompson) returns to Belfast, he tasks him with getting rid of an undercover English agent (Harry, played by Ray Lonnen) sent to track him down.
He had a rare starring part in Bill Morrison’s 1982 BBC play Potatohead Blues as Stan McVay, who discovers that his frozen-chip business is collapsing and his teenage daughter is having an affair with a married man.
Tony Rohr, front, in a production of Norman Rodway’s play Translations at the Donmar Warehouse, London, 1993. Photograph: Alastair Muir/Shutterstock
Although Rohr was able to demonstrate his versatility on television, he displayed his acting skills most effectively on stage.
As a founding member of the touring Joint Stock Theatre Group in 1974, he showed himself to be adept at interacting with an audience in its first production, The Speakers, based on Heathcote Williams’s book about orators at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. The New York Times declared the “most riveting” to be Rohr’s portrayal of MacGuinness, an Irish “buffoon” talking about his life and inventing “outrageous tales about his sexual adventures”.
The company was part of the counterculture theatre revolution, developing plays through its actors in workshops initially led by the directors Max Stafford-Clark and Bill Gaskill, alongside writers such as David Hare and Howard Brenton. Stafford-Clark said he had spotted Rohr’s “eccentric, individual” qualities when seeing him play Lucky in the Samuel Beckett classic Waiting for Godot at the 1969 Edinburgh festival fringe. He was particularly impressed by the way the actor “played the nonsense as wisdom and the wisdom as nonsense” in the character’s keynote 700-word-plus monologue.
Rohr frequently returned to Beckett’s plays and was a founder member of the Godot Company, a theatre cooperative formed in 2004 to take the writer’s works to a wider audience. Its notable touring productions included Waiting for Godot in 2006, with Rohr this time playing Estragon, one of the two vagrants – his chatting with Vladimir (William Hoyland) sounding “as melodious as a symphony”, according to the Stage – and Endgame, which Rohr directed in 2009. Over the years, Beckett sometimes requested that he play certain roles.
Rohr was born in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, to Margaret (nee Walsh) and Arthur Rohr, a confectioner, and attended the town’s Christian Brothers school, which he hated. He entered acting after service in the Irish army.
In 1963, while performing with the New Irish Players in Killarney, Rohr had a relationship with Pauline Collins, another actor in the repertory company. After it ended, she became pregnant. The couple decided not to marry and their baby daughter was given away for adoption. Collins, who in 1969 married the actor John Alderton, wrote movingly of being reunited with her daughter after 22 years apart in her 1992 book Letter to Louise. Rohr also then established a relationship with Louise.
He first worked with Stafford-Clark in the Traverse Theatre Workshop company, Edinburgh, from 1971, which resulted in his being asked to join Joint Stock, whose notable productions included the premiere of Caryl Churchill’s play Cloud Nine (1979).
Tony Rohr as Juanete in an RSC production of The Painter of Dishonour at the Barbican Pit theatre, 1996. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Stafford-Clark also directed him with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre (1978-85), cast him as both the hangman and Major Robbie Ross in its production of the penal colony play Our Country’s Good in the West End (Garrick theatre, 1989-90), and recruited Rohr to his Out of Joint company in 1993.
Rohr’s other memorable theatre roles included the old man whose face hangs almost motionless in the darkness of an empty stage while listening to his own reminiscences in a spellbinding production of Beckett’s one-act play That Time (RSC Fringe on TOP Festival, 1996) and a drunken hellfire priest in the political farce Dying for It (Almeida theatre, 2007).
On TV, Rohr played Solomon Featherstone, the land-owning relative of the wealthy widower Peter Featherstone, in Middlemarch (1994); a detective in Prime Suspect: The Lost Child (1995); a drunk priest in a bar in the 1996 Father Ted Christmas special; a grandfather in Jimmy McGovern’s drama The Lakes (1997-99); and the father of the care assistant played by Ricky Gervais in Derek (2013-14).
In 1981, Rohr married Janet Revell; she died in 2003. He is survived by their daughters, Ailise, Alana and Lily, and by Louise.
Tony (Harold Anthony) Rohr, actor and director, born 21 May 1939; died 29 October 2023
Symons starred as Lyra Belacqua in the November 2004 revival of His Dark Materials (play) at the Olivier, National Theatre.Duck (Royal Court), The Seagull (Bristol Old Vic), Lovers (Young Vic), A Month in the Country (Abbey Theatre – nomination for Irish Times Award), Richard III (Trinity, Dublin)
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Graduated from Warwick University with a degree in Economics.
Named “Greatest Irish Dancer of All Time” by the Irish Post in 1998.
Retired from competition in 1991.
His achievements include 9 World, 11 Great Britain, 9 All-Ireland, and 8 All-England titles in Irish dance.
Devised, choreographed and produced a show with “Riverdance” partner Jean Butlerentitled “Dancing on Dangerous Ground.” It is based on the Irish myth of Grainne and Diarmuid and opened in London in December 1999.
Began Irish dancing at age two.
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Patrick O’Kane is an actor from Belfast, Northern Ireland who has built up a considerable body of work on the British stage since graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama. He has appeared in classic and contemporary roles as a member of Britain’s leading theatrical companies, including the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and has played the title roles in “Hamlet (1948)”, “Macbeth”, and “Doctor Faustus (1967)”.
IMDB entry: Veronica Turleigh was born on January 14, 1903 in County Donegal, Ireland as Bridget Veronica Turleigh. She was an actress, known for The Horse’s Mouth (1958), The Promoter (1952) and Smiling at Grief (1939). She was married to James Laver. She died on September 3, 1971 in England.
Robert Ginty was an American actor best known for his lead performance in the movie “The Exterminator” . He spent some time living in Dublin. He was born in 1948 and died in 2009.
His Independent obituary by Tom Vallance is as follows:
The actor Robert Ginty became a leading star of action movies after he played the title role in the low-budget hit The Exterminator (1980). For the next decade he was the cut-price equivalent of Schwarzenegger or Stallone, making violent thrillers that invariably went straight to video but built him a large following of action fans. Ginty was usually the hero, often a war veteran using his skills to clean up the city streets, or a mercenary fighting corruption in the far corners of the world (where hordes of extras could be hired cheaply for scenes of mayhem). He was a man of many talents, however, and later found favour as an activist for experiment in the arts, a champion of human rights, a writer, a theatre and opera director, curator, artist and photographer.
Born Robert Winthrop Ginty in 1948 in Brooklyn, New York, where his father worked as a construction engineer and his mother worked for the government, he was of Irish ancestry and a direct descendent of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, member of Parliament and disciple of Thomas Paine, who died in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Ginty’s first love was rock music, and at the age of 16 he was touring with bands, playing drums with Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and John Lee Hooker.
He was educated at Yale and the City College of New York, then studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, the Actor’s Studio, and with Robert Lewis at the Yale School of Drama. He starred in Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending and Eugene O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions at the Provincetown Playhouse, and at the New Hampshire Shakespeare Festival he played Hotspur in Henry IV, Part One and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The producer Harold Prince saw these performances and hired him as both an assistant and actor for his Broadway productions of The Great John Brown (1972), Don Juan (1973) and The Government Inspector (1974). After returning to New Hampshire to star in Israel Horovitz’s one-act play The Indian Wants the Bronx, he moved to California, where he developed a reputation as a rugged player who could fill television roles that demanded physical action.
He was in episodes of Police Woman and The Rockford Files, and he had small roles in the films Bound for Glory (1976), and Two-Minute Warning (1976). His first notable role was in the TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep (1976-78), about the exploits of a Second World War flying ace and his squadron of misfits. Ginty was Lt. T. J. Wiley, one of what he later described as “a bunch of gung-ho young kid pilots”. The series prompted him to take up flying, a lifelong passion that culminated in his becoming in 2004 an honorary captain in the United States Navy’s Blue Angels.
Hal Ashby, director of Bound for Glory, then gave Ginty a strong supporting role in the powerful Vietnam war-drama Coming Home (1978), starring Jane Fonda. Ginty was the best friend of a marine (Bruce Dern) whose wife falls in love with a paraplegic while her husband is overseas.
Ginty next acted in the acclaimed television series The Paper Chase (1978-9), based on the movie about student life in a competitive law school. Ginty portrayed one of the students; another was played by Francine Tacker, who became the second of his three wives. Despite being hailed as the best new series of the year, The Paper Chase was cancelled after one season.
Ginty was on the verge, however, of his major breakthrough. He was cast in The Exterminator as a Vietnam veteran out for revenge on the gang who beat up his comrade. Deploying his most brutal combat skills, he battles the police and CIA as well as various criminals, at one point thrusting a villain through a meat grinder. Cheaply produced, the film made a huge profit, and though Ginty was billed third to Christopher George (as chief villain) and Samantha Eggar, he stole the film, and would often be billed afterwards as Robert “Exterminator” Ginty.
The image would carry him through a decade of low-budget, violent thrillers, shot in France, Italy, Mexico and Thailand, with such titles as Gold Raiders (1983), Maniac Killer, Programmed to Kill, Mission: Kill, Code Name Vengeance (all 1987), and Cop Target (1990). He also both starred in and produced Exterminator 2, an inevitable sequel to his biggest hit. He wrote and directed The Bounty Hunter (1989), and he also produced, directed and acted in Vietnam, Texas (1990), about a priest (Ginty) who discovers he fathered a son while on a tour of duty in Vietnam, though few priests would be as handy with a gun or their fists as Ginty proved to be. The film won him Best Director awards at the Houston International Film Festival and the Taormina Film Festival in Italy.
As his phase as an action star waned, he worked more frequently in television as both an actor and director. He appeared in seven episodes of Falcon Crest (1989-90) and such shows as Father Dowling Mysteries and Murder, She Wrote, and he directed episodes of Nash Bridges, Charmed and Tracker.
In 1994 Ginty responded to his heritage by becoming artistic director of the Irish Theatre Arts Center in Hollywood, whose goal is to sponsor stage, film and music projects dealing with the Irish experience, as well as allowing playwrights to hear their works read by actors in front of an audience. He lectured regularly at Trinity College, Dublin, and with film-makers Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan he founded the Director’s Guild of Ireland.
Ginty also became noted as a champion of experimental theatre. In 2004 he directed a hip-hop version of A Clockwork Orange in Toronto, and in 2005 at the Edinburgh Festival he directed Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, set in Iraq. As a stage director, Ginty favoured modern playwrights, staging revivals of Sam Shepherd’s True West, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.
An exhibition of his paintings and photographs was presented at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2006. He was also a Unesco Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Global Market Place and a member of the International Centre for Human Rights. A staunch advocate of preserving classical American architecture, in 2005 he was appointed as ambassador for the Prince’s Trust by Prince Charles.
He and his family, who lived in Toronto for several years, were also patrons of several arts bodies, including the Royal Ontario Museum, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the National Ballet of Canada. When asked how he felt about his period as a top action hero, he replied that he had no regrets. “I’ve played a very violent repertory of movies, and what they’ve done for me is given me an economically viable career.”
Tom Vallance
Robert Winthrop Ginty, actor and director: born Brooklyn, New York 14 November 1948; three times married (one son); died Los Angeles, California 21 September 2009.
Brefni O’Rorke was born in Dublin in 1989. He featured in many British films of the 1940’s beginning with “The Ghost of St Michael’s” in 1941. Other movies include “Love On the Dole”,”The First of the Few” and “Unpublished Story”. He died in 1946.
Diarmaid Murtagh is a native of Co Cavan. He began acting while a student in university in Dublin. He began his screen career in the RTE series “The Clinic” and features with George Clooney in “The Monuments Men”.
Profile from “The Agency”:
Diarmaid will next appear in Dracula Untold alongside Dominic Cooper and Luke Evans. His other most recent credits include The Monuments Men directed by George Clooney, starring Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett, The Wrong Mans for the BBC and the feature film Good People with Kate Hudson and James Franco, directed by Henrik Ruben Genz.
A native of Kingscourt, County Cavan, Diarmaid began acting in student shows at DCU while studying for a business degree. He went on to study at the Gaiety School of Acting for four years.
Diramaid’s theatre credits include I, Keano (Lane Productions), as well as There Came a Gypsy Ridingand Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme with Livin’ Dred Theatre company. He has also appeared inAn Ideal Husband, Macbeth,Christ Deliver Us and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, all with the prestigious Abbey Theatre.
A fluent Irish speaker, he has tread the boards for the Aisling Ghéar Theatre’s productions of Gruaigairí and Uaigneas an Ghleanna as well as appearing in Irish language television programmes such as Seacht, Ros na Rún and Rásaí na Gaillimhe (TG4), and An Cosc, a winning entry at the 2009 Corona Fastnet Film Festival. He also regularly voices cartoons for Ireland’s Irish language TV station TG4.
Other screen credits include 13 Steps Down (directed by Marek Losey for ITV), Eoinín, a short film directed by Tom O’Sullivan, the role of Leif in the History Channel’s Vikingsdirected by Ciaran Donnelly, Johan Remck & Ken Girotti, Trivia, The Clinic and The Roaring Twenties (RTÉ), and George Gently for the BBC. In 2011 he appeared as Brastias in Starz television series, Camelot. Diarmaid is based in London.
The above “The Agency” profile can also be accessed online here.
Eoin McCarthy was born in 1963 in Dublin. He made his screen debut in 1993 in the UK TV series “Anna Lee” which starred Imogen Stubbs. His films include “Land and Freedom”, “made of Honour” and “Traveller”. He starred with Derek Jacobi in the TV series “Cadfael”.
Shamus Locke was born on February 3, 1924 in Navan, Co. Meath, Ireland. He was an actor, known for It’s Alive (1974), Hungry Hill (1947) and The Strangers Came (1949). He died on September 30, 2003 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, USA.
Shaun Noble was born on June 1, 1921 in Dun Laoghaire, Eire. He was an actor, known forBlack Narcissus (1947), A Song for Tomorrow (1948) and The Voice Within (1945). He died in June 1999 in Kensington, London, England.
Josephine Griffin (13 December 1928 – 15 September 2005) was a well-known English film actress who appeared in a string of British films of the 1950s, such as The Purple Plain (1954), The Man Who Never Was (1956) and The Spanish Gardener (1956). After retiring from acting, under her married name Josephine Filmer-Sankey, she wrote about the Bayeux Tapestry and edited the autobiography of Sir John Mandeville.
Josephine Griffin was born in London on 13 December 1928, the only daughter of Ronald Griffin (son of Sir Lepel Griffin, a British colonial administrator in India).
She married in London on 11 October 1956. She made one more film, Portrait of Alison (1958; released in the USA as Postmark for Danger), then retired from the screen.
Josephine Griffin’s other connection to Winston Churchill was that he was an unseen character in The Man Who Never Was; his voice was supplied by Peter Sellers.
Noel Willman was born in Derry in the North of Ireland in 1918. He made “Androcles and the Lion” in Hollywood in 1953. Other movies include “The Net”, “Carve Her Name With Pride” in 1958, “Doctor Zhivago” in 1965 and “The Odessa File” with Jon Voight in 1974. He directed “A Man For All Seasons on Broadway in 1962. He died in 1988 in New York.
Article from Ulster Biography:
Noel Willman had a most distinguished career which covered every aspect of the acting profession, whether on stage, screen or television, acting, directing, or both at once.
Noel Bath Willman, son of Romain Willmann (sic; he changed the spelling of the family name when Noel was a child), a hairdresser, and Charlotte Ellis Willmann, was born in the city of Derry, studied at the London Theatre School and made his acting debut at the Lyceum Theatre, London in 1939, in Hamlet, directed by John Gielgud in what would be the last production in that theatre for fifty years. During the Second World War and after Willman was mostly active in provincial repertoire theatre, especially in Manchester, where he again appeared in Hamlet with Gielgud in 1944. In 1945-1946 he was at the Bristol Old Vic and in 1948 joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford where he took some major roles – Antonio inThe Merchant of Venice and Pandarus in The Taming of the Shrew. His Broadway debut came in December 1951 at the Plymouth Theatre in Jean Anouilh’s Legend of Lovers in a cast headed by Richard Burton (this was an English-language translation of the author’s adaptation ofEurydice, first produced in 1942).
Sir Tyrone (“Tony”) Guthrie, the renowned theatre director, encouraged Willman to try directing for the stage. In 1955, after some film work which was hard work but financially beneficial, he took an acting-directing role in All’s Well That Ends Well at the Stratford Festival. For several years he had a cross-ocean existence between London and other English venues, and Broadway, between acting and directing on stage and screen. One (or the) undoubted high point of his whole career came in 1962, when he won a Tony Award in 1962 for his direction of the original Broadway production of double-Oscar winner Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons. Bolt described how Willman was instrumental in many aspects of the play’s development, including the casting of Paul Scofield as Thomas More. The play was first performed on Broadway on 22 November 1961, at the ANTA Playhouse, and was an enormous success, enjoying a run of 620 performances. (Scofield took the same role in the 1966 film and won an Oscar.) In 1966, Willman was again nominated for an Emmy for his production of A Lion In Winter, which featured Christopher Walken, who would later become a leading Hollywood star. (A “Tony” Award is an Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre awarded annually for excellence, specifically for productions on Broadway, New York.)
His screen career began in 1952, with the role of Mr Perker in director Noel Langley’s version of The Pickwick Papers; other roles included Lord Byron in Beau Brummell, in a cast including Stewart Granger, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Ustinov and Robert Morley. Willman was often cast as cold, aggressive authoritarian figures. In Doctor Zhivago, David Lean’s epic based on Boris Pasternak’s novel, he was Razin, the icily intimidating Commissar jointly commanding a group of communist partisans during the Russian Civil War, who kidnap Omar Sharif’s eponymous doctor out of need for a medical officer, ignoring his pleas on behalf of his family. In The Odessa File, he was Beyer, a former SS officer in charge of vetting applicants to join a secret society of former SS members and who is humourless, imperious, and thorough. In Carve Her Name With Pride, he is casted simply as “Interrogator”; the person he interrogates is Violet Szabo (Virginia McKenna), the Anglo-French secret agent who has been captured while operating undercover in Nazi-occupied France. In 1976 he appeared as the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Bruno Merk, in 21 Hours at Munich, a television film dramatising (accurately enough) the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when members of the Israeli Olympic squad were taken hostage by terrorists; many were killed.
Noel Willman suffered a heart attack while in a cinema in New York City. He died on the way to hospital.
Amanda Byram was born on June 16, 1973 in Dublin, Ireland. She is an actress, known for Total Wipeout (2008), Paradise Hotel (2003) and The 9th Meteor Ireland Music Awards (2009). She is foremost a TV presenter. She has however starred in movies such as “A Dog’s Breakfast” in 2007.
He spent much of his early career working in theatre, notably at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. After playing Michael Evans in the original West End and Broadway productions ofBrian Friel‘s play Dancing at Lughnasa in the early 1990s, McSorley started to attract more TV and movie roles. He has appeared in many Hollywood movies including Braveheart(in which his character “Cheltham” was decapitated by William Wallace at the battle of Stirling) and In the Name of the Father. One of his most celebrated performances was his lead role in Omagh, a feature-length television drama depicting the effect of the Omagh bombing on the residents of the town. He is also known for playing “Father Todd Unctuous” in the Christmas special episode (“A Christmassy Ted”) of the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted. His film credits include The Constant Gardener, and he was also cast as Queenan in The Departed but had to pull out (Martin Sheen took over the role). McSorley most recently played the role of Robert Aske in the Showtime historical drama The Tudors. He appeared in the 2010 movie Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe.
The abpve “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Ian McElhinney (born 1948) is a Northern Irish actor. He has a long list of TV and film credits, including roles in Hornblower, Cold Feet, Queer as Folk and The Tudors.
Some of the actors on the TV series prefer to learn about the story through the script, one season at a time. For exampleJulian Glover, who plays Pycelle, has made it a point in his career that when he is filming literary adaptations, it is the task of the writers to translate the story from page to screen, and he doesn’t want to second guess them. In contrast, Ian McElhinney has thoroughly read through the book series and is quite familiar with its internal history – which is entirely fitting, given that Ser Barristan is one of the older characters in the story and spent over forty years at the royal court, and personally experienced many of the major political events of the past half-century. For example when Barristan is recalling Daenerys’s dead older brother Rhaegar Targaryen (in Season 3 episode 3 “Walk of Punishment“), “Rhaegar” was more than just a name to McElhinney: he knew from the books just how well Barristan knew Prince Rhaegar, and how earnestly reverent he was of the man. He is married to playwright Marie Jones.
The above “Games of Thrones” Wiki article can be accessed online here.
John McCormack was a world famous tenor from the 1910s until the 1940’s. He was born in Athlone, Ireland in 1884. In 1905 he went to Italy to train for a singing career. In 1911 he sang with Dame Nellie Melba in Australia. He sang in all the major concert hall throughout the world. In 1929 he had the lead role in the Hollywood movie “Song O mY Heart” with Maureen O’Sullivan. In 1932 he sang before thousands of people in the Phoenix Park in Dublin at the Eucharistic Congress. He was subsequently made a Papal Count. In 1937 he was featured in the glorious British made “Wings of the Morning” with Annabella and Henry Fonda. He died in 1945.
The year was 1906. The setting was a stage in Savona, Italy, a northwestern port town south of Milan. The opera to be performed that particular evening was L’Amico Fritz by Pietro Mascagni, with a fresh-faced 21-year-old named Giovanni Foli included among the cast members. Though he had only a supporting role, Foli earned quite a bit of attention for his performance. This should not be surprising. After all, this performer would go on to conquer the world, becoming one of the most popular singers of the first half of the 20th century. He shattered box office records during his many trips to the U.S., where he became one of radio’s first mega-stars, and was, according to one account, “the best-paid concert singer in history.”
If you can’t recall any popular singers named Giovanni Foli, that’s because it was a decidedly operatic stage name for the acclaimed Irish tenor John McCormack (1884 – 1945).
“Almost everybody who owned a talking machine in the days of World War I was sure to have, along with Caruso’s Pagliacci, John McCormack’s ‘Mother Machree,’” Time noted, after McCormack died at the age of 61. “He sang up & down the land, and was always good for a benefit — for the Irish, the Red Cross, the Catholics, the U.S. (he sold a half-million dollars’ worth of Liberty Bonds).”
A Gala Concert To some, McCormack is simply Ireland’s greatest musical artist. Others have compared his massive U.S. popularity in the 1920s to that of Elvis Presley in the 1950s. McCormack also paved the way for later crooning stars such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.
But while audiences and critics remain fascinated with Elvis, Sinatra and Crosby, McCormack’s light has dimmed somewhat. In terms of sheer talent and popularity, however, McCormack should always be remembered — especially by the Irish in America.
Towards that end, a very special concert will be held at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium in Manhattan on December 17, 2009. “Icon of an Age: A John McCormack Gala Tribute Concert” will feature songs made popular by McCormack.
Next year also marks the 80th anniversary of another important McCormack concert, this one in Dublin. The year was 1929, and the Irish were celebrating the 100th anniversary of Catholic emancipation. The world, of course, would soon be sinking into a Great Depression. Ireland itself was only a few years removed from a grueling Civil War. But McCormack was able to transcend these divisions, blending art, faith and history through his powerful music, which one critic has said “speaks from the heart, to the heart.”
So who, exactly, was John McCormack? How did a fellow dubbed Giovanni Foli become the first in a long line of popular Irish tenors? And what role did he play in cultivating Irish-American pride?
McCormack was born on June 14, 1884, the fourth of 11 children, and baptized at St. Mary’s Church in Athlone, County Westmeath. McCormack’s parents worked in nearby mills, but despite this working-class upbringing, young John was able to cultivate his impressive singing talents. Though countries such as Italy are better known for producing opera singers, Ireland’s musical tradition served McCormack well. John sang in the church choir as did his father Andrew. He went to the 1903 Feis Ceoil (the Irish National Music Festival) in Dublin and emerged as a gold medal winner.
McCormack first gained U.S. attention while performing at the Irish Village section of the 1904 World Exposition in St. Louis. His engagement was short-lived as he objected to the “stage-Irish” aspect of the show. He quit, but not before he met the love of his life, Lily Foley, also a member of the troupe, whom he would marry two years later.
It was a performance by another towering artist the following year that left a lasting impression upon McCormack. At London’s Covent Garden, McCormack watched Enrico Caruso in La Boheme. “The best lesson I ever received,” McCormack later said.
McCormack now knew what he wanted to do, and also knew he had the raw talent. So, he traveled to Italy, where the acclaimed Vincenzo Sabatini was charged with honing the Irishman’s technical singing skills.
McCormack then made his famous debut in Savano, before, in the fall of 1907, he made his London debut. McCormack was just 23 years old, making him the youngest principal tenor ever to sing at Covent Garden, according to the John McCormack Society, founded in 1960 to preserve the Irish tenor’s great achievements.
McCormack quickly showed he had the stuff to be an international star, selling out shows in Ireland, England, the U.S. and Australia. This wide appeal can be explained, in part, by the fact that McCormack blended high artistic music and more popular, accessible singing. In fact, McCormack biographer Gordon Ledbetter believes the tenor was the last singer to successfully bring together such divergent styles. Attempting to convey McCormack’s widespread fan base to contemporary audiences, another biographer said John McCormack was Pavarotti, Madonna and Johnny Carson all rolled up into one.
Though he was a hit around the world, Irish songs were always a favorite of McCormack’s. Given the events of the day as well as his Irish background, it makes sense that McCormack’s was the first well-received version of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” recorded after World War I broke out in 1914.
McCormack also recorded nationalist songs, such as “The Wearing of the Green,” which did cost him some British fans. But the singer’s devotion to his adopted country (he became a U.S. citizen) could never be questioned. McCormack donated thousands of dollars to the U.S. effort during World War I, after America entered the war in 1917.
This begins to illustrate why McCormack may have been so popular among Irish-Americans. “Growing up, almost every Irish household in New York would have a John McCormack record,” a distant McCormack relative (found driving a taxi cab in New York City) told one documentary filmmaker. But McCormack was not merely a great singer who happened to have been born in Ireland. The era in which McCormack performed was also important for the Irish. After all, many Irish nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic were skeptical about or openly opposed to U.S. involvement in World War I. This rekindled the old charge that Irish Catholics could never become truly American. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was among those who suggested “hyphenated Americans” were inherently disloyal to the U.S. – especially the Irish, given their anger towards the British, who were America’s ally in World War I.
Enjoying McCormack’s music was one way Irish-Americans could prove they were patriotic, while also displaying pride in their native land.
Of course, it was not the just the Irish who embraced McCormack. He sold out venues all over the country, and when he came to any large city, he was greeted by their most famous residents, such as Detroit’s Henry Ford. By the time Caruso died in 1921, it was widely believed McCormack was not just the most popular, but also the most talented, singer alive.
As sales of recorded music increased, and the reach of radio widened, McCormack was there to ride the new technological wave. He also crossed over into the movies. In 1929, he was paid $500,000 to appear in a stage-Irish film entitled Song O’ My Heart.
At various times McCormack had an apartment on Park Avenue, a farm in Connecticut and a home in the Hollywood Hills. But despite his nearly global reach – he also toured Asia to great acclaim – McCormack never forgot where he came from.
In 1925, the McCormacks spent their summers on a large estate in Kildare. That same year he honored his parents at a Dublin concert, singing “When You Are Old and Grey” to his father, while seranading his mother with his show-stopper “Mother Machree.”
Understanding how blessed he was, McCormack also dedicated his life to helping others. The Red Cross and various Catholic charities were among the many causes to which he donated vast sums of money.
Following his performance at the 100th centennial of Catholic Emancipation in Dublin, McCormack was named a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, an honor he cherished. So dedicated to these causes was McCormack that at times he failed to take his own health into account, touring until he was exhausted. By 1938, McCormack had more or less retired, performing only at his son’s wedding in 1941.
McCormack died a few years later but his legacy clearly lives on. “The Irish tenor” is now a beloved brand on the international music scene, thanks to the trail first blazed by John McCormack. Meanwhile, every time the latest pop singer or rap star crosses over into movies or television, they should be reminded that McCormack did it almost a century earlier. Not only that, he worked tirelessly to return the many blessings he’d received. Not bad for a young kid from Athlone named Giovanni . . . uh, John, that is.
The above “Irish America” article can also be accessed online here.
Sheet music cover image of ‘It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary The Song They Sing as They March Along’ by Jack Judge and Harry Williams, with lithographic or engraving notes reading ‘Lithographograph courtesy of Leslie’s Weekly (copyrighted) of Tommy Atkins,’ New York, New York, 1912. (Photo by Sheridan Libraries/Levy/Gado/Getty Images)
My favourite autograph and one of the rarest is of the brilliant actor Robert Shaw. He has starred in such magnificent movies as “Jaws”, “The Deep”, “The Sting”, “The Taking of Pelham 1…2…3..”, “A Man For All Seasons” and “From Russia With Love”. Sadly he died of a heart attack at his Irish home in Tourmakeady, Co Mayo in 1978 at the age of only 51. He was married to the beautiful Mary Ure(who starred in “Where Eagles Dare” with Clint Eastwood) who also died very young aged 42 in 1975.
TCM overview:
A rough-hewn British character actor who played more leading roles later in his career, Robert Shaw went from being typecast as tough-guy villains to proving his versatility in a wide range of performances. Shaw had his start on the stage in the late 1940s and quickly segued to the screen where he broke through as an assassin for SPECTRE in “From Russia with Love” (1963). But it was his Oscar-nominated turn as King Henry VIII in “A Man for All Seasons” (1966) that helped shed new light on the actor, leading to a variety of characters in films like “Battle of Britain” (1969), “A Town Called Hell” (1971) and “Young Winston” (1972). Shaw then entered his most fruitful period to play ruthless mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973) and criminal mastermind Mr. Blue in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974), which paved the way for his most iconic performance as salty Quint in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975). From there, Shaw was a leading man in a number of major studio films like “Black Sunday” (1977), “Force 10 from Navarone” (1977) and “Avalanched Express” (1979). But at the height of his career, Shaw suffered a fatal heart attack. Whether on screen or as the author of award-winning novels, Shaw was a unique talent the likes of whom would not be seen again.
Born on Aug. 9, 1927 in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, Shaw was raised by his father, Thomas, a physician, and his mother, Doreen, a former nurse. When he was seven years old, the family moved to Scotland and when he was 12, Shaw’s father – a manic depressive and alcoholic – committed suicide. As a result, the family moved to Cornwall where Shaw attended the independent Truro School and briefly taught school in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1949, he made his stage debut with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and later in the year toured Australia with the Old Vic. Shaw soon made his London stage debut in a West End production of “Caro William” (1951) and a few years later, transitioned to the screen with minor supporting roles in “The Dam Busters” (1955) and “A Hill in Korea” (1956), before returning to the stage to star in his own play, “Off the Mainland” (1956). Following a turn in the British crime thriller “Man from Tangier” (1957), he spent 39 episodes as the lead pirate on the children-themed series “The Buccaneers” (ITV, 1956-57).
Following the show, Shaw went back to the big screen for small roles in “Sea Fury” (1958) and “Libel” (1959), before landing episodes of British series like “The Four Just Men” (ITV, 1959-1960) and “Danger Man” (ITV, 1960-68). After playing Leontes in the feature adaptation of “The Winter’s Tale” (1961), he played cunning SPECTRE assassin Red Grant in “From Russia with Love” (1963). At this point, Shaw became a published author with The Hiding Place (1960) and The Sun Doctor, the latter of which won the 1962 Hawthornden Prize. He next played King Claudius in Grigori Kozintsev’s adaptation of “Hamlet” (1964), the Ghost of Christmas Future in “Carol for Another Christmas” (1964), and a fictional colonel fighting in “Battle of the Bulge” (1965), an epic war film about the famed World War II battle starring Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson. In “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), Shaw was King Henry VIII to Paul Scofield’s Sir Thomas More and Orson Welles’ Cardinal Wolsey, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor – the only such honor of his career.
Shaw went on to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer in the critically derided Western “Custer of the West” (1967), before starring in William Friedkin’s adaptation of Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” (1968). In the “Battle of Britain” (1969), Shaw was cast alongside British heavyweights like Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine and Susannah York for this epic and surprisingly historically accurate depiction of England’s fight to stop the Luftwaffe from bombing Britain back to the Stone Age. That same year, he starred opposite Plummer in the historical drama “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” (1969), while the following year he had his first screenwriting credit with “Figures in a Landscape” (1970), wherein he played an escaped convict alongside Malcolm McDowell who try to escape from the secret police of an unidentified totalitarian country. Following a leading performance in the little known Western “A Town Called Hell” (1971), he was Lord Randolph Churchill, father to Winston Churchill (Simon Ward) in “Young Winston” (1972), a British-made biopic about the early years of the future prime minister.
Though a well-known actor both in Britain and America, Shaw had yet to hit his most fertile period, which commenced with his turn as ruthless Irish mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973), who becomes the target of a long con by two confidence men (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) after he kills their friend and mentor (Robert Earl Jones). Shaw’s performance as the barely contained Lonnegan was a terrific counterpoint to Newman’s devil-may-care turn as expert con artist Henry Gondorff, which was perfectly exemplified in a card game where Lonnegan is out-cheated by Gondoff – one of the more memorable scenes of this multi-Oscar winning film. Shaw next played Mr. Blue, a criminal mastermind who leads a gang of thieves into a New York subway to steal $1 million in the commercial and critical action hit “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974). Standing in Mr. Blue’s way is a gruff, but determined transit cop (Walter Matthau), who contends with the chaos of multiple city agencies and a reluctant mayor (Lee Wallace) while trying to figure out just how the gang plans to escape the subway tunnel while surrounded by police.
The following year, Shaw delivered his most iconic performance in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975) playing Quint, a salty old shark fisherman who hunts down a killer great white with a landlubber police chief (Roy Scheider) and a know-it-all marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss). Shaw’s turn as the grizzled seafarer was the film’s most memorable, particularly in his confrontations with Dreyfuss’ bookish biologist and in his haunting recount of the sinking of the doomed U.S.S. Indianapolis. The movie was a monster hit and the highest-grossing film ever made at the time, making “Jaws” Shaw’s most successful film on all fronts. From there, Shaw starred alongside James Earl Jones as two pirates in “Swashbuckler” (1976) and played the Sheriff of Nottingham to Sean Connery’s Robin Hood in “Robin and Marian” (1976). He went on to search for sunken treasure with Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset in “The Deep” (1977) and was an Israeli military officer trying to thwart a crazed Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern) from blowing up the Super Bowl in “Black Sunday” (1977). Shaw next starred in the sequel “Force 10 From Navarone” (1977), taking over the Gregory Peck role as the leader of a special forces group that tries to blow up a bridge with a traitor in their midst. After completing the filming of “Avalanche Express” (1979), where he played a Russian general who defects to the United States, Shaw suffered a sudden heart attack while home in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland. He was only 51 years old.
By Shawn Dwyer
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Kieron Moore was born in 1924 in Skibbereen, Co Cork. He was educated in Dublin and after college, he joined the Abbey Theatre. He made over 50 films and appeared opposite Vivien Leigh in “Anna Karenina” in 1948. He went to Hollywood and made “Ten Tall Men” with Burt Lancaster and “David and Bathsheba” with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. He returned to Britain and continued his career there in such films as “Recoil” and “Blue Peter”. In 1959 he returned to Hollywood to make “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” for Walt Disney. In the 1970’s he retired from acting and became editor of “The Universe”, a Catholic newspaper. He died in France in 2007.
The “Guardian” obituary by Mark Lawson:
Kieron O’Hanrahan, who has died aged 82, knew that he would be most remembered as “the actor Kieron Moore”, for roles including Vronsky opposite Vivien Leigh in Anna Karenina (1947) and a bank robber in The League of Gentlemen (1960), but he was never fully satisfied by acting and spent at least the last 30 years of his life in retreat from the profession, working for the Catholic overseas aid agency Cafod and the Catholic newspaper The Universe. Few movie stars end their lives, as Kieron did, visiting the sick in hospital in France. He had retired there in the 90s and, in his latter years, this would have been his idea of a perfect final scene.
The acting had, anyway, unexpectedly overtaken a man who, from his birth on a farm in Skibbereen, County Cork, seemed most destined to be a doctor or writer. Kieron’s father Peadar O’Hannrachain (the Irish version of the family name) wrote books, poetry, journalism and a play, promoting Irish nationalism and the Gaelic League to the extent that he was both jailed and deported (to Herefordshire) by the British.
Kieron was greatly influenced by his father’s experiences and once, on a journalistic assignment to Belfast, refused to speak English to a patrolling British soldier. Only after his funeral did I discover that this incident directly repeated an act of defiance by his father which had been immortalised in an Irish poem. He inherited from this family background a lifelong concern with oppressed or dispossessed people which emerged in two documentaries he wrote and directed for Cafod: Progress of Peoples, shot in Peru, and The Parched Land, filmed in Senegal.
Kieron also drew from his father a passion for Ireland and for writing, although he was never as happy in either as he might have hoped. The first profession he chose was medicine but, after only a few months at University College hospital in Dublin in 1941, his hobby of acting accelerated, and roles in two late plays by the writer Sean O’Casey – Purple Dust and Red Roses for Me – took him to Liverpool and then London, where a movie scout offered a seven-year contract and an anglicised surname.
Two leading film encyclopaedias by Ephraim Katz and David Thomson, describe Kieron Moore respectively as “a husky, stern leading man” and “an Irish actor with a hangdog expression”. The latter aspect, if true, possibly reflected the actor’s own uncertainty about his calling, perhaps because he had always felt most at ease speaking Irish on stage rather than English on film. He would later recall his misery before attending the Royal Command Performance of Anna Karenina, knowing that he had been stiff and miscast. He regularly spoke well of only one of his films: The Green Scarf (1954), in which, among a cast including Michael Redgrave and Ann Todd, he played a deaf, dumb and blind author accused of murder. And, while his debut film, The Voice Within (1945), meant little to him professionally, it was of great personal significance: on the set, he met the actor Barbara White, to whom he was married for 59 years.
Kieron’s escape from cinema – and an opportunity to honour his father’s political intensity – came in 1974, when Cafod offered him a six-month sabbatical as an ambassador which stretched to nine years and put him on the other side of the camera. If the documentaries had exposed his writing gene, journalism released it when, in 1983, he joined The Universe, the biggest-selling Catholic newspaper, as associate editor. (Between 1984 and 1986, I worked for him there as reporter, TV critic and feature writer.)
He still fulfilled the cliche of “film-star looks”, with a tennis-court tan and a firm head of hair which betrayed his age only by greying. Had he not retired from acting, he could easily have played Omar Sharif in a biopic. Even when on time, or early for work, he always seemed to enter the office at the run, a tan shoulder bag bulging with copies of the morning papers, annotated on the train from Surrey, and the works of theology and classics of European and Irish literature which usually alternated in his reading, apart from a passion for the spy thrillers of the American writer Charles McCarry. He would frequently spend two days reworking the main editorial, usually choosing as his subject international inequality or injustice.
Kieron sometimes struggled to adjust to the tone of Catholic journalism. Once, when a visiting priest was railing against the free availability of condoms in society, he testified that they were like “washing your feet with your socks on”, not a theological objection previously considered.
His passionate commitment to projects also sometimes caused problems. Once, when he burst into a Universe meeting shouting “the bastards have blown up Middlesbrough Cathedral!”, colleagues assumed that a gruesome act of terrorism had occurred, but the associate editor had simply noticed that the printers had increased the size of an ecclesiastical photograph against his wishes. His entry into journalism coincided with the rise of video recorders, and one sub-editor, after losing a particularly fierce editorial argument, was in the habit of cathartically screening the sequence in The Day of the Triffids (1962), in which Moore’s character is eaten by a plant.
But, if stubbornness existed in him beyond ordinary human levels, so did kindness. One of his aims at The Universe was to humanise the paper’s moral advice column (a sort of “agony nun”) beyond the stern reiterations of Vatican law that had been the previous practice. The God he believed in was demanding, but also forgiving.
He encouraged and championed young writers and was later delighted to see former staff turning up in the national papers or the BBC. It gave him great pleasure that Roger Alton, who he had employed to professionalise page designs, became editor of the Observer.
Kieron was a Catholic of great faith (for much of his life attending mass daily) and, in this respect at least, would have made a good priest, although he would not easily have foregone the pleasures of flesh and family.
He was fiercely proud of his children and pleased that all entered caring professions: his daughter a nun, two of his sons teachers and the other a psychotherapist. They and Barbara survive him.
· Kieron O’Hanrahan (Kieron Moore), actor, journalist, charity worker, born October 5 1924; died July 15 2007For “The Guardian” obituary, please click here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:With dark good looks and a brawny build, Irish actor Kieron Moore made a name for himself in post-war British films as both heroes and villains. Interestingly, he is better remembered for one of his more earnest failures, that of Count Vronsky opposite Vivien Leigh‘s Anna Karenina (1948).Born Kieron O’Hanrahan, he grew up in a hearty, Irish-speaking-only household. His father, Peter, was an Irish Nationalist writer, poet, editor and political activist who was imprisoned more than once by the British for his activities.
Encouraged by their parents to pursue their artistic leanings, Kieron’s sister Nease became an actress, brother Fachtna became a music director, and sister Blaithin played harp for the National Symphony Orchestra. Kieron himself was educated in Dublin and started to study medicine at University College. He abandoned his medical studies, however, after an Abbey Theatre rep saw him in a local play and accepted his application for membership.In 1943 the handsome Kieron moved to England and subsequently made his London stage debut as Heathcliff in a production of Wuthering Heights. He went on to gain more notice in such plays as Purple Dust by ‘Sean O’Casey’ and Everyman. He made an impressive film debut as an Irish Republican Army killer in The Voice Within (1945). The heroine in the film, murdered by Kieron’s character, was played by actress Barbara White. Despite their fatal on-camera relationship, they formed a much more positive one away from the lens and married in 1947. Barbara retired shortly thereafter and they had three sons (Casey, Colm, Sean) and one daughter (Theresa).
Kieron was a talented, durable player but seemed to lack the charisma or drive for top stardom despite his early promise. An impressed Alexander Korda signed him up with his London Films following a heralded performance in the West End version of Sean O’Casey‘s play Red Roses for Me in 1946. The marquee name of Kieron Moore was bestowed upon him at this time.
While he excelled in his next unsympathetic role, the psychological drama Mine Own Executioner (1947) in which he plays a schizophrenic POW treated by doctor Burgess Meredith (with real-wife Barbara playing his wife in one of her last film roles), Kieron failed to capitalize on the one role that could have made him a star. As the urbane count in Anna Karenina (1948), he was deemed miscast by many of his reviews.
Kieron took a bite of the Hollywood apple when cast as Uriah the Hittite in the plush but stilted biblical epic David and Bathsheba (1951) opposite Gregory Peck and ‘Susan Hayward’ , and as a dashing Foreign Legion corporal in Ten Tall Men (1951), starring Burt Lancaster. Not much happened as a result and he returned to England. There he continued to offer fine and varied performances, notably in The Green Scarf (1954), in which he earned applause for his role as a deaf, blind and mute murder suspect.
The Green Scarf, poster, US poster, Kieron Moore, 1954. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Another part that garnered some attention was his playing of the bully Pony Sugrue in the Disney classic Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959). This was topped by the strong kudos he received in the top-drawer Jack Hawkins comedy starrer The League of Gentlemen (1960) as a gay former officer recruited by Hawkins to pull off a major bank heist. At the same time, he turned hero once again as a man forced to battle flesh-eating plants in the classic sci-fi thriller The Day of the Triffids (1963) co-starring Janette Scott.
At this juncture Kieron’s status started to regress with more and more routine films handed him, including Doctor Blood’s Coffin (1961), I Thank a Fool (1962) and The Thin Red Line (1964). He played second fiddle to special effects in Crack in the World (1965) and to Gregory Peck (again) in Arabesque (1966). He took as his final film the underwhelming Custer of the West (1967) in which he was oddly cast as an Indian chief. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he customarily performed on TV, including a short-lived series.
After retiring from feature film work altogether in 1974, his life took a religious and socially-active turn. He joined the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, for whom he worked for nine years, directing and narrating two film documentaries in the course of that time. The films dealt specifically with the struggle for survival in Third World countries. He also traveled extensively in the Middle East and India and provided voice-overs for other documentary features as well.
Retiring quietly to France in 1994, Kieron was survived by his wife, Barbara, and children at the time of his death on July 15, 2007 at age 82.
Dictionary of Irish Biogrphy
Moore, Kieron (1924–2007), actor and catholic activist, was born Ciarán Ó hAnnracháin in Skibbereen, Co. Cork, on 5 October 1924, one of four sons and two daughters of the Gaelic Leaguer and political activist Peadar Ó hAnnracháin (1873–1965) and his wife Máire Ní Dheasúna (Desmond) (1888–1967) from Kinsale. Peadar Ó hAnnracháin was one of thirteen children of a small farmer in the Skibbereen area. Having learned Irish from a textbook, he became a travelling teacher, writer, and journalist in Irish; his arrest in Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick, on 10 June 1912 for insisting on giving his name in Irish to a policeman became a cause célèbre. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was imprisoned for IRA activities several times between 1916 and 1921. At the time of Ciarán’s birth the Ó hAnnracháin family lived on a small farm that they owned, Peadar supplementing his farming with journalism and a local government job. The farm was sold in 1938 when Peadar took up a civil service position in Dublin. He was the author of numerous books in Irish, including poems, plays, a novel, and memoirs such as Fé bhrat an Chonnartha(1944), an account of his Gaelic League work, and Mar mhaireas é(1953). Ciarán’s siblings included the actress Neasa Ní Annracháin (mother of the broadcaster Doireann Ní Bhriain), Fachtna Ó hAnnracháin (director of music with Radio Éireann), and the harpist Bláithín Ní Annracháin. The family were brought up as Irish-speakers, and a persistent tendency to stiffness in Moore’s vocal delivery on film reflected a preference for Irish. Moore’s cultural sophistication (as an adult he read four languages and had a wide-ranging love of literature) grew from the heritage of his father, and in later years he campaigned on behalf of poor farmers in developing countries whose living conditions resembled those of his ancestors.
Moore was educated at Coláiste Mhuire, Dublin, and studied medicine at UCD for a few months in 1941 before dropping out to join the Abbey Players (having appeared as an amateur in two Irish-language productions in the Peacock theatre). His lead in an Abbey production of the mediaeval mystery play ‘Everyman’ was praised, and in 1943 he moved to England to pursue an acting career. He initially attracted critical acclaim by playing Heathcliff in a stage adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ at the Richmond theatre in Surrey (reprising the role in a 1948 BBC TV production), followed by the role of Ayamonn Bredon in ‘Red roses for me’, the West End hit by Sean O’Casey (qv). (Moore had previously appeared in a Liverpool production of O’Casey’s ‘Purple dust’.) His height and dark good looks fitted the image of the romantic hero.
His first film role (as Kieron O’Hanrahan) was in an Irish-set picture, The voice within (1945, dir. Maurice J. Wilson), in which he played an IRA man competing with his brother (also in the IRA) for the love of their stepsister. Shortly afterwards he was recruited by Alexander Korda’s London Films with a seven-year contract (he then changed his surname to Moore). Leading roles in A man about the house (1947, dir. Leslie Arliss) and Mine own executioner (1947, dir. Anthony Kimmins), both drawing on his Heathcliffean image of dangerous, damaged glamour, were well received, and he was briefly regarded as the coming romantic lead of British cinema.
Moore’s career received a decisive setback, however, when he was cast as Count Vronsky opposite Vivien Leigh in Alexander Korda’s film production of Anna Karenina (1948, dir. Julien Duvivier). He later told the critic Alexander Walker (qv) that both he and Leigh felt their freedom to interpret their roles had been taken away from them by a cynical director who cared nothing for the material but wished to impose a glossy romanticism on it in the hope of pleasing audiences; that within two weeks of the start of filming he considered going to Korda and demanding to be released, and spent much of the shoot inwardly cursing himself for not having done so; and that when he went to the premiere ‘I knew I was going to my own hanging’ (Walker, Vivien, 186–9). Moore’s fears were realised: his performance was savaged by critics who treated him as chief scapegoat for the film’s numerous failings (highlighted by contrast with the 1935 Hollywood adaptation with Greta Garbo and Fredric March). The critic James Agate sneered that Moore had shown himself to be ‘an idol with feet of peat’ (Ir. Times, 28 July 2007). Moore’s career never recovered, but he was somewhat ambivalent about this setback, later suggesting that a rapid rise to international stardom might have been disastrous for his personality.
After supporting roles in two Hollywood films – as a naively trusting and self-righteous Uriah the Hittite opposite Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward in David and Bathsheba (1951, dir. Henry King) and a showy French Foreign Legion corporal opposite Burt Lancaster in Ten tall men (1951, dir. Willis Goldbeck) – Moore settled into a career as a character actor, often in ensemble casts. Such films included The league of gentlemen (1960, dir. Basil Dearden), as one of eight disgraced or disgruntled former army officers planning a bank robbery. He played one of several wartime tugboat captains and potential sharers of Sophia Loren’s favours in The key (1958, dir. Carol Reed); a member of an anarchist gang in The siege of Sydney Street (1960, dir. Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman), which was filmed in Dublin; and a grinning Cagneyesque terrorist among the parade of Arab stereotypes in Arabesque (1966, dir. Stanley Donen). The day of the triffids (1962, dir. Steve Sekely) is an extreme example of an ensemble appearance: Moore’s role as a brilliant but self-hating alcoholic scientist seeking a remedy for the alien vegetable plague was added by the studio after the main filming had taken place. Moore often played characters of exotic origins (sometimes blacked-up), suffering personal trauma, or displaying some highly distinctive trait: his role as a deaf mute accused of murder in The green scarf (1954, dir. George More O’Ferrall) has been highly praised and was his personal favourite; his character in The league of gentlemen is an unusually early straight dramatic representation of a homosexual. His occasional lead roles were generally of the B-movie variety, as in Doctor Blood’s coffin (1961, dir. Sidney J. Furie). Moore played the bully Pony Sugrue in Walt Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the little people (1959, dir. Robert Stevenson), unsuccessfully competing with Sean Connery for caretakership of the local estate and for Darby’s granddaughter. For several years after his last film appearance (as Chief Dull Knife in Custer of the West (1967, dir. Robert Siodmak) Moore made guest appearances on several British television serials, including Randall and Hopkirk (deceased). In 1970 he took the lead role in a short-lived, nine-episode BBC TV series of his own devising, Ryan International, depicting the adventures of a Paris-based lawyer vaguely based on such popular characters as The Saint and Perry Mason.
Moore had always been a committed catholic: he was a daily mass-goer for much of his life and made a point of reciting the rosary nightly with his children. As his acting career wound down, he experienced a renewal of his religious faith (partly through the influence of Fr Michael Hollings (1921–97), an influential priest of the archdiocese of Westminster, who combined theological liberalism with personal asceticism, social activism, and an unorthodox lifestyle). After being asked to undertake a six-month stint as a goodwill ambassador for the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD), Moore worked for the charity for nine years, travelling to the Middle East and India as a projects manager. He scripted, narrated and directed two documentaries dealing with CAFOD’s work in Peru and Senegal, The progress of peoples (1975) and The parched earth(1979). (In 1957 he had directed two episodes of the BBC crime series The vise.) His last involvement in film was providing the voiceover for Muiris Mac Conghail’s RTÉ Irish-language documentaries on the Blasket islands (Oileán eile, transmitted 6 January 1985) and the Aran islands (Mórchuid cloch is gannchuid cré, transmitted 16 March 1989).
From 1983 to 1994 Moore worked for the Universe, an English catholic weekly paper, rising to associate editor, thus finding an outlet for his repressed literary aspirations in writing numerous editorials, often on themes of social justice. He took to reading contemporary theology and was on the theologically liberal wing of the church, somewhat sceptical of the Vatican; he watered down the Universe‘s previously uncompromising moral advice column. He edited a supplement, New Creation, and created a magazine, New Dawn. Among other causes, he championed the innocence of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven (convicted of participation in IRA bombings in Britain, cleared by the court of appeal after police were shown to have fabricated interrogation records), secured exclusive interviews with Margaret Thatcher and other political leaders, and commissioned a piece on suffering from the prominent theologian Karl Rahner, who was dying at the time. On a journalistic assignment to Belfast, he pointedly insisted on addressing a British soldier in Irish, imitating his father’s defiance. His intense commitment to professional standards led to flare-ups with some colleagues (one sub-editor developed a fondness for replaying on video the scene of Moore being eaten by a plant in Day of the triffids), but at the same time he was eager to develop promising young writers.
Moore married (1947) the actress Barbara White; they had three sons and one daughter (who became a nun), all of whom used the name ‘O’Hanrahan’ rather than ‘Moore’. Moore frequently expressed pride that his children had all entered the caring professions. In 1994 he retired to the village of Saint-Georges-Antignac in the Charente-Maritime department of France, chosen because of its remoteness from the usual Anglophone expatriate haunts; he joined the local choir and spent part of his time as a volunteer hospital visitor in the nearby town of Jonzac. He died in Jonzac on 15 July 2007, and is buried in Saint-Georges-Antignac. His acting career never fully reflected the deep personal hinterland on which he drew in reading, writing, and social activism, and like the better-known Patrick McGoohan (1928–2009) he was marked by a life experience stretching from the smallholdings of inter-war western Ireland to Hollywood, and held together by commitment to marriage, family, and a personalised catholicism: Kieron Moore was never allowed to displace Ciarán Ó hAnnracháin.
Marie Kean was born in Dublin in 1918. She starred on radio in Ireland for many years as ‘Mrs Kennedy’ in “The Kennedys of Castlerosse”. Her film debut was in 1956 in “Jacqueline”. Other movies include “The Girl With Green Eyes” with Rita Tushingham and Peter Finch in 1964, “Barrie Lyndon” in 1975, “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” with Maggie Smith in 1986 and splendid as ‘Mrs Mallins’ in John Huston’s “The Dead” in 1987. She died in 1993.
(1922–1994)
Considered by some to be one of the finest Irish actresses of her time, Marie Kean studied at Loreto College and the Gaiety School of Acting. She enjoyed a long, successful career on the stage and screen. Kean was best known to American audiences for her roles in the films BARRY LYNDON (1975), in which she portrayed Barry’s (Ryan O’Neal) mother, and David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970).
Marie Kean held STANLEY KUBRICK in the highest esteem and thought nothing of doing a scene 30 times. “I was well used to that working for David Lean and Roman Polanski,” she said. In Barry Lyndon, Kean offers a restrained yet impassioned performance as Mrs. Barry, a woman of intense determination. Barry’s mother, we learn in the film’s opening narration, has devoted her life to the memory of her departed husband, as well as to her son’s well-being. A largely passive figure during the first half of the film,Mrs. Barry asserts her influence more pronouncedly after Redmond has married Lady Lyndon (MARISA BERENSON). She discreetly but firmly urges Redmond to obtain a title, so that he will be protected financially should any misfortune befall his wife and benefactor. Later, when Barry and Lady Lyndon are incapacitated by grief after the death of their son, Mrs. Barry seizes the opportunity to make a power play. With Lord Bullingdon (LEON VITALI) already gone from the household, she takes it upon herself to dismiss Reverend Runt (Murray Melvin), thus diminishing the forces that would rally round her daughter-in-law against the neglectful and adulterous Barry. Unwittingly,Mrs. Barry thus invites the vengeful return of Lord Bullingdon and the downfall of her son,“Mr. Redmond Barry. ” Still, ever the staunch matriarch, she remains at Barry’s side, the one person who has stood by him through all his successes and failures.
Marie Kean joined the Abbey Theatre Company in 1949, an affiliation that she would maintain for the rest of her life. There, from 1949 to 1951, she appeared in productions of Juno and the Paycock,The Plough and the Stars, and The Playboy of the Western World. Later, in London, she worked with Peter Brook’s company, as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company. One of her most celebrated stage performances (and her personal favorite) was the role of Winnie in a 1963 production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, in which she appears buried up to the neck in sand. In 1971, as part of the Dublin Festival, she appeared in a one-woman show called Soft Morning, City, playing the type of ardent, downtrodden character that had become her specialty. In 1970, London’s Stage and Television Todaycalled Kean “one of the most impressive Irish actresses to emerge in recent years . . . an artist of considerable emotional depth and theatrical command. ” The following year, John Lambert of the Christian Science Monitor called her “possibly the best living Irish actress. ” Her final film role was in John Huston’s swan song, The Dead (1987).
For also accessing this article on website on Kubrick – Marie Kean, please click here.
Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Kean, Marie (Ní Catháin, Máire) (1922–93), actress, was born 27 June 1922 in Rush, Co. Dublin, the daughter of John Kean, a ship’s captain, and Margaret Kean (née Foley). Her interest in the theatre developed at an early age, when she attended shows given by travelling companies who performed in Rush during the summer months. Inspired by these and an early trip to the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, when she was thirteen, she appeared on the stage locally while still a child. She was educated at Loreto College, North Great George’s Street, Dublin, and on leaving school joined the civil service as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture, working there until her marriage in 1941 to William Mulvey (d. 1977). They had one son and one daughter.
After her marriage Kean determined on an acting career and went to study at the Gaiety School of Acting, then under the directorship of Ria Mooney (qv), who became a lifelong friend. She was engaged by the Radio Éireann repertory company, before making her professional stage debut in June 1947 at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, as Naomi in Mooney’s production of ‘Noah’. By 1949 she had joined the Abbey Theatre, appearing under the name ‘Máire Ní Catháin’; her lengthy association with the company began in a performance of ‘Grand house in the city’ by Brinsley McNamara (qv). She went on to establish herself as one of the Abbey’s key players, and throughout the 1950s received excellent notices for notable performances as Ginnie Gogan (‘The plough and the stars’), the Widow Quin (‘The playboy of the western world’), and Anna Livia Plurabelle in Joyce’s ‘The voice of Shem’, roles in which she later performed at the Théâtre des Nations festival in Paris. From 1955 she became well known to Radio Éireann listeners throughout Ireland as Mrs Kennedy in the lunch time soap opera ‘The Kennedys of Castlerosse’, which ran for over a decade.
‘The Kennedys of Castleross’ (1965)
Kean left the Abbey in 1961 and moved to England, where initially she toured with an English company in a production of ‘The plough and the stars’, before making her first London appearance as Anna Livia Plurabelle at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East (July 1962). She followed this with engagements at the Mermaid Theatre (as Mrs Gogan, September 1962) and the Arts Theatre (as Charlotte Russe in Edna O’Brien’s ‘A cheap bunch of nice flowers’, November 1962), and in 1964 first appeared in one of her most celebrated roles, Winnie in ‘Happy days’ by Samuel Beckett (qv) (Theatre Royal, Stratford East), for which she won several awards. She was also for a time associated with Peter Brook’s experimental theatre group, taking the part of Mother in his production of ‘The screens’ (Jean Genet) at the Donmar Rehearsal Theatre in May 1964. Among her later successes were her portrayals of Daisy Connolly in ‘The paper hat’ (Globe Theatre, April 1965), Mother in ‘I knock at the door’ (Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, 1968), an autobiographical play by Sean O’Casey (qv), Maggie Poplin in John B. Keane‘s (qv) ‘Big Maggie’, a role that she created (Cork Opera House, January 1969) and for which she won an award, Nora Melody in O’Neill’s ‘Touch of the poet’ (Gardner Centre, Brighton, August 1970), Maurya in ‘Riders to the sea’ (Abbey Theatre, April 1971), and Marina in ‘Uncle Vanya’ (Bristol Old Vic, October 1973), and her one-woman show about Dublin, ‘Soft morning city’, with which, after its premiere at the Dublin Theatre Festival, she toured Britain, the continent, and the USA. During her three seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1976–8) she worked extensively with directors Peter Brook, John Barton, and Trevor Nunn, appearing as the Nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the First Witch in ‘Macbeth’, and Madame Cabet in Brecht’s ‘The days of the commune’.
On her return to Dublin, Kean re-joined the Abbey, taking part in productions of Brian Friel’s ‘Philadelphia here I come!’ (May 1982), Shaw‘s (qv) ‘Arms and the man’ (August 1982), Lennox Robinson‘s (qv) ‘Drama at Inish’, for which she won the 1982–3 Harvey’s Award for best actress, and ‘Da’ by Hugh Leonard (June 1983). She also performed in the Olympia’s staging of Tom Murphy’s adaptation of The informer by Liam O’Flaherty (qv) (1981), and in 1985 she toured Japan in Beckett’s solo piece Rockaby.
Kean juggled her theatrical commitments with appearances in television dramas (as Mrs Brickley in the adaptation of Somerville & Ross’s ‘The Irish R.M.’, Mrs O’Casey in the RTÉ television play ‘Sean’, and productions of ‘The plough and the stars’ and ‘Jane Eyre’), and, from 1952, with film work in Ireland, Britain, and America. Among her best-known films were The girl with green eyes, banned in Ireland on its release in 1964, Ryan’s daughter(1970), Barry Lindon (1975), Angel (1982), The lonely passion of Judith Hearne (1987), and The dead (1987). She made her last stage appearance as Mrs Swift in Sebastian Barry’s ‘Boss Grady’s boys’ at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin, in 1989. Regarded as a brilliant character actress, her performances epitomised the image of battling Irish womanhood. A shareholder of the Abbey, for two years she represented the players on the board of directors. The last four years of her life were spent in deteriorating health in the Bloomfield nursing home in Donnybrook, Dublin, where she died 29 December 1993.
Ronan Keating was born in Dublin in 1977. He is best known as a singer. Recently he has starred in the Australian movie “Goddess”.
IMDB entry:
Has a son, Jack Keating, with Yvonne Connolly (born March 15, 1999). Member of the Irish pop boy-band Boyzone. Has a daughter, Marie Keating (born February 18, 2001) with Yvonne Connelly. Four older siblings: Ciaran, Linda, Gerard and Gary. His second solo-album, “Destination”, released. (May 2002). Performed at the anti-war “One Big No” concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London. [March 2003] Contributes “In The Ghetto” to the “Warchild Hope” album (released 21 April 2003). The first single he bought was “Last Christmas” by Wham! He and Yvonne were married on the island of Nevis, with only his brother Gary and a female friend present as witnesses.
His wife Yvonne went into labour while Ronan was on the 18th hole at the Celtic Manor playing for the All Star Cup on 29th August 2005 but it was a false alarm and the baby wasn’t born until 7th September. Daughter, Ali Keating, was born on September 7, 2005. He has sold in excess of 21 million albums worldwide. His daughter Marie is named after his mother who passed away from cancer. Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief, 2009. It took four days to scale the mountain, and two to climb back down. It raised 1.4 million pounds for charity. The Bee Gees songs are just timeless. Great hooks, great moments in the lyrics and melody that you can’t get out of your head. Once you hear one of them, you’re singing it all day.
Morton Downey was an Irish American singer very popular in the 1920’s and 30’s who made a few movies in Hollywood. He was born in 1901 in Connecticut. His movies include “Lucky in Love” in 1929 and “Ghost Catchers” in 1935. He died in 1985.
IMDB entry:
Pianist, songwriter (“Wabash Moon”), composer, singer and businessman, educated in public schools and at Lyman Hall. He began his singing career in a Greenwich Village movie theatre, and was later a vocalist for the Paul Whiteman orchestra aboard the SS Leviathan. In 1927, he toured Europe and then opened his own night club, the Delmonico in New York, in 1930, which offered the chance to sing over radio. He was also a member of the board of directors of Coca-Cola and other corporations. Joining ASCAP in 1949, his chief musical collaborators included Dave Dreyer, Paul Cunningham, James Rule, and Dick Sanford. His other popular-song compositions include “California Skies”, “All I Need is Someone Like You”, “In the Valley of the Roses”, “That’s How I Spell Ireland”, “Sweeten Up Your Smile”, “There’s Nothing New” and “Now You’re in My Arms”.
Donal Logue’s versatility and talent makes him one of the most well respected and beloved actors today. Born in Ottawa, Canada, Logue moved all over the United States, from the Boston area as an infant to various towns on the Mexican border. He returned to Boston to attend Harvard University, where he majored in Intellectual History and discovered his love for the performing arts. While in college, he appeared in over thirty plays, worked for two summers in the American Repertory Theatre’s Harvard/Radcliffe Summer Stock Company, and spent a short time doing theatre in England. After graduating, Logue joined the Cornerstone Theatre Company which developed community theatre in rural parts of the United States. From then on Logue dedicated himself to pursuing his passion for acting. In his 20 plus years in the industry, Logue has starred in films such as, The Tao of Steve, the story of a larger-than-life, philosophizing lothario, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and won him a Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Performance. His other film credits include Sneakers, Gettysburg, Blade, Runaway Bride, Reindeer Games, The Million Dollar Hotel, Comic Book Villains with Michael Rapaport, Confidence, Just Like Heaven, and The Groomsmen with Ed Burns. Recently, Donal co-starred in Max Payne with Mark Wahlberg, as well as Charlie St. Cloud with Zac Ephron. He also appeared in Zodiac, directed by David Fincher, based on the Robert Graysmith books about the notorious Zodiac serial killer. Following the US release of Zodiac, he co-starred in Mark Steven Johnson’s Ghost Rider with Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes. Logue made his directorial debut with the independent film Tennis, Anyone?, which appeared at the US Comedy Arts Festival. He wrote, starred, and directed the film about two Hollywood has-beens who try and find meaning in their lives through a series of celebrity tennis tournaments. In television, Logue joined the cast of the NBC series “LIFE” about a former police officer who returns to the force after having been wrongly imprisoned for years. In 2007, he headlined the critically lauded ABC comedy “The Knights of Prosperity” in which a group of blue collar guys band together to plan a heist of Mick Jagger’s New York City apartment. Prior to “The Knights of Prosperity” Logue starred in the Carsey-Warner produced show, “Grounded for Life” which aired for five seasons. He was also featured in a recurring role on “ER” as Sherry Stringfield’s love interest. In 2010, Logue finished a critically acclaimed season on “Terriers,” a television series created by Ted Griffin and Shawn Ryan for FX. He begins production on the Marc Cherry pilot “Hallelujah” for ABC in March of 2011. Logue lives in Los Angeles and has two children.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Peggy Ryan <rryan@mail.sdsu.edu>
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Elizabeth Dermot Walsh was born in 1974 in London. She is the daughter of the late Irish actor Dermot Walsh. She starred in the TV mini-series “Falling For A Dancer” opposite Liam Cunningham and Colin Farrell in 1998. She is currently starring the popular TV series “Doctors”.
IMDB entry:
Daughter of actor Dermot Walsh and actress Elisabeth Annear.Younger half-sister of Sally Walsh. Has an older brother, David Charles Walsh (b. 1969), and a younger sister, Olivia Claudia Walsh (b. 1977). Announced that she is 8 months pregnant with her first child (24 April 2012). Gave birth to her son Bertie in a London hospital (23 May 2012).
Was 9 months pregnant with her son Bertie when she took maternity leave from filmingDoctors (2000). Returned to work 4 months after giving birth to her son Bertie in order to resume filmingDoctors (2000).
Jack Doyle was a very famous Irish boxer in the 1930’s who wnet to Hollywood and made two films there, “McGlusky The Sea Rover” (1934) and “Navy Spy (1937)”. He was born in Cobh in 1913 and died in Paddington, London in 1978.
“Independent.ie” article from 2007 by Ciara Dwyer:
On New Year’s day there will be a documentary on RTE 1 about Jack:Jack Doyle — A Legend Lost.
Doyle’s friend Johnny O’Boyle tries to explain to me what Jack was like. Then he sighs and says, “I wish you could have met him. Jack was larger than life. If you had the job of writing a script of a boxer, you couldn’t top the Jack Doyle story.”
So who was Jack Doyle? And what made him so special?
When God was giving out gifts, he was lavish with Jack Doyle. Jack was six foot five, had the right hook of Jack Dempsey, the looks of a film star and a lilting tenor voice like Count John McCormack’s. He was almost too much. Having an easy beginning is not always advisable, and so it was with Jack. He didn’t have to struggle to use his talents or graft like any other boxer. With a right hook like his, he saw no reason to exert himself with disciplined training or daily work-outs at the gym. Life and success came too easy to him. This was eventually to be his downfall.
Jack Doyle was christened Joe, but once he read a book about the boxer Jack Dempsey, that was it. He knew he would have to change his name. As it was, he was beginning to get a name for himself anyway, for being proficient with his fists.
“There was a butcher in Cobh called Tim McCarthy and he took a great shine to Jack,” Taub tells me. “He wrote to the Daily Mail, saying, ‘We have a great champion here and he keeps knocking out all the seamen.’ They would play cards on the quays and accuse him of cheating. Jack was only 14 at the time but he kept knocking out these big burly seamen. Tim sent his letter to Geoffrey Simpson, who was one of the most famous boxing writers of the day. Simpson couldn’t do anything to help Jack but he remembered the name and years later went to see him boxing, when Doyle was in Windsor in the Irish Guards.”
Up until then, Jack had been working, shovelling coal in Cobh, which was known as Queenstown back then. He came up with the idea of going to London to join the Irish Guards with the sole purpose of improving his boxing skills. Straight away, he was a star in the ring.
“It was only inter-unit boxing,” Taub explains, “but Geoffrey Simpson came down to see him box at Windsor and wrote a piece saying, ‘This boy is big enough to beat the world.’ Then all of Fleet Street flocked down to Windsor to see him. He never lost in the army, so he had this fame before he even stepped out of uniform. A boxing promoter called Dan Sullivan bought him out of the army and the rest is history.”
This instant success was the ruination of him. He was only 18 when he came out of the army. They used to say he was like the Rudolph Valentino of the ring. Jack was only a raw boy from Cobh and women were falling at his feet. After army life, he had all this lavished on him and he had no parental guidance. (His family were back in Cobh.)
“He had this hunger to make his way and to provide for his family in Cork but it all came so easy to him,” Taub says. “Many other boxers were slaving away in the gym, honing their talents but Jack was a star just with his big, right hand. He grew to dislike the daily grind of training and other boxers became resentful of him. He found fame too easy.”
In his first 10 fights, Jack wrapped up 10 quick victories in 15 rounds. He was the first Irishman to box for the British heavyweight title. He was fighting against Jack Petersen but was disqualified for hitting too low. The boxing board of control took draconian measures — it confiscated his prize money of £3,000 and banned him from fighting for six months. Jack had been a trusting soul but he became cynical about it all. He was hitting low because he had syphilis and in those days there were no anti-biotics to clear it. Jack had told a friend that a gangster’s moll was fed to him to give him a dose of the clap, so that their bets were safe on Petersen.
But while the boxing ban was on him, he fell back on his other talents — singing. He had met Count John McCormack and had had lessons with his manager, Dr Vincent O’Brien. He toured, doing a show that included his favourites, like Macushla and I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen. And the record label Decca was so impressed with his voice that it offered him a recording deal.
Jack got a chauffer and a butler and took elocution lessons, which made him sound like Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. Before long, Hollywood beckoned and he was starring in films as an action hero. In America he met his first wife — the actress Judith Allen. They were blissfully happy until Judith realised that he was a cad. As she said, “Jack just couldn’t resist sharing himself.” When she heard that he was caught up in another relationship, she sent him a one-word telegram: FINISHED.
The documentary also includes some of Taub’s own footage, when he interviewed her. She was wistful about their time together.
“And you know, he told me that he would never sing Macushla to anyone else for the rest of his life; [she sighs] Yeah, those were nice days.”
Jack moved on to Delphine Dodge, who was one of the richest women in America and part of the Dodge cars family. She was married when she met Jack but she did not let that deter her. He appealed to her on several levels. She was an accomplished pianist — so they had music in common — and Delphine was a champion speed-boat racer; and Jack appealed to this hunger for excitement. She paid off all Jack’s gambling debts and gave him $5,000.
In the end, when her family suspected Jack of being a gold-digger, they got someone to put a gun to his head and told him to get out of town, which he did.
Jack’s next wife was the Mexican film star Movita. She had been dating Howard Hughes but she stood him up to meet Jack. She was smitten by him. But again, he couldn’t resist temptation. Women clamoured for him and he gave in, again and again. While married to Movita, he had a one-night stand with Countess De Cadenet (grandmother of the television presenter Amanda). She told Taub about her night with Jack.
“I met Doyle in Al Byrne’s Pigalle Club in Soho in the early part of 1940. I was there with another showgirl, having a drink and Doyle was there on his own. He said, ‘Who’s coming home with me?’ He was six feet five and so handsome. He hauled me off to some shabby room — a real dump, which he used for screwing purposes … he exuded great charm and said nice things but once the business was done, it was ‘Out’. I realised then that the performance was unimportant to him. It was just the chase that appealed.”
When Jack had to leave America — his papers weren’t legal –Movita put a red carnation in his lapel and told him always to think of her when he wore one. In his final years in London’s Notting Hill, when money was tight, he made a point of buying a fresh red carnation every day.
Movita came to Dublin with Jack and they did a show together singing duets. The Irish people took them to their hearts, but all was not well offstage and sometimes onstage. Jack was drinking heavily and occasionally Movita would have to carry the show. Things got nasty when he started to hit her. She knew then that she had to get away. But when she was interviewed by Taub, she was far from bitter about her years with Jack Doyle: “I loved him then, I love him now and I guess I will always love him.”
JACK found the love of another good woman — Nancy Kehoe — but in the end, she could take no more of him and his beatings. She left.
Over the years, he earned huge amounts of money but he was swindled by several people.
Contrary to reports, Jack Doyle did not die in the gutter in London. One night he was in The Hoop pub in Notting Hill and he collapsed. A fellow Cork man called John Sullivan was sitting in the crowd with Jack and offered to take him home. Sullivan worked on the railways at night, but for some reason that night, he decided to stay home with Jack. He gave him blankets and then in the middle of the night, Jack came in to him, complaining of the cold. Then he started to haemorrhage. He died in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington in 1978.
For all his affairs and physical violence, he will be remembered for his kind nature. The boxer Eddie Philips said that Jack was “a brute in the ring, but an angel outside of it”. And his motto was, “A generous man never went to hell.” While he had riches, he spread them around.
In the documentary, we hear Jack saying, “I’d do it all the same. I don’t regret a thing.” But Taub says, “What else could he say? He’d hardly admit the truth.”
The above “Independent.ie” article can also be accessed online here.
Eoin Macken was born in Dublin in 1983. He starred in the TV series “The Tudors” and “The Adventures of Merlin”. Movies include “Cold”.
IMDB entry:
Eoin Macken was born in Dublin and began his interest in drama at University College, Dublin. At the age of 19,he became a highly successful model, chosen as the face of Abercrombie and Fitch, in addition to working for Ralph Lauren, Braun and GQ magazine. After joining the Attic studio of drama he spent some time in Los Angeles, where he directed the well-regarded short, ‘Dreaming For You’, about young acting hopefuls in Tinseltown, in addition to completing his psychology degree. Back in Ireland he directed and shot a second film, psychological thriller ‘Christian Blake’ as well as appearing in serial drama ‘Fair City.’
Olivia Wilde is the daughter of the famed journalist Andrew Cockburn. She was born in New York City in 1984 but has spent much time in Ireland in Ardmore, Co Waterford, home of her grandfather author Claud Cockburn. She holds dual citizenship from both the U.S. and Ireland. Her TV work includes “House” and “O C” and on film in “Cowboys and Aliens”.
TCM overview:
Despite having little onscreen experience to her name, actress Olivia Wilde emerged as a star thanks to her scene-stealing portrayal of the temptress Alex Kelly on the popular teen drama “The O.C.” (Fox, 2003-07). Prior to that, Wilde had only the short-lived “Skin” (Fox, 2003) and a small supporting role in “The Girl Next Door” (2004) under her belt. But her turn on “The O.C.” propelled her to stardom, opening doors to both features and television. It was her work on the small screen, however, that proved the biggest boon to her career. After starring in another ratings-deprived series, “The Black Donnellys” (NBC, 2007), she joined the cast of the popular “House” (Fox, 2004-2012), which not only exposed her to a wider audience, but also gave her the opportunity to stretch her creative muscles. Wilde continued to maintain a high profile and began landing roles in major studio features like the Harold Ramis comedy “Year One” (2009) and the long-awaited sequel “Tron: Legacy” (2010). She had a leading role in the big-budget sci-fi/Western hybrid, “Cowboys & Aliens” (2011), as well as the raunchy comedy “The Change-Up” (2011) and the dystopian sci-fi thriller “In Time” (2011), all of which showed the young actress was capable of attracting an audience in a variety of mediums.
Born Olivia Jane Cockburn on March 10, 1984 in New York City, Wilde – who later adopted her acting surname from playwright Oscar Wilde – was raised in Washington D.C. by her father, Andrew, a former National Geographic reporter and author, and her mother, Leslie, a journalist, author and producer for “60 Minutes” (CBS, 1968- ). In fact, many in her family were dedicated to journalism – her sister Chloe was a writer, while her grandfather, James Helvick (a.k.a. Claud Cockburn), and her two uncles, Alexander and Patrick Cockburn, were also journalists. Not interested in the family business, Wilde wanted to do act. After graduating from the Georgetown Day School in D.C., she attended Philips Academy, where she studied acting and appeared in over two dozen school productions. She later moved abroad to Ireland to continue her dramatic studies at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. A rebellious teen and young adult, Wilde acted out by getting tattoos and piercings, dating older men and, at one time, even shaving her head; hence the natural fit of her stage name.
Wilde returned to the states and took up residence in Los Angeles, where she landed the lead in her first television series, “Skin” (Fox, 2003), a modern day take on “Romeo and Juliette” in which she played the sultry daughter of an adult film producer (Ron Silver) who falls for the son (D.J. Cotrona) of an anti-porn district attorney (Kevin Anderson). “Skin” came and went after only three episodes, leaving Wilde to find work elsewhere. Keeping with the adult film theme, she made her movie debut with a supporting role in “The Girl Next Door” (2004), a coming-of-age comedy about a straight-arrow overachiever (Emile Hirsch) who falls for his neighbor (Elisha Cuthbert), only to find out that she used to be a porn star. Meanwhile, after “Skin” was canceled, Wilde eloped with Los Angeles Filmmaker’s Cooperative (LAFCO) founder and documentary filmmaker, Tao Ruspoli. Upon returning to Los Angeles, she was one of the key models in Abercrombie & Fitch’s “Rising Stars” campaign in the summer of 2004. But it was her next television role that put Wilde on the map for good.
Returning to the small screen, Wilde began starring on “The O.C.” and delivered a lusty portrayal of the stunningly sexy and bisexual Alex Kelly, the bad girl owner of the Bait Shop, where the other kids start hanging out. Though only on the show for its second season, Wilde was dynamic and provocative as the temptress Kelly, stealing the show from the rest of the cast and attracting many male fans, especially after her character became romantically involved with Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton). As she continued her work on “The O.C.,” Wilde landed roles in feature films, including Nicholas Kazan’s hotly anticipated Sundance Film Festival favorite, “Alpha Dog” (2006), co-starring Justin Timberlake, Sharon Stone and Emile Hirsch. After a small part in the critically acclaimed adaptation of “Running with Scissors” (2006), she played a college sorority girl who steals the prized notebook of a reclusive freshman (Patrick Fugit) in “Bickford Shmeckler’s Cool Ideas” (2006), a straight-to-DVD comedy that barely registered with audiences.
Despite making strides on the big screen, Wilde continued to find greater success, as well as meatier roles, on television. She next had a prominent starring role in the short-lived drama, “The Black Donnellys” (NBC, 2007), playing the childhood friend of the Donnelly brothers (Tom Guiry, Jonathan Tucker, Billy Lush and Michael Stahl-David) who runs a local Hells Kitchen diner with her father and has a complicated relationship with one of the brothers. After the show was canceled in the middle of its first season due to declining ratings, she rebounded quickly by landing a supporting part on the highly successful medical drama “House” (Fox, 2004-2012). Wilde played Dr. Remy “Thirteen” Hadley, a new member of the infectious diseases diagnostic team formed by the irascible Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) who remains mysterious about her personal life, though overtime audiences learn that she carries the gene for Huntington’s disease. Her nickname, Thirteen, derived from the number she received in the competition House conducted to find his new team.
Back on the big screen, Wilde played Princess Inanna in the biblical comedy flop, “Year One” (2009), starring Jack Black and Michael Cera. She next appeared opposite Jeff Bridges and Garrett Hedlund in the visually impressive “Tron: Legacy” (2010), a long-in-the-works sequel to the 1980s cult favorite that fared well at the box office, but failed to win over a substantial amount of critics. Following a supporting turn in the mildly received Paul Haggis thriller “The Next Three Days” (2010), Wilde played a denizen of an Old West town beset by an alien invasion in “Cowboys & Aliens” (2011). Despite a great deal of hype, however, the movie was met with mixed critical reviews and was a box-office disappointment. She next played Jason Bateman’s sexy legal associate in the raunchy comedy “The Change-Up” (2011), and the title proved to be fitting for her personal life-that year she divorced Ruspoli and began dating comedian/actor Jason Sudeikis. Wilde subsequently portrayed Justin Timberlake’s mother in the sci-fi thriller “In Time” (2011), which took place in a world were people are genetically altered to stop aging at 25, but must buy time to continue living.
In 2012, Wilde bid farewell to “House,” which only cemented her status as a film actress. Meanwhile, she nabbed parts in a wide variety of genres, including roles in the ensemble comedy “Butter” (2012) and the character drama “People Like Us” (2012). After turning up in the magic-themed Steve Carell misfire “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” (2013), Wilde went the indie-comedy route with “Drinking Buddies” (2013), co-starring Jake Johnson and Ron Livingston. In the fall of 2013, she appeared in the critically lauded 1970s biopic “Rush,” playing the supermodel wife of hotshot racing star James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Niamh Cusack is the daughter of the famed Irish actor Cyril Cusack. She is best known for her role in television’s “Heartbeat”. She was born in 1959.
“Guardian” article by Nick McGrath from 2011:
The structure of my family is a little odd in that I’ve got three older siblings, Paul, Sinéad and Sorcha, then there’s a 10-year gap until me, closely followed by my brother Pádraig. Then 11 years after I was born came my half-sister Catherine from my father’s second marriage. Catherine was brought up in England but the rest of us were brought up in Ireland and by the time Pádraig and I arrived, the older three were on their way out of the nest and my mum and dad had separated, so really it was just my mum, Pádraig, me and my godmother, Kitty.
My mother ruled the world from her bed. Both my parents were acting when my elder three siblings were growing up but by the time Pádraig and I arrived, Mum was no longer performing. She had a very bad heart and was in bed a lot. I think because of that I didn’t give her much trouble. She was quite an indomitable woman. She was formidable, really, in terms of her energy, and managed to get a lot of things done and influence our lives hugely from her bed.
I’m never quite surewhen my parents split up, as it was all a bit vague because he did live in Dublin and the family thing was that he needed to live in Dublin because of his rehearsals, and I sort of bought that for quite a long time. An unusually long time, actually, and probably because that was easier for me to deal with. I think my mother deliberately shielded us emotionally from the split and didn’t share whatever grief and pain she went through with me.
When my dad was around he was quite involved, but he was a bit of a Victorian father. He could be a bit distant but I got to know him much better when I became an actor. Both of my parents were older than a lot of the parents that my friends had and I remember that he came to pick me up from school when I was about seven and the teacher looked out of the window and then turned to us and said, “There is an old tramp outside,” and I knew it was my dad as he had a tendency to wear bits and pieces of costume. He had a very particular style.
I prefer seeing my family one by one than all together. It can be a bit overwhelming when they’re all together, and I’m probably one of the quieter ones. The older three are more natural performers. I’m very proud of my family and as I’ve got older I feel prouder of them.
I’ve become closer to my half sister Catherine since my father died. You can’t engineer relationships, and despite being brought up in two countries with two mothers we still have a lot in common and a lot of similarities as people, and I really think she’s great. It’s weird how easy it is to just slot in. But I think that’s genetic.
Before I had my son, Calam, I think I was living life in black and white. When you have children, life becomes colourful. Everything you taste and notice, how the world is, how other children are. I think life becomes much more vivid when you’re a parent.
My husband, Finbar, and Calam are my biggest passion in life. My family and friends come second and then comes my acting. I think Calam’s already decided acting’s not for him. And that’s fine. All I wish is that he finds something he’s passionate about, the way I’m passionate about acting.
The above “Guardian” article can also be accessed online here.
Gerard McCarthy was born in 1981 in Belfast. He is best known for his role as ‘Kris Fisher’ in “Hollyoaks”. Hos other TV roles are in “The Vikings” and the current “The Fall” with Gillian Anderson. His movies include “On Eagles Wing” and “Belonging to Laura”.
Ruth Negga was born in Ethopia but brought up in Ireland by her Irish mother after the death of her father. She is best known for her performances in TV’s “Love/Hate” and “The Misfits”. Her movies include “Breakfast on Pluto” with Cillian Murphy.
Dave Allen was a brilliant Irish comedian who achieved great success in Britain. He was born Tynan O’Mahoney in Dublin in 1936. His father was the editor of “The Irish Times”. He also had a successful stage career. In 1972 he starred in The Royal Court‘s production of Edna O’Brien‘s play A Pagan Place, and appeared as both Mr Darling and Captain Hook in the London Coliseum‘s production of Peter Pan.In 1979 he played a troubled property man suffering a mid-life crisis in Alan Bennett‘s television play One Fine Day. He died in 2005.
Stephen Dixon’s “Guardian” obituary:
At the height of his career, Dave Allen, who has died aged 68, was Britain’s most controversial comedian, regularly provoking outrage and indignation in a society that got upset more often – and more easily – than it does today. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he introduced a laid-back, satirical, personal, storytelling style, first in Australia, and later on British television shows, such as Tonight With Dave Allen and the hugely successful Dave Allen At Large, with a mixture of elaborate sketches and intimate, sit-down comedy.Behind the calm facade, as he paused to sip his whiskey, or flick cigarette ash off his immaculate suit, he was quietly, humorously furious about political hypocrisy, the church domination of Ireland, and, in fact, all forms of authoritarianism. His stance, at its best wholly uncompromising, made him a godfather of comedy, and won him the admiration of a later generation of stand-ups.
Allen was a little like the reporter he once wanted to be; he simply told people about funny things he had seen or experienced, adding the spin of a natural storyteller. “I don’t know if there’s somebody out there, some god of comedy, dropping out little bits saying, ‘Here, use that, that’s for you, that’s to keep you going,'” he said in 1998.
He scandalised countless people in the 1970s with a sketch which involved the Pope doing a striptease; he was banned from Australian television for a year after telling his producer on air to go and masturbate, and leave him to continue an interview instead of going to the advertisements; he upset Mary Whitehouse in 1984 with an account of a post-coital conversation; his use of the word “lavatory” on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s was objected to; and the BBC apologised when, in 1990, he used the word “fuck” in the punchline to a joke – an incident which provoked questions in the Commons.
He explained why it was necessary, in a routine about employees living their lives by the clock – and then being presented with one when they retired – to use the word: “It’s a disdainful word, because it’s not a damn clock, it’s not a silly clock, it’s not a doo-doo clock. It’s a fucking clock!”
Sometimes, Allen just sat there and told straight gags, and sometimes they were sexist, and sometimes they smacked a bit of paddywhackery. It would be rewriting history to pretend that his material consisted entirely of insightful, observational monologues about life.
But it must be remembered that when he started on TV, Arthur Askey was still a big name, Benny Hill and Dick Emery were stars and Jimmy Tarbuck was “youth comedy”. To an extent, Allen had to play by established rules; what was groundbreaking about him was that there were rules he chose to ignore.
He had wonderful timing. You can tell great technical stand-ups when they deliver the punchline just when you think they’re going to do something else. And there’s another one, just when you think they’ve finished. He was paid large amounts of money to attack institutions in a subtle and subversive way. He, and the slightly later Billy Connolly, traded in alternative comedy long before that phrase was coined – observational stories laced with satire, or very long versions of old jokes in which he would digress into lots of comedy byways.
“The hierarchy of everything in my life has always bothered me,” Allen said in 1998. “I’m bothered by power. People, whoever they might be, whether it’s the government, or the policeman in the uniform, or the man on the door – they still irk me a bit. From school, from the first nun that belted me.
‘People used to think of the nice sweet little ladies … they used to knock the fuck out of you, in the most cruel way that they could. They’d find bits of your body that were vulnerable to intense pain – grabbing you by the ear, or by the nose, and lift you, and say ‘Don’t cry!’ It’s very hard not to cry. I mean, not from emotion, but pain. The priests were the same. And I sit and watch politicians with great cynicism, total cynicism.”
For his 1970s BBC shows, Allen often impersonated a priest; another scenario had him facing a firing squad in some banana republic, delaying his execution with increasingly preposterous last requests. He also had a successful stint compering ITV’s Sunday Night At The London Palladium. His interest in journalism re-emerged in documentaries, shot in Britain and the United States, in which he sought out oddballs and eccentrics. And then there was the West End stage – “In case you wonder what I do,” he would tell the audience, “I tend to stroll around and chat. I’d be grateful if you’d refrain from doing the same.”
In the 1980s, Allen made several shows for Carlton Television, minus his trademark cigarette. “I just realised it was crazy spending so much money on killing myself. It would have been cheaper to hire the Jackal to do the job.”
After the early 1990s, he retreated from the limelight, partly due to ill health, but occasionally released videos of earlier material; one such opened with him saying he had retired, but that every so often he had to do a bit of work to keep himself in the style to which he had become accustomed – “a bit of an Irish retirement, actually”. As he grew older, he brought a rueful awareness of ageing to his material, with reflections on the antics of teenagers and the sagging skin and sprouting facial hair of age. He won a lifetime award from the British Comedy Awards in 1996.
Allen was born David Tynan O’Mahony, the youngest of three boys, into a reasonably prosperous Dublin family. His grandmother, Norah Tynan, was the first women’s features editor on the Freeman’s Journal; his aunt, Katherine (KT) Tynan, was a poet. His father, Cullen “Pussy” O’Mahony, who died when David was 12, was the general manager of the Irish Times, the paper on which his brother Peter later worked as a journalist.
Pussy was also a drinking partner of Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien/Myles na Copaleen), then an Irish Times columnist, and Allen recalled that his father threw big birthday parties on new year’s eve, which the boys would watch from the stairs.
Although his father was an agnostic, Allen was brought up as a Roman Catholic, the faith to which his English mother had converted from Anglicanism. His early religious upbringing, in an era dominated by state and church control, influenced the direction his material took later on.
Newspapers were in the family, and in those days, said Allen, “you didn’t go off and make a career for yourself. You tended to take up what the family did.” So he started work as a clerk at the Irish Independent, and, after a short period on the Drogheda Argus, moved to London. But journalism was not a runner and, after a variety of factory jobs, and a stint at Butlin’s, a career in entertainment beckoned.
It was Sophie Tucker, the American vaudeville star and “Last of the Red Hot Mommas”, who spotted Allen’s potential when he played a minor role in her London show in the early 1960s. She suggested he try his luck in Australia, and there he first hit the TV big time.
In Sydney, he worked with opera singer Helen Traubel, another woman who profoundly influenced his career. She suggested he replace the corny one-liners with material based on the reality of his youth. Thus was born a style that made the public, and a generation of comics then in its infancy, think a little differently about humour, about the power of words, about authority, and about the world around them.
Allen’s first marriage to actor Judith Stott ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife Karin, and three chidren from his first marriage.
· David Tynan O’Mahony (Dave Allen), comedian, born July 6 1936; died March 10 2005
The above “Guardian” obituary can be accessed also online here.
Gerard Murphy was born in 1955 in Newry, Co Down. He began his acting career with Glasgow Citizens Theatre. His films include “Waterworld” and “Batman Begins”.
Jack Reynor was born in the U.S. in 1992 but moved with his family to Ireland when he was two years of age. He came to international prominence in What Richard Did” in 2012. He is currently making “Transformers 4” in Hollywood.
TCM overview:
A gifted young Irish actor, Jack Reynor rose from acclaimed work in independent films to starring in huge blockbusters. He made his screen debut playing an altar boy in Kevin Liddy’s “Country” (2000), a drama exploring the secrets and lives of an Irish family. His professional momentum increased with larger roles in the made-for-TV movies “Three Wise Women” (STV, 2010) and “Chasing Leprechauns” (Hallmark Channel, 2012) as well as in Kirsten Sheridan’s challenging, largely improvised “Dollhouse” (2012). Reynor’s breakthrough came with “What Richard Did” (2012), where he played the titular “golden boy” teen who makes a fatal error one night and must grapple with his conscience as well as with potentially life-ruining consequences. Reynor’s ability to portray the complex emotions of a character pushed to his limits, both with and, more impressively, without dialogue, dazzled critics. The rising young actor earned a massive international profile boost, however, when it was announced he was cast in the fourth installment of Michael Bay’s global blockbuster franchise, “Transformers” (2007, 2009, 2011). The casting news boosted Reynor’s profile overnight, elevating him to leading man status on an international scale.
Born Jan. 23, 1992 in Colorado, Reynor was the son of human rights activist Tara O’Grady and nephew of actor Paul Raynor, a supporting player in U.K. features and television. While still in preschool, Reynor moved with his family to Humphrystown, County Wicklow, Ireland with his family. There, he fell in love with the movies, watching Hollywood features like “Die Hard” several times a day. In 2000, he made his first appearance in Kevin Liddy’s drama “Country,” on which he impulsively talked his way into moving up from extra to a bit player role as an altar boy. The experience cemented his interest in acting, which he pursued through appearances in student productions at Belvedere College in Dublin. Reynor returned to filmmaking in 2010 with an appearance in the Hallmark Channel TV-film “Three Wise Women,” a romantically-themed variation on A Christmas Carol.
In 2012, he had his first major movie role as a young man caught up in a home invasion in director Kirsten Sheridan’s improvised drama “Dollhouse.” The year proved to be a watershed for Reynor, thanks largely to his star turn as a privileged young man who commits a terrible crime in “What Richard Did” (2012). Festival screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival led to a contract with the William Morris Agency and the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast Reynor in a supporting role in the Dreamworks comedy “The Delivery Man” (2013), a comedy vehicle for Vince Vaughn. More significantly, his performance in “What Richard Did” inspired director Michael Bay to cast Reynor as the lead opposite Mark Wahlberg in “Transformers 4,” which reportedly marked the launch of a new trilogy for the science fiction-action franchise. The casting news boosted Reynor’s profile overnight, elevating him to leading man status on an international scale.
By Paul Gaita
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Nora-Jane Noone was born in 1984 in Newcastle, Galway. She made her film debut in “The Magadelene Sisters” in 2002. She plays Garda kate Noonan in the ‘Jack Taylor’ triller series with Iain Glen. She played ‘Louise Hazel’in “Coronation Street”. She recently starred in the TV series “Deception”.
IMDB entry:
Nora-Jane Noone was born on March 8, 1984 in Galway, Ireland. She is an actress, known for The Descent (2005), The Magdalene Sisters (2002) and Savage (2009). Attended The Performing Arts school in Galway Attended college in NUI Galway, studying science. Born in Newcastle, Galway, Ireland. Previous acting role before “The Magdalene Sisters” was as Jan in a High school production of “Grease”Is a dancer and musician – can play the piano. She joined the cast of “Coronation Street”, playing a single mum of one and as a possible love interest for Steve McDonald. [February 2005]
David Caves is from Ballymena in the North of Ireland and has made an excellent foil to Emilia Fox in his role as Jack Hodgson in the BBC drama series “Silent Witness”
Caves originally planned to become a teacher before training at LAMDA and, prior to his addition to the Silent Witness cast, was known only as a stage actor, having made an impact as Petruchio in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2012 touring production of “The Taming of the Shrew”.
“The Stage” interview from 2013:
It’s the morning after the first episode of Silent Witness’ 16th series, and the morning after David Caves’ small screen debut. The actor has just begun appearing in the popular crime series as forensic scientist Jack Hodgson, having already built up a reputation as a stage actor, notably in productions such as theRoyal Shakespeare Company’s The Taming of the Shrew. And while other performers might, by this time, have flicked through the papers looking for a review, or jumped on Twitter to see what people have been saying about their turn, Caves has been avoiding reading anything.
“Sometimes the curiosity gets the better of me,” he admits. “But usually I try not to read anything, as I think, good or bad, it should not change anything. With a show like this, where such a loved character [Harry Cunningham, played by Tom Ward] has gone, people are going to be disappointed, of course, and always wary of a new guy coming in, and could be quite critical. But there is nothing you can do. Some people will like it, others won’t. All you can do is the best job you can do.”
Caves graduated from LAMDA in 2005 and has since then appeared in a variety of stage productions, including The Beggar’s Opera at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and The Changeling at the Southwark Playhouse, a performance which Janie Dee called the best she’s ever seen.
Following his stint in this production, he went on to appear in the aforementioned The Taming of the Shrew playing Petruchio, which again earned him rave reviews. However, it was while appearing in this production that Caves decided he wanted to branch out from theatre work, and try his hand at something new.
“I really wanted to do some television but my theatre schedule up to then had been pretty hectic,” he explains. “I was extremely fortunate to be working as I did, and with some incredible people along the way. I absolutely love theatre and my heart will always be there, as that is where I started. But I did feel, coming to the end of that job [The Taming of the Shrew] that I would like to try something else, some TV or film work. And as luck would have it, along came Silent Witness. It was great timing.”
Caves’ character, Jack Hodgson, is described as “straight-talking and quick witted” and as someone who is “confident in his own ability”. Playing Petruchio helped, Caves says, in preparing him for his audition.
The actor describes Jack as “confident, brash and a little cheeky” and explains: “I thought some of those are similar to Petruchio. Auditions are pretty nerve-wracking, particularly for something like Silent Witness. I was nervous, so I thought, if I can take in the energy of the part I am playing now, that will be helpful and hopefully it will get me through.”
He adds that being in work at the time of his audition helped with his own self-belief.
I made it daunting in my own head but in real life everyone was so generous [on Silent Witness]
“I was in good shape, I suppose, as it always helps when you are working,” he says. “You are riding high on that, and are confident, so carry yourself better in auditions.”
Caves says he was given an “in-depth character analysis” of Jack, and admits he was “intimidated” when he first started digesting the information he had been given.
“There was a lot of information about who he was,” he recalls. “Too much information can kill things a bit, take the life away, because you just try to play exactly what the author has written, which does not leave you any room to bring something yourself. Having said that, once we were up and running, it was up to me what I wanted to try and do, and the more touches of lightness I could bring to the role the better.”
Alongside his work as a forensic scientist, Caves’ character also has a penchant for cage fighting, or mixed martial arts. Caves says he was unable to do much research for the forensic scientist part of his role, but he wanted to train as much as he could for the martial arts part.
“I was really looking forward to that bit,” he says. “I was impatient to start doing it. I asked if there was any way to have some weights brought in on set, so I could pop out between scenes and have a quick session. To my utter surprise they agreed. It was so great, as I would not have been able to train as much as I had wanted without that.”
Caves isn’t expecting all future jobs to be like that, but he clearly relished his time working on Silent Witness. His appearance makes for a pretty impressive television debut, too, especially given how he did not originally set out to be an actor.
Caves, who is from Northern Ireland, studied modern languages at St Andrews in Scotland, and initially thought he was going to be a teacher. He worked as a teacher in France as part of his university course, but when he returned to the UK, he found he had “lost the drive for the academic side of things” and found himself getting heavily involved in plays and musicals at the university.
“I found I loved this medium and wanted to look into it more, to see what was out there and what drama school was about,” he says. “So I did some research and decided to have a go, not really expecting anything to happen. I was naive and did not know how tough it was. I thought I was probably not good enough but something inside me told me I should have a go, so I did.”
Caves ended up being offered places at both LAMDA and Bristol Old Vic, opting for the former because of the lure of London. His training focused on theatre, and although this is where he has spent most of his career to date, he is now enjoying being on television, which he says has been a learning curve for him. He calls it “Alice in Wonderland stuff”.
“I made it daunting in my own head but in real life everyone was so generous [on Silent Witness],” he says. “I was very quickly put at ease. It was like a little family, like joining a theatre company. It was a really pleasurable experience.”
He goes on to explain that the differences between theatre and television are “mainly technical”, but says he tries not to get too bogged down with that side of things.
“You can go overboard and get so vain about how you look in a shot and then it becomes a vanity project,” he says. He misses the rehearsals that come with working in theatre, and adds that, while they do rehearse in television, “it’s quick and minimal”.
“They expect you to come having done the work and made some choices,” he continues. “If those choices don’t work, they tell you and you have to make quick decisions. But that is a really good thing.”
He adds: “Sometimes you can over think things and over rehearse. But sometimes great things come out of very quick decisions in the moment – just by listening and reacting.”
For “The Stage” interview with David Caves, please click here
Jamie Dornan was born in 1982 in Belfast. He played ‘Sheriff Graham’ in the series “Once Upon A Time”. His movies include “Marie Antoinette” in 2006 and “Shadows in the Sun”.
TCM overview:
Largely unknown until 2013, actor Jamie Dornan was thrust into the spotlight when he was cast as the male lead in the major movie adaptation of the hit erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey. A native of the Belfast area, the handsome Northern Irishman pursued acting after briefly attending university, while also working as a model and performing in a band called Sons of Jim. In 2008, Dornan found his first lead role in the horror movie “Beyond the Rave,” but he mostly remained under the radar until he was cast in the dual role of Sheriff Graham and the Huntsman on the fantastical TV series “Once Upon a Time” (ABC, 2011- ). While occasionally appearing on the hit show, he joined Gillian Anderson for the Belfast-set psychological drama “The Fall” (BBC, 2013- ). As word of the well-received series gradually expanded beyond the United Kingdom, his role as Christian Grey in “Fifty Shades of Grey” was announced, immediately making him a subject of intense international interest.
Born and raised just outside of Belfast, Dornan is the great-nephew of WWII-era actress Greer Garson, and he decided to follow her path, but not before stints as a model and musical artist. In addition to appearing in ad campaigns for high-end fashion companies such as Dior and Calvin Klein, Dornan played in the group Sons of Jim, which met with limited success before disbanding. Given his rugged yet regal looks, he found a fitting first screen role as Count Axel Fersen in Sofia Coppola’s bold historical drama “Marie Antoinette” (2006). Dornan’s initial headlining turn arrived in 2008 when he portrayed a British soldier sucked into supernatural events involving dance-obsessed creatures of the night in “Beyond the Rave.” Shifting gears considerably, he subsequently appeared in the pensive English drama “Shadows in the Sun” (2009), co-starring Ophelia Lovibond and veteran actress Jean Simmons.
In 2011, Dornan landed the part of Sheriff Graham and the Huntsman on the popular American show “Once Upon a Time,” giving him exposure to a much wider audience. On the fairytale-inspired series, his hunky law-enforcing character became torn between the scheming Regina (Lana Parrilla) and the virtuous Emma (Jennifer Morrison), showcasing his undeniable sex appeal. Outside of his “Once Upon a Time” appearances, Dornan signed on as a regular on the tense Northern Irish show “The Fall,” starring as Paul Spector, a charming serial killer attempting to elude the investigation of a determined police detective (Gillian Anderson). While enjoying the success of these two ongoing series, Dornan had an unexpected breakthrough-during the fall of 2013, it was announced that he would be replacing Charlie Hunnam as the cinematic version of Christian Grey, the bondage-loving businessman in E.L. James’ sensual novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which had proved to be a pop-culture phenomenon. One of the most highly anticipated Hollywood movies of 2014, “Fifty Shades of Grey” found Dornan working closely with actress Dakota Johnson, leading to much speculation about how the pair would fare as on-screen lovers drawn into a steamy and dramatic relationship.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Niamh McGrady hails from the North of Ireland. She currently is playing ‘Nurse Mary-Claire Carter’ in the British TV series “Holby City”. Other work includes “Best: His Mother’s Son”. In 2008 she was on Broadway with Patrick Stewart in “Macbeth”.
Imelda Staunton was born in London in 1956. Her parents hailed from Co Mayo. When she was 18 she enrolled in RADA. Her work includes “Vera Drake”, “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. Her husband is the actor Jim Cater.
IMDB entry:
Imelda Staunton was born on January 9, 1956 in London, England as Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton. She is an actress, known for Vera Drake (2004), Chicken Run (2000) and Much Ado About Nothing (1993). She has been married to Jim Cartersince October 1983. They have one child.An only child, she attended La Sainte Union Convent, a convent school in the north of London.
She was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1986 (1985 season) for Best Performance in a Supporting a Role for “A Chorus of Disapproval” and “The Corn is Green”.
She was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1991 (1990 season) for Best Actress in a Musical for “Into the Woods”.
She was nominated for a 1997 Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards for Best Actress in a Musical of the 1996 season for her performance in “Guys and Dolls”.
She was awarded the 1985 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre Award) for Best Supporting Actress for her performances in A Chorus of Disapproval and The Corn is Green.
Became an Associate Member of RADA.
Graduated from RADA.
She won the “Coppa Volpi” award for her performance in Vera Drake (2004) at the 2004 Venice Film Festvial. The movie “Vera Drake” also won the “Gold Lion” award for the best movie at the same event.
I go up for a job, someone else gets it, what can I do about that? That might be in another league to me, people being competitive. But it’s not like running a race. I’m not against anyone. I think that’s a much more American thing, that.
We’re all unique as actors. To yourself, you are unique, you have to think, “I’m me, I’m not going to bunch myself with other people”. Agents and producers have to get you into a box, to accommodate their limited imaginations.
[on working with Mike Leigh in Vera Drake (2004)] He’s the nicest . . . because he works so hard, and I think he expects other people to work hard. And in my book, that’s enough. We don’t roll into rehearsal at 10:30 and have coffee. We start at 8:00 a.m., we finish at 8 o’clock at night. I mean, you don’t want to dither around him. And I think that’s fine. I think he’s entitled to say what he wants and what he doesn’t want. He knows a lot about it. He doesn’t have to be nice if he doesn’t want to, just to be charming.
Well, my parents were working people. You just worked. I’ve always wanted a long career, not an instant one. I left RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts], I worked in rep for six years, then I came to London and came to the National Theatre. What’s better than that? I don’t know what’s better than that. “Oh, but surely you wanted to be a big film star when you were 21?” No, because I would’ve been rubbish. Because I spent a lot of time in rep being OK, being very bad, and then being quite good. And I could practice my craft. You know, being exposed that early, to be brilliant in your first job, where do you go from there? It’s given me time, which is a luxury.
[on her view about abortion, something she’s been asked a lot after her role in Vera Drake (2004)] I’m not Susan Sarandon. I don’t want to bang a drum. I think I’m just going to say, “I’m pro-choice” and leave it at that.
I am a character actress, well, let’s say, I am a leading character actress who does interesting, odd parts.
You know you can be very famous without being a great actress, and that’s not good for me.
I reached the point now, where I have become as comfortable on a movie set as I am on stage. Before, I was trying to figure it out, how much should I emote, where should I stand? But now I know more about the camera, and what goes into the mix, technically. I’m much more comfortable doing film now.
[what she thinks about celebrities getting free gifts at award shows] It’s obscene, isn’t it? Just ridiculous. We don’t need any of these things! Give it to people who need it. I’ll never have to buy moisturizer again. I might start eating it soon.
All my heroes-Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville–are just so brilliant. And I thought, “Well, I’m not in that league”.
As Vera Drake, I feel Mike [director Mike Leigh] has used all of me as a dramatic actress, in a positive sense.
As you well know, we don’t have a script when we’re shooting. But after the film, the screenplay gets published and you can read the whole thing.
Agents and producers have to get you into a box to accommodate their limited imaginations.
[on Vera Drake (2004)] You don’t have a script, so we prepared that film for six months and then filmed it for three and a bit months. Nothing is improvised on film but for me I created with Mike [director Mike Leigh] that woman literally from the day she was born, so I know everything about her life. And of course we can’t do it in every job because there is not the time, because most films you literally get the script, you learn it immediately and you turn up and you just do it. Which, with a lot of the work I do, that’s plenty of preparation. But for something like that–and I’d never worked with him before–and it was a real eye-opener. And to have that happen to me in a time when–I hope–was the middle of my career, it was like going back to drama school and starting all over again. (On Vera Drake (2004))
[on her role of Alfred Hitchcock‘s wife Alma Reville in The Girl (2012)] Alma was very tolerant. She mothered Hitchcock, because he was like a bloody child. He was a bloody idiot with Tippi [Tippi Hedren. People should have told him, “Just make the bloody film and go home”.
[on Alfred Hitchcock] But he was delusional. People say he was vulnerable–oh, for goodness sake, don’t be mealy-mouthed about it! He just needed to grow up–that may sound unkind, but it’s realistic. There again, if he had grown up, he wouldn’t have been such a brilliant filmmaker. All his many flaws made him the great director he was.
We actors are like children–all you have to do is feed and encourage us, and we’ll be fine. That controlling animus has gone. No director treats us badly anymore. In fact, they should put that in the end credits of The Girl (2012): “No actor has been harmed in the making of this movie”.
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Kathleen O’Regan was born in 1903 in Dublin. In 1929 she starred as ‘Mary Boyle’ in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Juno and the Paycock”. She also starred in “The Shadow Between” and “The Rose of Tralee”.
!The Times” obituary from 1970:
Miss Kathleen O’Regan, the actress, who died on Thursday, will be remember for her performances in the first London productions of Sean O’Casey‘s Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars. In the first she played the daughter; of the two characters from whom the tragedy takes its title, and in the second she played, in succession to Eileen Carey, the young wife who is driven out of her wits by the events of Easter Week, 1916.
Later productions that gave scope to her sense of character or feeling for comedy were those of Van Druten’s Young Woodley, in which she played opposite Frank Lawton when it was first tried out by Basil Dean in England; of By Candle Light, an adaptation from the German (“Never choose wine or women by candle light”), in which she succeeded Yvonne Arnaud as a lady’s maid masquerading as her employer; and of Banana Ridge, which Ben Travers fashioned to suit Alfred Drayton and Robertson Hare, respectively the lion and the mouse of contemporary farce, and in which Travers himself suggested her for the lion Drayton’s mate.
She began her film career by playing her old part under Alfred Hitchcock in Juno and the Paycock, which is credited with being the first British film to have been planned and made from its earliest stages as a “talkie”.
Kathleen O’Regan was married to Lieutenant-Colonel K. A. Plimpton, D.S.O., who was for fourteen years Secretary of the Garrick Club.
Josef Locke was born in 1917 in Derry. A famous singer in Britain during the 1940’s, his songs include “Goodbye” from “The White Horse Inn” and “Here My Song, Violetta”. He appeared in a few movies including “What A Carry On” in 1939. He died in 1999.
Stephen Dixon’s obituary in “The Guardian”: “Goodbye, goodbye – I wish you all a fond goodbye.” As he strutted the stage, his glorious tenor soaring to the back of the “gods” in the north of England’s variety theatres, Josef Locke’s tearful and adoring audiences sang along and waved their handkerchiefs in time to the music. Locke, who has died aged 82, was an Irish superstar, the Tom Jones of his day – earning £2,000 a week when £100 was a good wage for a music-hall artist.
His voice could have taken him to the world’s great opera stages, but he chose the more raffish life of a variety bill-topper, specialising in sentimental ballads such as Hear My Song, Count Your Blessings and I’ll Take You Home Again, Cathleen, invariably closing his act with stirring audience galvanisers like Blaze Away or Goodbye. He was handsome, immaculately tailored and flamboyantly rogueish, with a trim moustache and a twinkling eye for the ladies.
Locke based himself in Blackpool, also home to his good friend, the comedian Frank Randle. Together they caroused, brawled and drank through the night, got up to various romantic escapades and lost fortunes on the horses. It was, in fact, Locke’s offstage antics that created the legend around him – he happily squandered his vast earnings, and in 1958 fled back to Ireland with the Inland Revenue hot on his heels. The day a warrant for his arrest for unpaid taxes was issued in Blackpool, he was in Kildare, paying 790 guineas for two horses. He named one of them The Taxman.
The story was told, charmingly but fancifully, in Peter Chelsom’s 1992 film Hear My Song, in which Locke was played by Ned Beatty. For the premiere, the 75-year-old singer was persuaded to return to England, where he sang Danny Boy to Princess Diana. When Chelsom first mooted the project to Locke, he found the singer only too willing to add to his legend – at one point the director had to track him down to a bar in Spain after he disappeared without signing the contract for clearance rights.
Josef Locke was born Joseph McLaughlin in Derry, Northern Ireland, the son of a butcher and cattle dealer, one of 10 children. He sang at churches in the Bogside as a child, and after a rudimentary schooling joined the Irish Guards, later serving with the Palestine police before returning to Ireland in the late 1930s. He then became a policeman and, performing semi-professionally, was known as “the Singing Bobby”. He sought advice about an operatic career from the greatest Irish tenor of them all, John McCormack, who told him that his natural showmanship might serve him better on the popular stage. Again on the advice of McCormack, Locke went to London to see impresario and bandleader Jack Hylton, who, impressed, booked him into the Victoria Palace. It was Hylton who renamed him – Joseph McLaughlin was considered too long for variety bills.
After some success in London, where he made his first recordings in 1947, Locke signed with Lew and Leslie Grade, who realised that his over-the-top style and penchant for sentimentality might go down better on the northern variety circuit, and steered him to stardom. Locke delighted in the world of variety, revelling in his celebrity, wearing only the best clothes and driving the fastest sports cars, always accompanied by a glamorous companion.
He also appeared in films for John E Blakeley’s Manchester-based Mancunian company, starring with other music-hall stalwarts like Randle, Tessie O’Shea and Jewel and Warriss. Some critics were sniffy about what they saw as the misuse of a fine voice. “The Londonderry tenor did indeed possess a fine organ,” wrote one, “ruined by undisciplined bawling and a delivery drenched in sentimentality.”
However, Locke’s (mainly female) public thought otherwise, and there was no sign of a diminution in his popularity when he suddenly vanished back to Ireland. Twenty years later, a masked singer, sounding uncannily like Locke and billed as “Mr X”, made some appearances in British clubs, and it was thought that he had returned incognito. It turned out not to be the case, although on one occasion he was flown into Britain to appear on This Is Your Life – and then flown straight out again before the taxman could catch him.
The success of the film Hear My Song – Chelsom used the “Mr X” story as the basis for his heart-warming fantasy – brought Locke back into the limelight, and an album of his old recordings became a bestseller. The tax business now long-forgiven, he continued to sing, mostly in Ireland, until fairly recently, then retired. He lived the latter part of his life near Clane, Co Kildare, and is survived by his wife, Carmel, and a son.
• Josef Locke (Joseph McLaughlin), singer, born March 23 1917; died October 15 1999
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Fiona Victory was born in Dublin. Her father was the RTE Orchestra Conductor Gerard Victory. She came to prominence in RTE’s “Brackenn” opposite Gabriel Byrne in 1980. Her other TV work includes “Nanny”, “Bergerac” and “Shine On Harvest Moon”.
“Shine on Harvey Moon” page:
She had great success in Ireland before coming to England where she worked extensively for the touring Paines Plough Theatre Company based in Lancaster and for the Michael Bogdanos Company at the Young Vic in London. On television she featured in Resnick with Tom Wilkinson. She made a great impression in a four parter ‘The Hanging Gale’ a drama set at the time of the Irish Famine. Her fils include ‘Return to Oz and ‘Champions. Last year she returned to the stage to play the title role in ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ in Coventry. Before that she played the widow Queen in ‘The Playboy of the Western World’ in Liverpool. Kenneth Cranham & Fiona played Oberon and Titania together at the Edinburgh Festival and the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. Fiona won best actress award for her performance in the one woman show as ‘Kitty O’Shea’ at the Abbey Theatre in the Dublin Theatre festival in 1990.
The above “Shine on Harvey Moon” page can also be accessed online here.
T.P. McKenna was born in 1929 in Co Cavan, Ireland. He began his acting career in Dublin at the famed Abbey Theatre. In 1959 he made the film “Shake Hands With the Devil” with James Cagney, Dana Wynter and Glynis Johns. He made his career in England and acted in most of the major television series of their time e.g.”The Sweeney”. “Blake 7” etc. He died in 2011.
Michael Coveney’s “Guardian” obituary:
Before he became a familiar face on television and cinema screens, the outstanding Irish actor TP McKenna, who has died after a long illness aged 81, bridged the gap between the old and the new Abbey theatres in Dublin. He appeared with the company for eight years during the interim period at the Queen’s theatre; the old Abbey burned down in 1951, the new one opened by the Liffey in 1966.
During that time he made his reputation as a leading actor of great charm, vocal resource – with a fine singing voice – and versatility. He was equally adept at comedy and tragedy, a great exponent of the best Irish playwriting from JM Synge and Séan O’Casey to Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel. The elder son in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was a favourite, much acclaimed role.
It was Stephen D, Leonard’s skilful conflation of two James Joyce books, for the rival Gate theatre that in 1963 brought McKenna to London, where he stayed for more or less the rest of his career, appearing regularly on West End stages while reaching wider audiences.
He played barristers and detectives, conmen, police officers and a pope. His default mode was an imposing, authoritative geniality, and when he played a Nazi engaging in the casual slaughter of Jews in the TV mini-series Holocaust (1978), it was as hard to watch as it was to credit that this was the same actor who was so delightful as Harold Skimpole (“no idea of time, no idea of money”) in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1985) on BBC television.
For an actor, McKenna was an unusually modest and self-effacing man, and this trait lent a profound transparency and poignancy to those performances that touched on failure and disappointment, notably in Chekhov. You never saw the joins.
His family had settled in Mullagh, County Cavan, in the north of Ireland, in the 18th century. His great-grandfather, Nicholas McKenna, was an auctioneer, tradesman and farmer; his uncle, Justin McKenna, a notable politician; and his father, Ralph, also an auctioneer and merchant. Thomas – generally known in later life as “TP” – was the eldest of 10 children. He was educated at Mullagh national school and St Patrick’s college, Cavan, where he studied literature and discovered his acting and singing talent in Gilbert and Sullivan. He played Gaelic football, representing St Patrick’s in the final of the All Ireland colleges competition in 1948.
As a schoolboy, he had seen the legendary Anew McMaster‘s touring company in Shakespeare and decided to go on the stage. But first he took his banking exams in Belfast, then worked for the Ulster Bank in Granard, Trim and Dublin, where he trained at the Abbey Theatre School. He made his debut at the Pyke in 1953, appeared with McMaster at the Gaiety in 1954 (playing Horatio in Hamlet and Albany in King Lear) before joining the Abbey.
McKenna played more than 70 roles for the Abbey at the Queen’s, a large, demanding theatre seating 900. One of the Gate theatre’s biggest modern successes was Stephen D at the Dublin Theatre festival of 1962. In the following year, McKenna came with it, and his fellow actor Norman Rodway, to London. Although he returned to Dublin in 1966 to play in the Abbey’s reopening production – Walter Macken’s Recall the Years, a curtain-raiser to a major revival of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars – McKenna never liked the new theatre and revelled in the wider opportunities now open to him on British television and stage.
At the Royal Court in 1964, he played Cassius in Lindsay Anderson’s revival of Julius Caesar, then joined Stuart Burge and Jonathan Miller at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1968, playing the Bastard in King John, Joseph Surface in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, Trigorin in Chekhov’s The Seagull and Macduff in Macbeth. At the end of an exhausting season, he directed his first and favourite play, Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.
Back at the Court in 1969, he was one of the two Irish contractors in David Storey’s The Contractor, directed by Anderson, and this role with his compatriot Jim Norton led to both of them being hired by Sam Peckinpah to appear in Straw Dogs (1971), his fourth major film, following Joseph Strick‘s Ulysses (1967) – he was Buck Mulligan – Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), and Charles Jarrott’s Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). McKenna had a soft spot for Peter Hall’s Perfect Friday (1970), a comedy caper with Stanley Baker, Ursula Andress and David Warner, and he also popped up tellingly opposite Richard Burton in Michael Tuchner’s Villain (1971), the first movie “inspired” by the Kray twins.
McKenna had married May White, literally the girl next door, who worked for Radio Éireann, in 1955, but he did not bring the family over to settle in London until 1972. Notable stage roles over the next two decades included Robert Hand in James Joyce’s only play, Exiles, directed byHarold Pinter at the Mermaid in 1970; a straitlaced puritan preacher inGeorge Bernard Shaw‘s The Devil’s Disciple for the RSC in 1976, a performance of coruscating charm opposite Tom Conti, John Wood, Zoë Wanamaker and Bob Hoskins; a beautifully modulated doctor in Max Stafford-Clark’s production of Thomas Kilroy’s take on The Seagull at the Royal Court in 1980; and the Duke of Florence, an acid-voiced, bleakly ruthless intelligencer, in Philip Prowse’s gorgeous staging of John Webster’s The White Devil at the National in 1991.
He returned to the Gate several times. The artistic director Michael Colgan said that his Uncle Vanya there in 1987 was the most moving performance of his tenure, while his Serebryakov in the same Chekhov play, a few years later, fitted equally well. His whiskey-sodden, disenchanted ophthalmologist in Friel’s Molly Sweeney (1994), a play about regaining sight but losing faith, was just as potent and memorable, and he played a wonderful double act with Niall Buggy in Pinter’s No Man’s Land in 1997.
And there seemed hardly a major television series he did not adorn, as a maverick Russian agent in Callan, or as various villains in Lovejoy, Minder and The Sweeney. He was the final suspect ever interviewed byJohn Thaw as Inspector Morse. His last major movie was Lawrence Dunmore’s The Libertine (2004), starring Johnny Depp in Stephen Jeffreys’s screenplay from his own theatre piece, and he last appeared on the London stage in 2005, as the disabled father in a National Theatre revival by Tom Cairns of Friel’s elegiac Aristocrats.
But with a fine, black-humoured Irish flourish, he saved his last gasp for a short, low-budget movie called Death’s Door (2009), in which he played a dying man in a grand old house confronted by a junkie career criminal played by one of the Irish theatre’s rising stars, Karl Sheils.
May died in 2007. McKenna is survived by four sons and a daughter, three brothers and five sisters.
• Thomas Patrick McKenna, actor, born 7 September 1929; died 13 February 2011
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
T.P. McKenna obituary in “The Guardian”.
T.P. McKenna was born in 1929 in Co Cavan, Ireland. He began his acting career in Dublin at the famed Abbey Theatre. In 1959 he made the film “Shake Hands With the Devil” with James Cagney, Dana Wynter and Glynis Johns. He made his career in England and acted in most of the major television series of their time e.g.”The Sweeney”. “Blake 7” etc. He died in 2011.
Michael Coveney’s “Guardian” obituary:
Before he became a familiar face on television and cinema screens, the outstanding Irish actor TP McKenna, who has died after a long illness aged 81, bridged the gap between the old and the new Abbey theatres in Dublin. He appeared with the company for eight years during the interim period at the Queen’s theatre; the old Abbey burned down in 1951, the new one opened by the Liffey in 1966.
During that time he made his reputation as a leading actor of great charm, vocal resource – with a fine singing voice – and versatility. He was equally adept at comedy and tragedy, a great exponent of the best Irish playwriting from JM Synge and Séan O’Casey to Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel. The elder son in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was a favourite, much acclaimed role.
It was Stephen D, Leonard’s skilful conflation of two James Joyce books, for the rival Gate theatre that in 1963 brought McKenna to London, where he stayed for more or less the rest of his career, appearing regularly on West End stages while reaching wider audiences.
He played barristers and detectives, conmen, police officers and a pope. His default mode was an imposing, authoritative geniality, and when he played a Nazi engaging in the casual slaughter of Jews in the TV mini-series Holocaust (1978), it was as hard to watch as it was to credit that this was the same actor who was so delightful as Harold Skimpole (“no idea of time, no idea of money”) in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1985) on BBC television.
For an actor, McKenna was an unusually modest and self-effacing man, and this trait lent a profound transparency and poignancy to those performances that touched on failure and disappointment, notably in Chekhov. You never saw the joins.
His family had settled in Mullagh, County Cavan, in the north of Ireland, in the 18th century. His great-grandfather, Nicholas McKenna, was an auctioneer, tradesman and farmer; his uncle, Justin McKenna, a notable politician; and his father, Ralph, also an auctioneer and merchant. Thomas – generally known in later life as “TP” – was the eldest of 10 children. He was educated at Mullagh national school and St Patrick’s college, Cavan, where he studied literature and discovered his acting and singing talent in Gilbert and Sullivan. He played Gaelic football, representing St Patrick’s in the final of the All Ireland colleges competition in 1948.
As a schoolboy, he had seen the legendary Anew McMaster‘s touring company in Shakespeare and decided to go on the stage. But first he took his banking exams in Belfast, then worked for the Ulster Bank in Granard, Trim and Dublin, where he trained at the Abbey Theatre School. He made his debut at the Pyke in 1953, appeared with McMaster at the Gaiety in 1954 (playing Horatio in Hamlet and Albany in King Lear) before joining the Abbey.
McKenna played more than 70 roles for the Abbey at the Queen’s, a large, demanding theatre seating 900. One of the Gate theatre’s biggest modern successes was Stephen D at the Dublin Theatre festival of 1962. In the following year, McKenna came with it, and his fellow actor Norman Rodway, to London. Although he returned to Dublin in 1966 to play in the Abbey’s reopening production – Walter Macken’s Recall the Years, a curtain-raiser to a major revival of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars – McKenna never liked the new theatre and revelled in the wider opportunities now open to him on British television and stage.
At the Royal Court in 1964, he played Cassius in Lindsay Anderson’s revival of Julius Caesar, then joined Stuart Burge and Jonathan Miller at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1968, playing the Bastard in King John, Joseph Surface in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, Trigorin in Chekhov’s The Seagull and Macduff in Macbeth. At the end of an exhausting season, he directed his first and favourite play, Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.
Back at the Court in 1969, he was one of the two Irish contractors in David Storey’s The Contractor, directed by Anderson, and this role with his compatriot Jim Norton led to both of them being hired by Sam Peckinpah to appear in Straw Dogs (1971), his fourth major film, following Joseph Strick‘s Ulysses (1967) – he was Buck Mulligan – Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), and Charles Jarrott’s Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). McKenna had a soft spot for Peter Hall’s Perfect Friday (1970), a comedy caper with Stanley Baker, Ursula Andress and David Warner, and he also popped up tellingly opposite Richard Burton in Michael Tuchner’s Villain (1971), the first movie “inspired” by the Kray twins.
McKenna had married May White, literally the girl next door, who worked for Radio Éireann, in 1955, but he did not bring the family over to settle in London until 1972. Notable stage roles over the next two decades included Robert Hand in James Joyce’s only play, Exiles, directed byHarold Pinter at the Mermaid in 1970; a straitlaced puritan preacher inGeorge Bernard Shaw‘s The Devil’s Disciple for the RSC in 1976, a performance of coruscating charm opposite Tom Conti, John Wood, Zoë Wanamaker and Bob Hoskins; a beautifully modulated doctor in Max Stafford-Clark’s production of Thomas Kilroy’s take on The Seagull at the Royal Court in 1980; and the Duke of Florence, an acid-voiced, bleakly ruthless intelligencer, in Philip Prowse’s gorgeous staging of John Webster’s The White Devil at the National in 1991.
He returned to the Gate several times. The artistic director Michael Colgan said that his Uncle Vanya there in 1987 was the most moving performance of his tenure, while his Serebryakov in the same Chekhov play, a few years later, fitted equally well. His whiskey-sodden, disenchanted ophthalmologist in Friel’s Molly Sweeney (1994), a play about regaining sight but losing faith, was just as potent and memorable, and he played a wonderful double act with Niall Buggy in Pinter’s No Man’s Land in 1997.
And there seemed hardly a major television series he did not adorn, as a maverick Russian agent in Callan, or as various villains in Lovejoy, Minder and The Sweeney. He was the final suspect ever interviewed byJohn Thaw as Inspector Morse. His last major movie was Lawrence Dunmore’s The Libertine (2004), starring Johnny Depp in Stephen Jeffreys’s screenplay from his own theatre piece, and he last appeared on the London stage in 2005, as the disabled father in a National Theatre revival by Tom Cairns of Friel’s elegiac Aristocrats.
But with a fine, black-humoured Irish flourish, he saved his last gasp for a short, low-budget movie called Death’s Door (2009), in which he played a dying man in a grand old house confronted by a junkie career criminal played by one of the Irish theatre’s rising stars, Karl Sheils.
May died in 2007. McKenna is survived by four sons and a daughter, three brothers and five sisters.
• Thomas Patrick McKenna, actor, born 7 September 1929; died 13 February 2011
Richard Lynch was born in Brooklyn, New York to Irish parents. He served in the U.S. Marine Corp. A brilliant character actor he featured in “Scarecrow” with Al Pacino and “The Seven-Ups”. He died in 2012.
“Independent” obituary by John Riley:
The son of an alcoholic, Richard Lynch began using drugs himself. Then in 1967 he had an accident in Central Park, setting himself on fire in the middle of an LSD trip. After massive reconstructive surgery he eventually rebuilt enough confidence to return to acting. His height and distinctive scarred appearance made him ideal casting for villains in sci-fi, fantasy and horror films, and he became a favourite character actor among cult film fans.
Lynch was one of seven children from a Brooklyn-Irish Catholic family; his younger brother Barry also became an actor. Through his parents Lynch held Irish citizenship and frequently visited the country. After a spell in the US Marine Corps, he studied theatre at Herbert Berghof’s HB Studio and the Actors’ Studio
Lynch appeared in dozens of on- and off-Broadway plays. In 1965 he played Louis XIII opposite Anne Bancroft and Jason Robards in Michael Cacoyannis’s production of John Whiting’s The Devils. Eleven years later Tony Richardson directed Lynch and Vanessa Redgrave in Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, and in 1977 he appeared opposite Al Pacino in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.
The year after his accident, Lynch appeared with Timothy Leary in the documentary LSD – Trip to Where? The scarring, along with his six-foot frame, brought roles as cops, heavies and the like. His film debut came in Scarecrow (1973) in which he played a thuggish prisoner. Two years later he was a cop in the Xaviera Hollander biopic The Happy Hooker.
The following year saw him in a more substantial role. In Larry Cohen’s fantastically subversive God Told Me To, random murders are carried out by New Yorkers who use the title of the film to explain their crimes. Each of these events is presaged by an appearance from a strange Christ-like figure played by Lynch.
His TV appearances included episodes of Serpico (1976), Police Woman and The Streets of San Francisco (both 1977) and The Bionic Woman (1978). He also played three different roles in Starsky and Hutch (1975, 1978 and 1979). In 1978 he appeared in Battlestar Galactica and two years later returned for the lower budget Galactica 80. Battlestar Galactica: the Second Coming (1999) is a rarely-seen trailer the makers hoped would interest a studio in a reboot of the franchise.
In between, Lynch had secured a couple of starring roles. In the film Delta Fox (1979) he played an ex-con who gets tied up in a labyrinthine kidnapping plot. He turned his scarring to good effect, deflecting questions about it to add to the mystery of his character’s back story. The widely praised TV movie Vampire was intended as the pilot for a series.
In 1981 he finally got a series, The Phoenix, the story of an archaeological expedition to Peru that discovers an alien. Unfortunately the first series was also the last, and Lynch returned to B-movies and television, in 1985 playing the first of several Russians, as a Soviet terrorist in Chuck Norris’s commie-basher Invasion USA.
Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus had long been producers and directors of everything from trash to arthouse. Lynch’s work with them included a Soviet general in Armstrong (1998), while Lima: Breaking the Silence (1999), the true-life story of a Peruvian kidnapping, gave him the chance to play an Irish role, as an ambassador.
After that came the micro-budget basketball crime drama Death Game (2001). If Golan hoped the following year’s modern-day adaptation of Crime and Punishment would be a prestige product – its impressive cast included John Hurt and Vanessa Redgrave – it was scuttled by his directorial ineptitude. Final Combat (2003) was a martial arts drama.
Lynch’s height and a Rutger Hauerish mane of silver-white hair brought a certain authority, allowing him to play the US President in the Mexican wrestling drama Mil Mascaras and the Aztec Mummy (2007). That year also saw him in a somewhat mainstream hit – to the satisfaction of cult film fans – with Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween in which he played the small role of the headmaster of Michael Myers’ school. Zombie recalled, “I’ll never forget the way he scared the crap out of the kid actors. As soon as I said ‘Action!’, he dove right into his role of Principal Chambers at top volume.”
After that, Zombie didn’t even audition him for the forthcoming The Lords of Salem in which Lynch takes charge of a 17th-century witch trial. His son Christopher by his first wife, the actress Béatrix, appeared with him in the time-travel drama Trancers II (1991) but died of pneumonia in 2005. Lynch was discovered dead in his home.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Honor Heffernan is a very popular jazz and blues singer from Ireland. In 1982 she had a leading role in Neil Jordan’s first movie “Angel” with Stephen Rea. She was also featured in the popular Irish TV series “Glenroe” from 1999 to 2000. Her website here.
Mary O’Hara was born in Sligo in 1935) and is an Irish soprano and harpist. . O’Hara achieved fame on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her recordings of that period influenced a generation of Irish female singers who credit O’Hara with influencing their style, among them Carmel Quinn, Mary Black, and Moya Brennan, among others. On the death of her newly married husband in 1956 she spent some years seeking spiritual consolation. In 1962 she became a nun and she remained in the convent for 12 years/ On reentering the secular life she resumed her concert and recording career to phenomenal success. She is now retired, remarried and living on the Aran Islands.
Martin McCann was born in 1982 in Belfast. His movies include “Closing the Ring” in 2007 ,”Clash of the Titans”. “Killing Bono” and “Shadow Dancer”.
IFTN interview:
Belfast-born Martin McCann has worked tirelessly the last 10 years to carve a career in the film industry. With roles in Tom Hanks-narrated ‘The Pacific’, Brian Kirk’s award-winning ‘My Boy Jack’ alongside Daniel Radcliffe, and a leading role in IFTA-winning ‘Swansong: Story of Occi Byrne’, McCann is already a star in Ireland and the UK.
In what could propel him to international stardom, movie screens are getting a double dose of McCann this year, with his latest offerings ‘Shadow Dancer’, released in cinemas on August 24, and ‘Jump’ screening at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
Ahead of both screenings McCann spoke to IFTN about why James Marsh is the “nicest man on the planet”, why wearing a shell tracksuit brought him back to his childhood, and reveals what one of the best nights of his life was.
‘Shadow Dancer’ is released in cinemas August 24. You play Brendan in the film which sees an IRA member turns MI5 informant. Would you say this is your grittiest role yet? Grittiest, I don’t know. I didn’t have a particularly large role in ‘Shadow Dancer’, I had a small role but an important role. I just pretty much based it on a lot of people I kind of grew up with, you know Northern Irish men from Belfast, that had too much time on their hands and got roped into the wrong things at the wrong time. Through no fault of their own, I really do believe that, monkey see monkey do. I tried to basically play this young man that is not a bad person, but is someone who really is the victim of their own circumstances.
Young men think they’re doing right, this is the problem, they think that they’re doing the right thing, and the world sees it as a wrong thing, and it is a wrong thing, nobody should kill anybody in the name of anything, no man made line, no man made water should be a reason for anyone to be killed, and I truly believe that. But I do also believe that these young men are not bad people, they were just a victim of the circumstances in which they were in.
When you’re preparing for a role do you always try to find the good in the character? Yeah, unless the character thinks that he is a bad person, you have to find reasons why the character is doing what they’re doing, what they believe in, what they want. Usually when one character is doing bad it’s because they think that that’s doing good in another end of the spectrum, so you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing. If you do that then the audience will believe in what you’re doing, even if it is a bad thing. I mean Hannibal Lecter for example, you can’t really understand why you like him, but you do. I mean he eats people! That’s an extreme example of an actor making the right choices and believing in what they’re doing. I’m not comparing myself to Anthony Hopkins whatsoever, he’s a much better actor than me!
’Shadow Dancer’ is set in 1990s Belfast, where you grew up. Was it easy for you to relate to the surroundings and the 90s clothing? It was funny putting [the clothing] on. When I talk to people my age I always have a thing in the back of my mind where I automatically assume they’re older than me because for some reason I always feel 19 or 20, I’m 29 now. For the first time in my life when I was putting on the 90s attire in ‘Shadow Dancer’ I can remember wearing that stuff when I was a kid, and I was like ‘Oh my goodness I’m getting a little bit older here, I’m not a teenager more!”
Were there some shell tracksuits on set? Kappa tracksuits and shell tracksuits and the bomber jackets and the jeans and that was Belfast, bomber jacket, t-shirt, jeans and a pair of black shoes maybe. We weren’t the height of fashion I can tell you that!
What was working with Oscar-winner James Marsh like? He is literally the nicest man on the planet, and I don’t say that loosely because I’ve worked with some pretty nice people. Richard Attenborough is famous for being nice and he is super amazing nice, but James Marsh is literally the nicest man on the planet. He’s just so sweet and so gentle, so caring and appreciative of the actor’s craft and the process, and I would walk over fire to work with that man again, I really would.
Do you put that down to his vast experience working in the industry? Well he’s predominantly a documentary maker and a well-established and Oscar-winning documentary maker, so I think he has a real sense of reality, a true sort of barometer that you see on real life situations and how people really react. He tries to make things as real as he can. He’s just a really nice person, he gives you the time and gives you the space to do that and he totally trusts you and makes you feel as an actor that you’re doing it right, which is a very important trait of a director. A director has to instil confidence, the moment that any actor gets a little inkling of self-doubt from a director it’s really damaging.
A director has to instil confidence, the moment that any actor gets a little inkling of self-doubt from a director it’s really damaging. “
When you’re working on set, do you like to work closely with the director and get feedback as you work? I do like to work closely with the director, and some directors don’t like actors watching the scenes back on the monitor, but I do like to watch the scenes back. It never puts me off if anything, it’s nice to watch yourself back and get a gauge of what you’re doing and what direction you’re going in. It might put some actors off, but I find that generally working close with the director and watching the stuff back and maybe talking about it is beneficial for my style of acting.
You filmed ‘Shadow Dancer’ and Kieron J Walsh’s ‘Jump’ pretty much back to back. Tell me about your character in ‘Jump’. Yeah pretty much back to back. My character’s name is Pearse Kelly and he’s just basically a young man in extraordinary circumstances. His brother went missing and he’s trying to get to the bottom of where his brother is, is his brother safe, is his brother hurt, and why is his brother missing? He kind of slowly uncovers a few things and realises it’s not a good situation, and in searching for his brother he meets this young girl whose life’s turned upside down and is contemplating suicide and it really kicks off from there, so I’d say my character’s just an ordinary young man.
Is that what attracted you to the role? I like the fact that it was set in Derry, there’s not many films made in Derry or about Derry and the town and I just tried to bring as much as me to the character as I could. I spent nearly 29 years being me so I’m well scripted in being me, and let the circumstances and the situations just tell the story.
‘Jump’ was shot in Belfast. Do you prefer to work closer to home? It’s got pros and cons really. As an actor it’s always nice to get away and be abroad to do a job. I was abroad last month and that was really nice but you know as an actor it sounds all glamorous, but when you’re sitting by yourself in a restaurant alone you might think, ‘well it’s really nice but you know, you’re alone’. So it’s kind of like a nomad lifestyle in many respects. When you’re working at home you can go and visit your family and you’ve people you love, and when you’re abroad you’re travelling so I suppose it’s good to have both, but both have their pros and cons.
There’s a lot of buzz surrounding ‘Jump’, it received rave reviews at the Galway Film Fleadh and has now been officially selected for the Toronto International Film Festival.
What makes it so special? To be honest, I’ve done quite a few projects now, and any projects that I have done, a lot of them you kind of watch back and you go ‘Mmm, I wish I could have been better or that could have been funnier or I would have done this different or I would have done that different’, but the first time I watched ‘Jump’ back I really was taken aback at how good it was. It’s a really well made film and I think it’s above and beyond the standard of a lot of films in the cinema at the minute, and that’s a rare thing to say. Making a film sometimes gets lost in translation it’s not easy to make a film, and it’s certainly not easy to make a good film, and these guys have genuinely made a really brilliant film, entertaining from start to finish, it doesn’t drag, every character is well developed and it’s just a really well made film. I’d go as far to say one of the best films made in Ireland in the last few years certainly.
Looking back at some of the projects you’ve done, are there any that stick out where you feel you would have tweaked parts given the chance? You look back at them and say ‘Mmm can that be a little better or it could have been funnier or it could have been quicker’, because obviously as an actor when you’re in a project you’ll critique yourself quite harshly. I don’t really like to watch myself back, and anything that I do I watch it once and that’s it gone, I don’t know why but that’s just the way I am as an actor. I’ve never regretted anything that I’ve done, but certainly with ‘Jump’, I couldn’t wok out ways to make it better, it was as good as it could be.
You filmed in Canada a few weeks ago, what was the project you’re working on over there? I’m filming a television show, it’s one of my best friend’s television shows called ‘Republic of Doyle’. My friend is Alan Hawco, I did ‘Closing the Ring’ in 2006 with Alan, and Alan went on along to CDC, it’s basically Canada’s BBC, and said ‘I’m in this Richard Attenborough movie, here’s some of my scripts do you fancy working with me’ and they gave him a pilot. Five years later he’s executive producer, writes, directs, stars in his own show in his hometown beside his family. I take my hat off to anybody who would do that, he got Russell Crowe on as a guest star and the lovely Irish Sean McGinley plays his father on his show.
It’s very big in Canada, it’s on Sky on a station called Alibi, it’s basically him playing a detective and Sean McGinley plays his father; they’re a father and son duo who solve crimes in their little home town of St John. He’s wrote an episode for me called ‘From Dublin with Love’ so I went over to play his long lost cousin, there’s been a bit of trouble and he kind of helps out and they kind of rekindle their old friendship. It’s not normally the type of job that I would do, but because he’s one of my best friends, I’m looking forward to it, it’s going to be a great experience.
How are you at doing a Dublin accent? Ah it’s alright, we’ll see. Dublin’s tough but I’ve always been confident with accents so it’ll be fine.
You’ve dipped in and out of drama and comedy, but have stuck with the comedy more so of late. Do you prefer one genre over the other? I did comedy for ‘Whole Lotta Sole’ and I kind of started out doing comedy strangely enough in the BBC sketch show ‘Dry Your Eyes’, maybe seven or eight years ago. It’s funny, comedy’s not easy, it’s definitely not easy and I take my hat off to anybody that’s really good at it. If you’re an actor you should find the drama a little bit more natural, but sometimes it’s good to mix a little bit of comedy with the drama, it’s good to have both strings to your bow.
You’ve been recognised for both genres, and you won an IFTA Award for Best Actor in 2011 for ‘Swansong: Story of Occi Byrne’. Where do you keep your IFTA Award? My mother keeps my IFTA Award in her living room, she keeps it on display for everyone to see, and I gave it to her because I know it’ll be safe in her hands. That was one of the best nights of my life, and I’m eternally indebted to IFTA for recognising what we did on that film and I feel really really proud that I accomplished it.
The above IFTN interview can also be accessed online here.
Siobhan McKenna was and is regarded as Ireland’s greatest actress. She made few films but she has given excellent performances in the few that she participated in. Her most important films are “Daughter of Darkness2, “Hungary Hill”, “King of Kings” and “Dr Zhivago. Shortly before her death in 1986, she had given a tremendous performance in Tom Murphy’s “Ballingaire”. She was married to the actor Denis O’Dea who predeceased her.
Joan of Arc, surely the most extraordinary of all Christian saints, was convinced, and successfully convinced others, that she was guided by angelic voices. She stepped into the story of her country in the most dramatic way. A peasant girl from the fields, she led the French army to a series of victories at a terrible time for France in the One Hundred Years’ War, bitterly fought, over the succession to the French throne. She was betrayed. On May 30 1431, accused of heresy, she was cruelly burnt alive in a small Normandy town. She was only 19 years of age.
Wonderfully, as British soldiers believed they saw angels over the battlefields of Mons, French soldiers, looking upwards from their own hellish trenches, saw her riding in full armour on horseback through the clouds. She wasn’t yet a certified saint, but French soldiers in the Great War knew Joan of Arc was with them. She was always, after all, devoted to the common soldier who fought and paid for France’s freedom with their lives. They prayed to her, told stories about her, sang about her. After the war, the Vatican hastened to canonise her in 1920.
George Bernard Shaw, capitalising on the still relatively recent canonisation of Joan, brilliantly brought her life to the stage in 1924. It is probably his finest play. Shaw created a provocatively original version of The Maid as a protestant and a nationalist before her time. He had in mind that the famous actress Sybil Thorndike would play the leading role, which she did to wide acclaim. The part has gone on to be a defining role for women.
The challenge was taken up in Galway’s little Irish language theatre when a perfect translation of the play was sent to the directors, who immediately agreed to produce it. The translation was done by a young actress, and fluent Irish speaker, Siobhán McKenna, and the role was to bring her fame beyond her dreams.
The play opened in Galway in December 1950. It was the talk of the town. People were both moved and awed by Siobhán’s portrayal of St Joan. It was a new departure for An Taibhdhearc. No longer was it just sufficient for a play to be in Irish; it had to be of the highest theatrical standard, evidenced by its acting and presentation.
The play was directed by Ian Priestly Mitchell, but Siobhán insisted on certain changes. She refused to work with two members of the cast whom she claimed were not up to speed. The changes she asked for were all made.
In January 1951 the play moved to the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. In the audience was An Taibhdhearc’s old friend Micheál MacLiammóir who was enchanted. He persuaded Siobhán to present the play at his Gate Theatre, but in the original English version.
Again Siobhán’s performance caused a sensation. Audiences wept when Joan, given a choice of being entombed for the rest of her life on a diet of bread and water, or burned at the stake, desperately replied: “You think that life is nothing but not being dead? It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live on bread. It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again climb the hills. To make me breathe foul damp darkness… without these things I cannot live. And by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your council is of the devil.”
From Dublin the play transferred to London, then Paris (where it took the city by the proverbial storm ), and finally to New York. She was featured on the cover of Life magazine; and in 1956 was the first Irish actor to win a Tony Award, the highest accolade that Broadway can confer.
Siobhán was born Siobhán Giollamhuire Nic Cionnaith into a proudly Irish speaking, nationalist family in Belfast, in May 1923. Her mother was Margaret O’Reilly from Longford, and her father Eoghan was something of a mathematical genius. In 1928 he was appointed professor of mathematical sciences at NUIG, and the family moved into the imposing Fort Eyre, in Shantalla.
Siobhán went to school first to the Dominican Sisters at Taylor’s Hill, and then as a boarder to the St Louis Sisters at Monaghan. While a student at NUIG, she began acting at An Taibhdhearc, and showed such promise that Professor Liam Ó Briain (one of the founders of An Taibhdhearc ) recommended her to the Abbey where she was immediately given a contract. As her career developed she had small parts in films and on the London stage. She received praise from the renowned critic Kenneth Tynan for her role in James Forsyth’s Héloise in 1951, the same year that her St Joan took off internationally.
The above “Galway Advertiser” article can be also accessed online here.
Rarely out of work some of Siobhán’s other memorable roles include Pegeen Mike from the Playboy of the Western World, directed by Shelah Richards (later made into a film ). She enjoyed leading parts with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, with Cyril Cusack in Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, and in David Lean’s Dr Zhivago.
Siobhán was the much over-used term, a star, and greatly sought after. In early 1986, the year she died at only 63 years of age, and although seriously ill (of which few people were aware ), she undertook the demanding role of Mammo in Tom Murphy’s Bailegangaire, which was written with her in mind. It was memorably directed by Garry Hynes (herself a Tony Award winner ), to rave reviews. Siobhán’s contribution became a legend.
Siobhan McKenna, a pride of the Irish theater whose vivid Joan of Arc captivated Broadway audiences in 1956, died of a heart attack yesterday after surgery at the Black Rock Clinic in Dublin. She was 64 years old and a resident of the Irish capital.
Miss McKenna’s agent in New York, Milton Goldman, reported that she had been suffering from lung cancer. The actress was to have appeared in a new film directed by John Huston and based on Joyce’s story ”The Dead,” Mr. Goldman said.
Miss McKenna, who was born in Belfast and grew up speaking Gaelic, was a product of the Abbey Theater in Dublin. She began her acting career in 1940 as a semiprofessional at the Gaelic An Taibhdhearc Theater in Galway, Ireland.
She became associated with the Abbey in 1944 and made her London debut in ”The White Steed” in 1947. But she returned to Galway in 1951 to appear as Joan in her own Gaelic translation of Shaw’s ”Saint Joan.” She then did the role in English to great acclaim in Ireland and London. ‘An Immediate Impression’
Theatergoers in New York first saw Miss McKenna in ”The Chalk Garden” in 1955. But it was her vigorous portrayal of Joan that took Broadway by storm the following year.
”A tidy young lady with a broad face, alert eyes and a voluminous voice,” Brooks Atkinson, the theater critic of The New York Times, wrote after the premiere at the Phoenix Theater, ”she makes an immediate impression on the theater, and for the last two or three years has been made a distinct impression on ‘Saint Joan.’ ”
Mr. Atkinson, who believed that Miss McKenna’s interpretation did not fully explore Shaw’s character in all its ramifications, wrote that she ”concentrates on the hearty farm girl who has seen visions and who bullies her way to the Dauphin’s court and the vasty fields of France by her rude vitality, naive camaraderie, brashness and boyish stance.”
”Miss McKenna,” he went on, ”fairly bursts into every scene, and usually at the top of her voice. She reads her lines with a sing-song rhythm that becomes rather hypnotic before the play is over. But the accent is Irish, which makes it particularly attractive to American ears, and the voice is extraordinarily powerful.” ‘The Best St. Joan’
The actress Geraldine Page said yesterday: ”It was the best St. Joan I’ve ever seen. It is one of the greatest performances of the century.” She also called Miss McKenna ”an absolutely extraordinary actress.”
In Ireland, another colleague, Cyril Cusack, called her death ”a great shock and a great loss to the Irish theater and country.”
Miss McKenna also scored an enormous success with a one-woman show, ”Here Are Ladies,” that became a centerpiece of the New York Shakespeare Festival’s comeback season in 1971. In it, she presented a gallery of women by Irish writers she loved and admired: Yeats, Synge, Joyce and Beckett, among others.
Miss McKenna turned the show into a collage of Irish writing, delivered with a caressing brogue and crowned with a powerful reading of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Joyce’s ”Ulysses.” Scheduled for only a short run, it played for 67 performances until Miss McKenna decided the strain of the multiple-role solo evenings was becoming too much for her.
But she took the show on a United States college tour later that year, then performed it, again to much acclaim, in Ireland and Britain, and brought it to Broadway in 1973. A 1971 one-hour film version of the show, broadened to include the sights of Ireland and a suporting cast from the Abbey, was seen on American cable television last year. Spoke
Siobhan McKenna was born on May 24, the year being given variously as 1922 or 1923. As a child, she spoke only Gaelic. After attending a convent school, she gained her first acting experience at Galway University, where she joined the only all-Gaelic reportory theater in Ireland, An Taibhdhearc.
After graduation in 1944, she moved to the Abbey and first appeared in ”The Countess Cathleen,” which marked her stage debut in English. She made her film debut in 1947 in Daphne du Maurier’s ”Hungry Hill.”
More films followed, but Laurence Olivier prompted her to return to the stage in ”Fading Mansions.” Her career then became a steady stream of roles in plays, new and classic, and movies, including ”Doctor Zhivago” and ”Playboy of the Western World.”
Miss McKenna walked the boards of London, Edinburgh, Stratford-on-Avon, Stratford in Ontario, New York and many other places. Among her most recent work in the United States was another one-woman production, ”Dubliners, Exiles, Epiphanies,” with readings from Joyce. She opened it in 1982 at the Joyce Centennial Festival in Washington and took it around the country and to Ireland after that.
Miss McKenna was married for 32 years to the actor Denis O’Dea, who died in 1978. She is survived by their son, Donnacha O’Dea, and a sister, Nancy.
Milo O’SheaMilo O’Shea, Pat Boone & Fidelma Murphy
Milo O’Shea
Milo O’Shea obituary in “The Guardian” in 2013.
Great Irish character actor who starred as Leopold Bloom in Joseph Strick’s adapatation of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and as ‘Friar Laurence’ in the 1968 film version of “Romeo and Juliet”. He also starred with Paul Newman, James Mason and Charlotte Rampling in “The Verdict”. He moved to the U.S. and died in New York in 2013.
Michael Coveney’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
For a performer of such fame and versatility, the distinguished Irish character actor Milo O’Shea, who has died aged 86, is not associated with any role in particular, or indeed any clutch of them. He was chiefly associated with his own expressive dark eyes, bushy eyebrows, outstanding mimetic talents and distinctive Dublin brogue.
His impish presence irradiated countless fine movies – including Joseph Strick‘s Ulysses (1967), Roger Vadim‘s Barbarella (1968) and Sidney Lumet‘s The Verdict (1982) – and many top-drawer American television series, from Cheers, The Golden Girls and Frasier, right through to The West Wing (2003-04), in which he played the chief justice Roy Ashland.
He had settled in New York in 1976 with his second wife, Kitty Sullivan, in order to be equidistant from his own main bases of operation, Hollywood and London. The couple maintained a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park by the Dakota building, and formed a spontaneous welcoming committee for any Irish actors or plays turning up on Broadway.
Although he had worked for Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir at the Gate theatre in Dublin, and returned there in 1996 to appear in a revival of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys opposite his great friendDavid Kelly, his Irish theatre connections belonged to the city of his youth, and he preferred it that way.
His father was a singer and his mother a ballet teacher, so it was inevitable, perhaps, that Milo gravitated towards the stage. He was just 12 when he appeared in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra at the Gate. He completed his education with the Christian Brothers at the Synge Street school (where the actor Donal Donnelly was a classmate) and took a degree in music and drama at the Guildhall School in London; he remained a superb pianist all his life and could – and usually did – sit down at the keyboard and play more or less anything.
He made a London debut in 1949 as a pantry boy in Molly Farrell and John Perry’s Treasure Hunt at the Apollo, appearing in John Gielgud‘s production of the jewellery-theft potboiler alongside Sybil Thorndike, Marie Lohr and Alan Webb. When Queen Mary came backstage, she asked O’Shea where the gems had gone. “Don’t tell her,” whispered Thorndike, “or she won’t come back after the interval.”
Back in Dublin, he appeared in revues at the 37 Theatre Club on Lower O’Connell Street and was part of a group including Maureen Toal, whom he married in 1952, Norman Rodway and Godfrey Quigley at the Globe, as well as appearing at the Pike. He toured America with Louis D’Alton’s company and played a season at Lucille Lortel’s White Barn theatre in Westport, Connecticut.
The 1960s started inauspiciously with a brief run at the Adelphi in London in Mary Rodgers’s Once Upon a Mattress, which lasted just 38 performances. But Brendan Behan had seen and loved Fergus Linehan’s musical Glory Be! and recommended it to Joan Littlewood, who presented it for a season at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in 1961. O’Shea was a hit, leading a cast of young Dublin actors including Kelly and Rosaleen Linehan. Some critics mistook youthful buoyancy for amateurism and likened the show to Salad Days, suggesting it be renamed “Mayonnaise”.
By the end of the decade, O’Shea was fully established on Broadway, winning a 1968 Tony nomination as one of Charles Dyer’s two gay hairdressers in Staircase (the other one was Eli Wallach) and appearing opposite Angela Lansbury as the sewerman in Jerry Herman’s Dear World in the following season.
Around the same time, two major movie performances, following Strick’s admirable but unsatisfactory Ulysses (O’Shea was Leopold Bloom), confirmed his status: as the mad scientist Durand Durand (inspirational name for Simon Le Bon’s pop group Duran Duran), he was seen gibbering ecstatically as he tried to destroy Jane Fonda’s Barbarella with simulated lust waves in his Excessive Machine; and as Friar Laurence in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) he brought brief hope and humour to the carnally doomed coupling of Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey.
And in 1969 he struck sitcom gold in the BBC’s Me Mammy, scripted by Hugh Leonard, in which he played bachelor Bunjy Kennefick, a West End executive with a luxury flat in Regent’s Park and a mountainous mum, played by Anna Manahan, with her apron strings tied round his neck. The show ran for three series to 1971, and O’Shea was now a household face on both sides of the Atlantic.
After the move to Manhattan, he appeared on Broadway as Eddie Waters, the failed old comedian, in Mike Nichols’s production of Trevor Griffiths’s Comedians; as James Cregan in Eugene O’Neill’s extraordinary A Touch of the Poet, with Jason Robards and Geraldine Fitzgerald; and as Alfred Doolittle in a 1981 revival of My Fair Lady, once again starring Rex Harrison.
But he won his second Tony nomination for his luxury-lifestyle-loving Catholic priest, Father Tim Farley, in Bill C Davis’s debut Broadway play, Mass Appeal in 1982. The critic Frank Rich applauded his comic mischievousness and timing, and noted how the mask slipped on the sham of a life of this lost alcoholic soul who was inducting a rebellious young seminarian; the play was finally about secular and religious love, not the Catholic church at all.
Unfortunately, O’Shea did not return to London with Mass Appeal, but with Gerald Moon’s Corpse! at the Apollo in 1984. He played an Irish war veteran trapped in a basement with Keith Baxter; Baxter was playing a pair of effete twins who each wanted to kill the other (without success, alas). The play was as moribund as its title.
O’Shea will survive, though, whenever we catch a glimpse of him in Silvio Narizzano‘s odd version of Joe Orton’s Loot (1970), or as yet another priest in Neil Jordan’s weird and wonderful The Butcher Boy (1997), or as an incredulous inspector in Douglas Hickox’s critic-baiting Theatre of Blood (1973), or holding the ring between Paul Newman and James Mason, his hair slightly longer than usual, as the trial judge in The Verdict (1982).
His last stage appearance was a homecoming of sorts as Fluther Good in Sean O’Casey’s tremendous tenement tragedy The Plough and the Stars 12 years ago at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, directed by Joe Dowling, with Linehan as Bessie Burgess.
He is survived by Kitty and by his two sons, Colm and Steven, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce in 1974.
• Milo O’Shea, actor, born 2 June 1926; died 2 April 2013
Sam Kydd was born in 1915 in Belfast. He featured in many numerous British films since the mid 1940’s including “The Captive Heart”, “The Blue Lamp” and “Quest for Love”. He died in 1982.
Good website on Sam Kydd by his actor son Jonathan Kydd here.
IMDB entry:
Sam Kydd was born on February 15, 1915 in Belfast, Northern Ireland as Samuel John Kydd. He was an actor, known for Orlando (1965), Crane (1963) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959). He was married to Lavender Rosamund Marguerite ‘Pinkie’ Barnes. He died on March 26, 1982 in London, England. He was the father of actor Jonathan Kydd. Irish-born, he lived in England from early childhood. During his acting career, he specialised in playing irrepressible cockney characters. Son of an army officer, he saw military action himself during World War II. Taken prisoner in Calais in 1940, he was interned in a POW camp in Poland for five years. There, he took charge of theatrical activities among the prisoners, writing and staging plays.
The great director John Huston is part of a dynasty which includes his father the actor Walter Huston and his daughter Anjelica Huston. John Huston was born in 1906 in the U.S. b ut became an Irish citizen in 1964, having lived in St. Clerins in Co Galway since the early 1950’s. His major directorial assignments include “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “Beat the Devil”, “Moulin Rouge”, “The Man Who Would be King” and “The Dead”. He has also acted in such films as “The Cardinal” and “Chinatown”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry: An eccentric rebel of epic proportions, this Hollywood titan reigned supreme as director, screenwriter and character actor in a career that endured over five decades. The ten-time Oscar-nominated legend was born John Marcellus Huston in Nevada, Missouri, on August 5, 1906. His ancestry included English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish. The age-old story goes that the small town of his birth was won by John’s grandfather in a poker game. John’s father was the equally magnanimous character actor Walter Huston, and his mother, Rhea Gore, was a newspaperwoman who traveled around the country looking for stories. The only child of the couple, John began performing on stage with his vaudevillian father at age 3. Upon his parents’ divorce at age 7, the young boy would take turns traveling around the vaudeville circuit with his father and the country with his mother on reporting excursions. A frail and sickly child, he was once placed in a sanitarium due to both an enlarged heart and kidney ailment. Making a miraculous recovery, he quit school at age 14 to become a full-fledged boxer and eventually won the Amateur Lightweight Boxing Championship of California, winning 22 of 25 bouts. His trademark broken nose was the result of that robust activity.
John married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Harvey, and also took his first professional stage bow with a leading role off-Broadway entitled “The Triumph of the Egg.” He made his Broadway debut that same year with “Ruint” on April 7, 1925, and followed that with another Broadway show “Adam Solitaire” the following November. John soon grew restless with the confines of both his marriage and acting and abandoned both, taking a sojourn to Mexico where he became an officer in the cavalry and expert horseman while writing plays on the sly. Trying to control his wanderlust urges, he subsequently returned to America and attempted newspaper and magazine reporting work in New York by submitting short stories. He was even hired at one point by mogulSamuel Goldwyn Jr. as a screenwriter, but again he grew restless. During this time he also appeared unbilled in a few obligatory films. By 1932 John was on the move again and left for London and Paris where he studied painting and sketching. The promising artist became a homeless beggar during one harrowing point.
Returning again to America in 1933, he played the title role in a production of “Abraham Lincoln,” only a few years after father Walter portrayed the part on film for D.W. Griffith. John made a new resolve to hone in on his obvious writing skills and began collaborating on a few scripts for Warner Brothers. He also married again. Warners was so impressed with his talents that he was signed on as both screenwriter and director for the Dashiell Hammett mystery yarn The Maltese Falcon (1941). The movie classic made a superstar out of Humphrey Bogart and is considered by critics and audiences alike— 65 years after the fact— to be the greatest detective film ever made. In the meantime John wrote/staged a couple of Broadway plays, and in the aftermath of his mammoth screen success directed bad-girl ‘Bette Davis (I)’ and good girl Olivia de Havilland in the film melodrama In This Our Life (1942), and three of his “Falcon” stars (Bogart, Mary Astorand Sydney Greenstreet) in the romantic war picture Across the Pacific (1942). During WWII John served as a Signal Corps lieutenant and went on to helm a number of film documentaries for the U.S. government including the controversial Let There Be Light(1946), which father Walter narrated. The end of WWII also saw the end of his second marriage. He married third wife Evelyn Keyes, of “Gone With the Wind” fame, in 1946 but it too lasted a relatively short time. That same year the impulsive and always unpredictable Huston directed Jean-Paul Sartre‘s experimental play “No Exit” on Broadway. The show was a box-office bust (running less than a month) but nevertheless earned the New York Drama Critics Award as “best foreign play.”
Hollywood glory came to him again in association with Bogart and Warner Brothers’. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), a classic tale of gold, greed and man’s inhumanity to man set in Mexico, won John Oscars for both director and screenplay and his father nabbed the “Best Supporting Actor” trophy. John can be glimpsed at the beginning of the movie in a cameo playing a tourist, but he wouldn’t act again on film for a decade and a half. With the momentum in his favor, John hung around in Hollywood this time to write and/or direct some of the finest American cinema made including Key Largo (1948) andThe African Queen (1951) (both with Bogart), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Moulin Rouge (1952). Later films, including Moby Dick (1956), The Unforgiven (1960), The Misfits (1961), Freud (1962), The Night of the Iguana (1964) andThe Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) were, for the most part, well-regarded but certainly not close to the level of his earlier revered work. He also experimented behind-the-camera with color effects and approached topics that most others would not even broach, including homosexuality and psychoanalysis.
An ardent supporter of human rights, he, along with director William Wyler and others, dared to form the Committee for the First Amendment in 1947, which strove to undermine the House Un-American Activities Committee. Disgusted by the Hollywood blacklisting that was killing the careers of many talented folk, he moved to St. Clerans in Ireland and became a citizen there along with his fourth wife, ballet dancer Enrica (Ricki) Soma. The couple had two children, including daughter Anjelica Huston who went on to have an enviable Hollywood career of her own. Huston and wife Ricki split after a son (director Danny Huston) was born to another actress in 1962. They did not divorce, however, and remained estranged until her sudden death in 1969 in a car accident. John subsequently adopted his late wife’s child from another union. The ever-impulsive Huston would move yet again to Mexico where he married (1972) and divorced (1977) his fifth and final wife, Celeste Shane.
Huston returned to acting auspiciously with a major role in Otto Preminger‘s epic film The Cardinal (1963) for which Huston received an Oscar nomination at age 57. From that time forward, he would be glimpsed here and there in a number of colorful, baggy-eyed character roles in both good and bad (some positively abysmal) films that, at the very least, helped finance his passion projects. The former list included outstanding roles inChinatown (1974) and The Wind and the Lion (1975), while the latter comprised of hammy parts in such awful drek as Candy (1968) and Myra Breckinridge (1970).
Directing daughter Angelica in her inauspicious movie debut, the thoroughly mediocre A Walk with Love and Death (1969), John made up for it 15 years later by directing her to Oscar glory in the mob tale Prizzi’s Honor (1985). In the 1970s Huston resurged as a director of quality films with Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) andWise Blood (1979). He ended his career on a high note with Under the Volcano (1984), the afore-mentioned Prizzi’s Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987). His only certifiable misfire during that era was the elephantine musical version of Annie (1982), though it later became somewhat of a cult favorite among children.
Huston lived the macho, outdoors life, unencumbered by convention or restrictions, and is often compared in style or flamboyancy to an Ernest Hemingway or Orson Welles. He was, in fact, the source of inspiration for Clint Eastwood in the helming of the film White Hunter Black Heart (1990) which chronicled the making of “The African Queen.” Illness robbed Huston of a good portion of his twilight years with chronic emphysema the main culprit. As always, however, he continued to work tirelessly while hooked up to an oxygen machine if need be. At the end, the living legend was shooting an acting cameo in the film Mr. North (1988) for his son Danny, making his directorial bow at the time. John became seriously ill with pneumonia and died while on location at the age of 81. This maverick of a man’s man who was once called “the eccentric’s eccentric” by Paul Newman, left an incredibly rich legacy of work to be enjoyed by film lovers for centuries to come.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Paddy Considine is an English actor of Irish parents. He was born in 1972 in Burton-Upon-Trent. He is best known for his work with director Shane Meadows. His movies include “In America”, “Dead Men’s Shoes” and on television “Red Riding Trilogy”.
TCM overview:
ossessing an enormous wealth of animated charm, along with a touch of quiet intensity, actor Paddy Considine established himself as a talented performer in his relatively short career. From the time he made his feature debut in friend Shane Meadows’ “A Room for Romeo Brass” (1999), Considine amassed a number of credits that displayed his versatility, particularly in roles that required morally or mentally troubled characters. He delivered fine turns in the stark drama, “Last Resort” (2000), while doing a 180 degree turn for the lighthearted romantic comedy “Born Romantic” (2000). Considine’s exceptional performances often exceeded rather underwhelming material, as so happened with Michael Winterbottom’s “24 Hour Party People” (2002). He shined as an Irish immigrant who struggles to make good in the United States in Jim Sheridan’s critically hailed semi-autobiographical drama, “In America” (2003). Following smaller supporting roles in studio fare like “Cinderella Man” (2005) and “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007), Considine excelled in lower profile projects like “The Cry of the Owl” (2009), “Red Riding: 1980” (Channel 4, 2009) and “Blitz” (20110), which once again allowed the actor to put the full breadth of his talents on display.
Born on Sept. 5, 1974 in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, Considine was raised with his six brothers and sisters in a working-class household in the suburb of Winshill. After finishing his required studies at the Abbot Beyne Senior School, Considine studied acting at Burton College, where he befriended future director and collaborator Shane Meadows. He failed to complete his studies, however, and eventually went on to study photography at the University of Brighton. Considine held a career as a professional photographer until the end of the 1990s, when he returned to acting for his feature debut after Meadows cast him in a starring role for the director’s critically acclaimed comedy drama, “A Room for Romeo Brass” (1999). He played Morell, a strange neighborhood character in working-class Nottingham who ultimately drives a wedge between two 12-year-old friends (Andrew Shim and Ben Marshall) after pursuing the sister of one of the boys. Prior to starring in the film, Considine thought very little about an acting career. But after his memorable turn, Considine rethought the direction of his career.
Considine followed his film debut with another fine performance in the grim drama “Last Resort” (2000), directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. The actor played Alfie, a washed-up boxer who runs a dilapidated arcade. Considine’s endearing performance gave the otherwise stark film a much-needed comic spark. Though released in only 14 theaters in the United States, “Last Resort” did make the festival rounds, which helped expose Considine’s already impressive acting talents to a wider audience. He settled back into a light-hearted romantic comedy for his next project, “Born Romantic” (2000), about three lonely Londoners contemplating life’s greatest mystery: women. After a virtually unnoticeable role in the crime-comedy “The Martins” (2001), Considine was the troubled and volatile music manager, Rob Gretton, in Michael Winterbottom’s nostalgic “24 Hour Party People” (2002). Though unfamiliar with both Gretton and the larger Manchester music scene, Considine impressed Winterbottom enough to be cast in the role. Once again, however, Considine gave a notable performance in a film that was barely seen by audiences, particularly in America.
Considine’s fortunes changed virtually overnight when he appeared in the Oscar-nominated drama “In America” (2003). Helmed by acclaimed director Jim Sheridan, “In America” told the near-autobiographical tale of a man (Considine) who emigrates from Ireland with his family to America in order to realize his dreams of becoming an actor. Told that he would not be playing a character based on Sheridan in the film, Considine nonetheless could not help having the idea in the back of his mind. Considine’s experience on “In America” proved to be the most taxing in his short career, starting with the death of his father two weeks before shooting began. He pointed to the support of his fellow cast members, particularly the two little girls who play his daughters, as helping him get through the shoot. Considine also had trouble performing love scenes with co-star Samantha Morton because of his fidelity to his wife, Shelly – he was so nervous and guilt-ridden that he briefly considered giving up acting over love scenes. Though not nominated for an Oscar like co-stars Morton and Djimon Hounsou, Considine nonetheless turned in his finest performance to date.
From there, Considine teamed with director Pawel Pawlikowski for the romantic drama “My Summer of Love” (2005), before appearing alongside Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger in the Oscar-baiting drama “Cinderella Man” (2005). He next appeared in the speculative historical drama “Stoned” (2005), in which he played a man accused of murdering Rolling Stones founding member, Brian Jones. After reuniting with Meadows to co-write and star as a vengeance-minded brother in the crime thriller “Dead Man’s Shoes” (2006), Considine wrote and directed “Dog Altogether” (2007), a short film partially inspired by the life of his father. Back on the big screen, he had a small role as a newspaper reporter in the blockbuster action thriller, “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007), starring Matt Damon, before he starred on British television in the addiction-themed drama, “My Zinc Bed” (BBC, 2008). In “The Cry of the Owl” (2009), he was a recent divorcé who moves to rural Pennsylvania, where he becomes unhealthily obsessed with a younger woman (Jenny Thierolf). He next starred as a police detective brought in to investigate the Yorkshire Ripper case, only to unearth massive police corruption in the acclaimed “Red Riding: 1980” (Channel 4, 2009), part two of three feature-length television movies based on the famed serial killings. Meanwhile, he followed by playing a charming spiritual guru in the coming-of-age drama, “Submarine” (2011), before starring opposite Jason Stratham in the action thriller “Blitz” (2011).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Lorcan Cranitch is a versatile Irish actor of stage, screen and television. He was born in 1959 in Dublin. He trained at RADA. His film appearances include “Dancing at Lughnasa”, and “The Playboys”. In December 2012 he was starring in Dublin in the stage production of James Joyce’s “The Dead” at the Abbey Theatre as ‘Freddie Mallins’.
“Irish Times” interview:
Lorcan Cranitch is currently appearing in The Talk of the Town, at Project Arts Centre until October 20th
What is the best production you have been in? Tricky one. I’ve been fortunate to be in some great shows, so it would be either the original production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme or The Price by Arthur Miller at the Gate.
And the worst? Easy. A very depressing play, appropriately called Atonement at the Lyric in Hammersmith, many years ago. To this day, I still couldn’t say what it was about. I had a very embarrassing nude scene, one of the other actors – there were two of them – suffered a nervous breakdown, and on Guy Fawkes Night there were more people on stage than in the audience.
What is the best production you have been to? Another tricky one, but I was lucky enough to catch Derek Jacobi playing King Lear recently. Amazing.
Who has been your greatest influence? My parents.
What one show, other than your own, of course, were you really looking forward to in the Dublin Theatre Festival?Hamlet – the Wooster Group have great pedigree.
Opening night – terrific or torture? Slightly torturous. Obviously there’s no way round them, but even if it has been hugely well received, there’s the downer that you have to do it all again tomorrow just as competently and you may well be hungover.
And critics – terrific or torture? Neither, God love them.
Where were you when inspiration struck for your latest role? That question assumes that it has.
What is your pre-show routine? Stand on stage for a bit – reacquaint – shower. Sing. No food!
And post-show? Complain. Bitch, set the world to rights – usual stuff.
What one thing would you say to an aspiring actor at the start of their career? Do your homework. Be on time. And remember, it’s not fair.
The lead has called in sick, the director is drunk, and the ticket sales are poor – must the show go on?No. Of course not. What good will that do?
No one should ever go to the theatre on an empty stomach: what’s the best meal/drink to have before seeing The Talk of the Town? A cocktail.
The best thing about your job is … The variety.
What are you looking forward to when your run is finished? I’ll begin rehearsing the Abbey Theatre’s production ofThe Dead.
Finally, the pitch: Why should someone come and see your show at the DTF? Maeve Brennan is relatively unknown in her home country but, as Roddy Doyle (whose mother was a cousin of Maeve) points out, when it comes to short-story writing, she is up there with the best of them, and her life story is fascinating. This production ticks all the boxes: award-winning author, Emma Donoghue; great director, Annabelle Comyn; great cast, with the terrific Catherine Walker as Maeve. But don’t take my word for it, ask the people who already have tickets – it’s nearly sold out.
The above “Irish Times” interview can also be accessed online here.
Peter O’Toole was a great actor, has just announced his retirement from acting. He was born in 1932 and is an Irish actor of stage and screen. O’Toole achieved stardom in 1962 playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia and then went on to become a highly-honoured film and stage actor. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards – for Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969),The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982) and Venus (2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award acting nominations without a win. He has won four Golden Globes, a BAFTA and an Emmy, and was the recipient of an Honorary Academy Award in 2003 for his body of work. He died in 2013.
The Guardian obituary by David Thompson:
Katharine Hepburn, his consort in The Lion in Winter (1968), once told Peter O’Toole that he was profligate with his talent as an actor. But perhaps O’Toole’s metier was always risk. Even in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), when he was not quite 30, he looked like an elegant wreck, dipped in suntan, his eyes full of fever. O’Toole, who has died aged 81, made his height, his giddy conviction and his theatricality hold that epic together. He was a freed bird in white robes, yet he shuddered like a schoolboy at the thought of torture.
Was O’Toole a great actor? Some said so – not least those who watched him grow up at the Bristol Old Vic in the 1950s. Did he sometimes stray into misguidedness or grotesquerie? Did he occasionally seem “unwell”? He is remembered for the disaster that was his Macbeth at the London Old Vic in 1980 – a performance that sold more steadily the more furiously it was debunked. But that was half the point to being O’Toole. He was a phenomenon and, night to night, moment to moment, you might shift your opinion as he zigzagged in the crosswinds of his own turbulent imagination. He coincided with the method, or realism in acting, but he ignored it.
O’Toole was plainly fascinated by ham acting and theatrical travesty – in one of his most entertaining films, My Favourite Year (1982), he played an actor, Alan Swann, a swashbuckler in the tradition of Errol Flynn. It earned him his seventh Oscar nomination but he lost to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi. Seven Oscar failures was a rueful glory he shared for a while with his old pal, Richard Burton. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary Oscar. He accepted but did not agree to be finished, There would be an eighth “failure” – his resplendent record.
O’Toole was born, he said, in Connemara, western Ireland (others say Leeds, where he grew up), the son of a wandering bookmaker. They were apparently following the horses at the time, but the family moved about a lot. He went to a Catholic school in Leeds and learned to read at an early stage. He was a teenage boozer, getting into scrapes and fights; wrapped parcels for a living for a while; and tried journalism on the Yorkshire Evening Post. He was told his writing was too colourful. After he and a friend hitchhiked to Stratford-upon-Avon, where they sawMichael Redgrave in King Lear, he knew acting was what he wanted to do.
Having undertaken two years’ national service in the navy, in 1954 he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where his fellow students included Alan Bates and Albert Finney. He was a rebel at the acting school, often at odds with his teachers, but he stood out at a time when a new provincial realism was creeping into British acting. Somehow, he could make Connemara and Leeds sound Athenian. After graduating, he got the job at Bristol. In three years there, he played more than 50 roles. These included Vladimir in Waiting for Godot (his favourite play), Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion, Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, the dame in pantomime, and a Hamlet that drew Peter Hall and Kenneth Tynan down to Bristol. He often played men older than he was, and his model at Bristol was Eric Porter – “because of his great looseness and power”.
He left Bristol in 1958, and did Willis Hall‘s The Long and the Short and the Tall in London in 1959 (directed by Lindsay Anderson, with Terence Stamp as his understudy). From there, he went to Stratford for a season, where he played Shylock in a 1960 production of The Merchant of Venice. His Portia, Dorothy Tutin, graciously stepped aside at the final curtain to signal the debut of a new star. He was also Petruchio, opposite Peggy Ashcroft, in The Taming of the Shrew.
By then he was married to the actor Siân Phillips and they had the first of two daughters. It was a marriage full of fights and reconciliations, but all his friends testified to O’Toole’s deep devotion and need for a wife who was his equal in most dramatic flights.
The theatre was poised for its great new talent, even if a few critics noted his tendency to “bark” out the words, but the movies already had their hooks in him. In 1960 he had a small part in Kidnapped, an odd one in Nicholas Ray’s The Savage Innocents and a much better one in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England. He was being talked about. Elizabeth Taylor even interviewed him for Mark Antony in her forthcoming Cleopatra (1963). They met, he whipped her at backgammon, and they agreed to disagree.
It was in 1962 that he was cast by David Lean as a far too tall, much too florid, yet riveting TE Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia. Sam Spiegel, the producer, had wanted Finney (and Marlon Brando before him), and they never got on well. But Spiegel did say O’Toole had “probably the most heady blend of sensitivity and vitality I have known in an actor”. It was a big picture, of course, and O’Toole was often rebellious and difficult. In hindsight, the character and the film are not always clear, but the faults are more in the screenplay than in the acting. He was nominated for an Oscar, and lost to Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird.
He went straight into another movie, Becket (directed by Peter Glenville, 1964), with Burton, and he elected to do Brecht’s Baal on the London stage as it was the kind of rogue play no one else would touch. O’Toole was seldom in the mainstream. But since that flopped, Laurence Olivier honoured him by asking him to play Hamlet in the National Theatre’s London debut at the Old Vic – with Olivier directing. Everyone who had seen O’Toole’s Bristol Hamlet believed that it was more urgent than the London show.
But O’Toole was now an international celebrity – there was another nomination for Becket (he and Burton were edged out by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady). And so his movie career took over, producing dismay: Lord Jim (1965), a failure; What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), an interesting comedy that never lived up to all its starry contributors; How to Steal a Million (1966), a dud with Audrey Hepburn – viewers asked which star was thinner and more wide-eyed; The Bible: In the Beginning (1966) – as several angels – for John Huston; The Night of the Generals (1967); Great Catherine (1968); Murphy’s War (1971); Under Milk Wood (1972) – with Burton and Taylor; Man of La Mancha (1972); Rosebud (1975); Man Friday (1975).
It was an utterly unpredictable course for the actor whose Lawrence and Hamlet had seemed to command the world. There were silly, big-salary choices, to be sure, and the press was full of merry stories about O’Toole’s wildness, his drinking and his carefree attitude. But he had loved Donald Wolfit’s example; he was most excited by melodrama and going to the brink. He was already aware of another role, himself – O’Toole, in interviews, sitting at a bar, melodious and completely drunk. It was a grand part for which he did not have to learn lines.
The Lion in Winter was different – though, in truth, not quite as good as it is supposed to be. But O’Toole and Hepburn relished the union in which she was old enough to be his mother. That was another nomination – bowing to Cliff Robertson in Charly. O’Toole’s schoolteacher in Goodbye, Mr Chips (1969), far too sentimental, then lost to John Wayne in True Grit. The film roles that stand out are his deranged lord in The Ruling Class (1972) and the monstrous movie director Eli Cross in The Stunt Man (1980), two pictures that deliberately court extremism, and which might have been written for O’Toole. He was outstanding in both, but his bravura left vague the question of just how good the films were. He was nominated for both – and he lost to Brando in The Godfather and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. That was a mark of cult work, true to his private spirit, but not close to the public pulse.
For several years he was away from the London stage, yet he worked in Dublin and in 1973 returned to Bristol for a season – working for next to nothing and playing a fine Uncle Vanya. In 1975, he was found to be suffering from pancreatitis. He underwent surgery, lost much of his stomach, then came back from it all to appear in a good adaptation of Geoffrey Household’s novel Rogue Male for British television in 1977.
In 1979, his marriage ended. That year he appeared as Tiberius in theBob Guccione-sponsored version of Caligula, a fairly sordid movie – and unfortunately compared with the BBC’s version of I, Claudius (in which his wife had been a shining player). Far more controversial was his Macbeth, at the London Old Vic in 1980, directed by the film-makerBryan Forbes, with Frances Tomelty as Lady Macbeth. It was not just that critics deplored the concept, the stagecraft and O’Toole’s own playing (monotony was frequently mentioned). Rather, it was the sense that O’Toole had set himself up against the world – that he even fed on the rebukes.
He married the actor Karen Brown in 1983; they had a son, Lorcan, but the marriage did not last long. The work, meanwhile, was often reckless and indifferent. Far from a versatile actor, he had become someone who could play only versions of himself. In which case, in 1989, he was blessed by providence. It came in the form of Keith Waterhouse‘s play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. O’Toole took the part of the alcoholic, fatalistic and self-destructive Spectator columnist with laconic restraint. It played every night to standing ovations and may have been the triumph of O’Toole’s life. Yet there was also his tactful, delicate portrayal of the English tutor in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987).
In 1982, he did George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman in London, and sometimes wavered as he strolled across the stage. On screen, he did almost anything – Svengali (1983), Supergirl (1984), Club Paradise (1986). Much was awful, nothing was dull. And then, in the 1990s, he found another self, the literary autobiographer, and published two volumes about his early life, under the title Loitering With Intent. More atmospheric than factually helpful, they were the works of a real writer and helped alter his public reputation.
With his honorary Oscar, did he think of retiring? Out of the question. He did Bright Young Things (2003), directed by Stephen Fry; he played President Paul von Hindenburg in Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003); he was an incredulous Priam in Troy (2004) and Casanova as an old man in the 2005 mini-series starring David Tennant. Then grace fell upon him, like a fine rain. Hanif Kureishi wrote, and Roger Michell directed, Venus (2006), a small story about a small-time, dying actor and a young woman. It was as touching as anything O’Toole had ever done. He got an eighth nomination, and smiled as the prize went to Forest Whitaker for his Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Still he worked on, and it was characteristic that his Pope in the TV series The Tudors (2008) was as lowdown as his derelict in Venus had seemed aristocratic. In Michael Redwood’s film Katherine of Alexandria, due for release next year, he plays the Emperor Constantine’s orator, Cornelius Gallus.
What can one say, in summary, of so many astonishing performances by a man who had become a warning figure for young actors? He was one of those who make us ponder the terrible stress of the job and its art, its curse and its inspiration.
He is survived by his daughters, Kate and Pat, and Lorcan.
• Peter Seamus O’Toole, actor, born 2 August 1932; died 14 December 2013
The Guardian obituary website can be accessed on-line.
Michalle Fairley was born in Coleraine, Northern Ireland in 1964. She began her career on British television in such series as “Holby City”, “The Bill” and “Inspector Morse”. She starred as ‘Mrs Granger’ in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and now stars in “Game of Thrones”.
Ciaran McMenamin was born in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland in 1975. He is nest known for his performance in the hit TV series “Primeval”. One of his early successes was in 1998 in the series “The Young Person’s Guide to Becoming a Rock Star”. His films include “Titanic Town”, “County Kilburn” and “To End All Wars”. Interview here.
Colin Morgan was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1986. He plays the title role in the BBC television series “Merlin”. His films include “Parked” and “Island”. He has also been featured in “Dr Who” on television.
IMDB entry:
Colin Morgan is a Northern Irish actor, best known for playing the title character in the BBC TV series Merlin. Morgan attended Integrated College Dungannon, winning the ‘Denis Rooney Associates Cup’ for best overall student in the third year, before gaining a National Diploma in Performing Arts from the Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education in 2004. He went on to study at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, where he graduated from in 2007. In November 2010, the Belfast Metropolitan College honored Morgan with an Award of Distinction for his contribution to the Arts
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Stefanie Gubbi)
Graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2007.
He is a vegetarian.
Has a brother named Neil.
His mother, Bernadette, is a nurse, and his father is a painter and decorator.
After studying at the Belfast Institute, he went to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.
Obtained a National Diploma in Performing Arts at Belfast Institute of Further & Higher Education in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2004.
Was still in drama school when he was cast by director Rufus Norris to make his professional debut in the title role of the stage adaptation of DBC Pierre’s Booker Prize winner “Vernon God Little” at the Young Vic in 2007. Colin Morgan has credited this role as his first big break.
Is Lactose Intolerant.
Is a strong swimmer.
Favorite actor is Sean Penn.
IMDB entry above can also be accessed online here.
Allen Leech is one of Ireland’s most promising young actors. He was born in 1981 in Dublin. He had a major role in 2003 in the movie “Cowboys and Angels” followed by “Man About Dog”. He also starred in the 2011 film “Re-Wind” with Owen McDonnell and Amy Huberman. He is currently best known for his part as Branson the driver in the highly popular television series “Downton Abbey”.
“MailOnline” interview:
Tom Branson has emerged as one of the major characters in Downton Abbey. Are you pleased?
It came out of nowhere. When I first joined, I thought I’d be the chauffeur for a couple of episodes, and now here I am running the estate! I love that you can find Branson downstairs chatting to Mr Carson or upstairs having a whisky with Lord Grantham. He’s the only character who transcends the classes. Incidentally, the ‘whisky’ we drink on camera is burnt sugar and water, so when you see Tom having a drink, it’s not alcoholic.
How do you kill time between scenes?
We’ve discovered a great game called Bananagrams. It’s a bit like Scrabble, and Maggie Smith is the champion.
Are you afraid of being killed off, like Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) or Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay)?
Yes, it’s pot luck! Any of us could be caught under a falling tree, or poisoned by Mrs Patmore [the cook]. If I was going to go, I’d like Thomas [Downton’s underbutler] to kill me. We could have a wrestle for the knife and Thomas could win. But don’t make that happen – I don’t want to be killed off!
Tell us about your new film, In Fear…
It couldn’t be further from Downton – and that’s exciting. It’s set in Ireland and is very contained, claustrophobic and frightening. I went to watch it and it genuinely made me jump, which was a bit daft as I knew what was coming.
Do you ever get starstruck?
I was lucky enough to go to the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles earlier this year – Downton won Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series.
Jeff Daniels had been looking in my direction but I assumed he was looking at the cast of Breaking Bad, who were on the next table. I couldn’t believe he’d know who I was when he came up and said hello. We had a drink and I turned into a crazy fan and told him how much I loved him.
What was the last party you went to?
My friend’s birthday last week. We got through the Groucho Club’s entire cocktail menu. I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t feel great the next day.
What do you do in your spare time?
I run a lot. I was supposed to do a marathon this year but unfortunately I got injured beforehand. I’m toying with the idea of doing my first triathlon next year instead.
Do you have a hidden talent?
If I do, it’s so hidden, even I don’t know about it!
What plans do you have for the rest of the year?
I’m going to Australia to watch the Melbourne Cup, which I’m really excited about. Horse racing is big in my family: my mum and brother both own horses. My older brother is going to come with me and that should make the trip even more special.
In Fear is in cinemas now
The above “MailOnline” interview can also be accessed online here.
Emmett J. Scanlan was born in 1979 in Dublin. He has won wide acclaim for his performance as Brendan Brady in “Hollyoaks”, His films include “Blood” and the lead in “Charlie Casanova”.
“Entertainment.ie” 2014 interview:
“From Hollyoaks to Hollywood”, that’s the headline beside Irish actor Emmett J Scanlan, as he graces the cover of the latest issue of Gay Times Magazine, perhaps still best known for his role in the hit series. But Scanlan has been around for a while, appearing in the likes of The Big Bow Wow, The Clinic, MTV show The Phone, and Brendan Gleeson starring soccer dramedy Studs. But while, for now at least, he may still be under the long shadow cast by his homosexual sociopath character in Hollyoaks, 2014 should see all that change for Scanlan. We got a chance to ask him a few questions about his recent past and not too distant future, and as expected, he’s as bracingly honest and funny as you’d want from an Irish interviewee. Entertainment.ie:2013 was a very big year for you, with your run in Hollyoaks coming to an end and your role in hit TV show The Fall, but 2014 looks like it’s going to be even bigger. How are you feeling about your career right now? Emmett Scanlan: 2013 was always going to be a big year for me whether I ended up working or not. It was the end of my 2 and a half year Hollyoaks stint. A choice I needed to make. When you leave a job like that and have nothing, and I mean sweet f**king nothing to go into, it’s frightening, but in a positive way. It helps define what type of character you are going to be. I needed to stretch; I needed to explore new challenges. Everyone seeks that, everyone wants that, but wanting will only leave you wanting. You need a hunger. That’s not necessarily a good thing. But it’s what will drive my career to places I’ve never been. I’ve been blessed with some wonderful characters over the last 5 years. People trusting me with more and more responsibility… so in that respect I’m really happy with how my career is going… every project I’ve been lucky enough to be part of has had great success; this is unusual for me. I was shit when I first started out and my career reflected that. Now that I’m less shit I’ve been enjoying a more fortuitous streak. It really is blind faith when you take on a job. You don’t know if it’s going to be successful, or lead to your next gig and you certainly shouldn’t make the decision to do it based on that, but it’s hard not to. Just roll the dice and cross your fingers. I’ve been lucky in my choices but I do work hard. Really f**king hard. I work. Every day. E.ie:You’ve been a working actor for about a decade before the role of Brendan Brady came along, which is probably how most people today would’ve been introduced to you. Now that you’ve had some time away from the show, how do you feel about your time there?
ES: Hollyoaks will always be a special place for me. Brendan Brady was such an interesting character to dance with. The people I worked with there were some of the most talented and beautiful.
Don’t think I’ve told anyone this, but apparently when I got the job I told my sister Orla that I was gonna make Brady the baddest guy on TV. I was gonna take home Villain of the Year for Oaks in my first year… I didn’t know how, I just knew at that time I would. Now I don’t remember saying that, AT ALL, if anything it sounds arrogant and I really don’t mean it to be… Truth be told I’d never have imagined the success that character would have had, ‘tash and all…. Anyway long story short I won the award…
My point is this; if you can hold it in your head you can hold it in your hand. Hollyoaks gave me that chance. And I will always be indebted to them
E.ie: The Fall was a massive hit last year, and you’ll be returning to the role for Season Two. Can you give us any hints as to what viewers can expect?
ES: The Fall was another show that I knew I had to be part of. The scripts were beautiful… I didn’t care what part I got I just knew I had to get a part. I wanted to help tell Allan’s (Cubitt, Programme Creator) story. It came straight after Oaks and DC Glen Martin was the complete antithesis to Brendan Brady. It was a perfect next step. I’m so humbled to have been part of it, to continue to be part of it.
At the moment I’m filming the second season. 6 episodes. I think the scripts are even better than last years, which is saying something. Cubitt is a genius. And producers Julian (Stevens) and Gub (Neal) magnetic. This was never going to be a one series show. The fact it was so popular and we get to continue telling this story is a f**king blessing. There’s a great atmosphere on set. After the IFTA wins and BAFTA nominations, it feels like being part of something really special. To be fair it has always felt like that.
E.ie: What is it like working with the legend that is Gillian Anderson?
ES: I’m filming all this week with Gillian. She’s f**king wonderful to watch. Effortless. Experienced. She doesn’t have an off day. Same can’t be said for me… I’m learning. Every day. And that’s all I can ever ask for. But I need to learn faster and there’s no better actor to learn from.
E.ie: And is Jamie Dornan really THAT handsome in real life? ES: Is Jamie really that handsome?? What type of f**king question is that?? You asking me or Brendan Brady?? On a scale of 1 to Jamie, I give myself a 2… I blame my parents…
Jamie is a top bloke. A Man United fan, a father and is riding the wave to stardom… Richly deserved. Why? Because he takes risks… You can’t lose if you take risks. Regardless of the outcome.
E.ie: This year you’ll also be appearing in the new series of BBC zombie-drama In The Flesh. What can you tell us about it?
ES: In The Flesh is such a wonderfully insane original spin on an otherwise undead genre. The first season saw the zombies re-institutionalised back into society, 4 years after the first rising. A breakthrough in medical science allowed these now “partially deceased syndrome sufferers” to return from their rabid state to a state of “normality”. A drug once administered helping reconnect the brainwaves and kick start their consciousness again. The results made for some really interesting viewing. I thought it was a perfect first season. It didn’t cater for an audience, it simply said “This is who we are, take us or leave us…” Season 2 follows the evolution of this. It brings outside forces into the town of Roarton… People like Simon and Maxine to shake things up.
E.ie: The zombie genre has always been a metaphor for whatever social issue is prominent at the time, what would you say is the main theme of In The Flesh?
ES: What’s the main theme?? You’re getting too clever for me now… Eh… Acceptance. Alienation. Hatred. Love. They’re all themes heavily saturated in Dominic (Mitchell)’s scripts… And then some.
E.ie: As if that weren’t enough, you’re also in this summer’s big Marvel superhero movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy. You even pop up in the trailer, with Karen Gillan holding a knife to your throat! What can you tell us about your character, and of the film in general?
ES: I can’t tell ye anything about it! I only ever saw the couple of scenes I was in. The script was heavily Guarded. But that’s assuming the scenes even make the final cut. For all I know, come August you’ll see my foot cross through back of shot and that’s it. Mum will be so proud. But regardless of that, one thing that can’t be cut by anyone is the experience I had, the friends I made, the geniuses I worked with, the sets that would make small all sets that have gone before. One thing that can’t be cut are the memories. Thank you James Gunn, my Irish American brother!
E.ie: Outside of these big projects, you also have roles in some independent movies, like Patrick’s Day, which has you reuniting with Charlie Casanova director Terry McMahon, and assassin thriller Breakdown. What is the biggest lure for you on a new project? Would it be the script, or the director, or the co-stars, or something else entirely?
ES: Terry is a truly brilliant creator. He called me in for Patricks Day more so because of Charlie Casanova. The scene we shot didn’t fit the movie. We knew that when we shot it, but it was just great to fly home and hang with him for a couple of days. You’ll catch the scene on the DVD extras I’m sure. My ideal role would be in Terry’s movie Dancehall Bitch. I’ve waited many years for this one. I can’t wait to tear it apart. That’s the aim. My ambition.
Breakdown was an awesome experience. I did that solely because I wanted to work with Craig Fairbrass and the main man himself James Cosmo. I’ve been a fan of both since Cliffhanger and Braveheart.
Why do I choose a project? Sometimes it’s the director, sometimes it’s the cast, sometimes it’s the story, the script. What it never is, is the money. Ideally you need a great story, a great director and a great cast to make anything work. It’s like a great song needs the lyrics, the instrumental, the voice. If one of those is lacking, it’s like learning to swim with one arm band. It starts to get messy.
E.ie: Earlier on in your career, you were just as busy behind the camera as you were in front, writing and producing and directing short films. Do you ever get the itch to return to that side? ES: I wrote, directed and produced movies because at that time no one was hiring me. And rightly so. I was rubbish. But I needed to improve. And the only way I could see myself doing that was by getting my hands dirty. If they weren’t going to give me a job, I’d f**king make my own jobs. Hire myself. Cast myself. It was an incredible learning experience. But no, I don’t think I’d go back there. I loved it, but my passion is living the character. Not telling the story. I need to leave that to the professionals. Those heroes who can make us forget for 2 hours.
E.ie: Lately, with the likes of The Guard, In Bruges, What Richard Did and Citadel to name just a few, there has been a massive resurgence in international attention for Irish movies and talent. And with films like Charlie Casanova, Stalker and Collider, there seems to have been an expansion in what Irish films can actually be about. As an actor involved with Irish and international cinema, what’s your opinion on the current state Irish movies?
ES: The Irish are storytellers. We have been peppered throughout history with some of the best storytellers the world has ever seen. Irish cinema and Irish movies seem to be getting better and better. Intelligent and thought provoking. Our dark humour translates across the word. I think we need to continue to take risks, invest in home grown talent. We have a very different way about us. A style that separates us. I watched Calvary yesterday. It’s a movie that you had to work for. This wasn’t popcorn cinema, not that there’s anything wrong with that, it was just pure cinema. A great story, a dark story, expertly told. More of that please.
E.ie: And finally, any advice for aspiring actors out there?
ES: Advice? A month ago I was flown out to LA to test for the leading role in a new NBC/Warner show, Constantine. It was between me and one other fella, a lovely guy called Matt Ryan. We both signed wonderful contracts for a gig we had yet to score. Such is the American way. It was a game changer. A life changer. I’d already spent the money I was going to earn in my head 10 times over. I flew back home feeling confident I did a good job.
Next day I woke up to the news I didn’t get it. I was happy for Matt. But that didn’t stop it from hurting. For 45mins I was numb. I was due on set for Breakdown and all I could do was stare into space wondering what the point of all that was, what was my lesson? Why all those sleepless nights in LA? Don’t get me wrong, I met some really great people. Worked with legends like Daniel Cerone, David Goyer, Neil Marshall and Felicia Fasano. People who are at the top of their game. With resumes that would make your sphincter clench. But what was the point of all that if I didn’t book the job?
And then I realised. That WAS the f**king point. To meet them. My journey wasn’t to play Constantine, it was to meet these people. I was just looking in the wrong direction. I will work with these people again, just not as Constantine. And that’s my story.
Every time we think we’re being rejected from something good, we’re being re directed to something better. You have to believe that. Don’t take it personally. Otherwise this game will destroy even the best of us. Hope is everything, because without it we have nothing. BELIEVE and never give up. But above all else, f**king enjoy it. I am.
The above “Entertainment.ie” interview can also be accessed online here.
Flora Montgomery was born in 1974 in Northern Ireland. She made her television debut in 1995 in an episode of “The Governor”. Other television appearances were on “Heat of the Sun”, “Mosley” and “Lewis”. Films include “When Brendan Met Rrudy” in 2000 and “Goldfish Memory” in 2003.
IMDB entry:
Theatre has been as prevalent in Flora’s career as film and television. She won the Irish Times Best Actress Award for her role as the lead in Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Other ‘classic’ roles include Yelena in Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, Ophelia in Hamlet and Katherina in Taming of The Shrew. She has worked with many contemporary playwrights such as Neil LaBute who directed her in his monologue ‘Bash’. She performed in the world premier of ‘The Reckoning’ a two-hander with Jonathan Pryce, and also in the award winning Dinner, both in the West End. Flora has also recorded numerous radio plays, most recently the Oscar winner Frederic Raphael’s Glittering Prizes. Flora grew up by the shores of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. She was educated in Belfast and London, and trained in Dublin.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: self
2003: Named as one of European films’ Shooting Stars by European Film Promotion. She is a descendant of Scottish laird Sir Hugh Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery, known as one of the “founding fathers” of the Ulster-Scots. Daughter of William Howard Clive Montgomery of Rosemount House and of Greyabbey, Newtownards, Ards, County Down, Ulster, and second wife (m. 4 Dec 1965) Daphne Bridgeman (b. 9 Apr 1940) of the Viscounts Bridgeman and of the Earls of Bradford, Viscounts Newport, Barons Bradford and Bridgeman Baronets, of Great Lever, who is a descendant of Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. Her older brother and sisters are Hugh Geoffrey Clive Montgomery (b. 27 Sep 1966, married at Dunkeld Cathedral, Dunkeld, Perthshire, 5 Sep 2009 to Laura Campbell), Rose Evelyn Montgomery (b. 26 May 1968) and Frances Mary Montgomery (b. 29 May 1970, married 3 Sep 1994 to Mark Henry Leo Adams, b. 8 May 1966).
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Ruth Bradley was born in 1987 in Dublin. In 2007 she starred in the film “Stardust” followed ib “In Her Skin”. She is in the series “Primeval”.
IMDB entry:
Ruth Bradley was born on January 24, 1987 in Dublin, Ireland. She is an actress, known for Grabbers (2012), Flyboys (2006) and In Her Skin (2009). When she was 18 she went to Trinity College Dublin to study drama and languages. After three weeks she dropped out of student life knowing that that lifestyle wasn’t for her. She then moved to London to pursue acting full time. Her mother is IFTA winning actress Charlotte Bradley. She lived in Newfoundland Canada until she was five and then moved to Ireland. Her sister is IFTA nominated actress Roisin Murphy. Bradley’s first screen appearance’s were in 2002 in Ultimate Force (as Georgia Gracey) and Sinners (as Angela). Bradley won the IFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2007 for “Stardust”. Bradley won a Best Actress award at the Milan International Film Festival for her performance in “In Her Skin” (2010
Jack MacGowran was born in Dublin in 1918. He is primarily associated with the stage was though the works of Samuel Beckett. He has though made a considerable impact on film. His film debut came in 1951 in “No Resting Place”. The following year he made “The Quiet Man”. Other movies include “Cul-de-Sac” in 1965, “The Fearless Vampire Killers”, “Doctor Zhivago” and in 1973, “The Exorcist”. He died the same year.
IMDB entry:
Jack MacGowran, the great Irish character actor known for his roles in the plays of Samuel Beckett, was born on October 13, 1918 in Ireland. He established his professional reputation as a member of the Abbey Players in Dublin, but he won his greatest fame for assaying Beckett’s characters onstage. (In 1971, MacGowran would win the Obie Award for Best Performance By an Actor assaying “Beckett” on the off-Broadway stage.)
MacGowran’s appearance as the Squire’s right-hand man in John Ford’s paean to Ireland, The Quiet Man (1952) introduced9 him to world cinema. He moved to London in 1954, where he joined The Shakespeare Company (before it won the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II and added the sobriquet “Royal” to its name). At the Shakespeare Company, he became friends with fellow Irishman-abroad Peter O’Toole, with whom he would co-star in Richard Brooks’s Lord Jim (1965) (1965) a decade later. In New York, he appeared as Joxer, one of the greatest roles in modern Irish drama, in the Broadway musical “Juno”, which was based on ‘Sean O’Casey”s 1924 masterpiece “The Shame of Mary Boyle (1929)”. Fittingly, he played O’Casey’s brother Archie in Young Cassidy (1965), one of John Ford’s last films (which the director had to abandon due to ill health).
One of his only movie leads came with 1968’s Wonderwall (1968), an exercise in “mod” cinema (as genre that ironically harkened back to the first cinema, that of the silent screen), a film that is remembered mostly for ‘George Harrison”s score. By that time, MacGowran had established himself as the actor to go to for roles calling for an impish, Puckish character. He was in great demand for comedies, such as the Oscar-winning ‘Tom Jones (1963)_ (Best Picture of 1963) and Start the Revolution Without Me (1970). In the classical genre, he memorably played The Fool to the great ‘Paul Scofield”s watershed interpretation of King Lear (1971) in Peter Brooks’s 1971 film that captured Scofield’s magisterial performance, arguably the greatest interpretation of Lear in the 20th Century.
After starring in the first London production of Beckett’s “Endgame”, MacGowran began a busy career as a character actor in motion pictures. Director Roman Polanski used him twice, as a gangster in his absurdist Cul-de-sac (1966) and as Professor Abronsius, the Vampire Hunter, in his horror film parody The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), a role that was written especially for him. His last film was a more straightforward horror picture, the 1973 blockbuster The Exorcist (1973), in which he played a doomed film director.
Jack MacGowran died on January 31, 1973, of complications from influenza, which he had caught in London during a flu epidemic. The cinema and the stage lost a unique talent that never has been replaced.
The aboce IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Des McAleer is a terrific character actor who was born in Belfast in 1952. He seems to specialise in ‘hard’ men and is a welcome presence on film and in television.He made his film debut in “Anne Devlin” with Brid Brennan in 1984. Other movies include “Hidden Agenda” in 1990,”Poor Beast in the Rain” and “This Is the Sea”.
Cindy O’Callaghan was born in Ireland in 1956. In 1971 she was brought to Hollywood by Walt Disney studios to film “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” with Angela Lansbury. She returned to England to continue her studies. Her other film appearances include “Hanover Square” in 1979. In 1980 she starred in the television series about nursing entitled “Angels”.
“Wikipedia” entry:
O’Callaghan is probably most famous for her childhood role of ‘Carrie Rawlins’ in the Disneyclassic film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), where she starred opposite Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson. She has commented “filming Bedknobs was an incredible adventure. There I was, a working class girl from West London suddenly living on a film set in Los Angeles. My mum, who came with me, would race to the studio canteen every morning and then shake with excitement when celebrities like Rock Hudson came in to get their breakfast. I was just as star struck. I had to go to school for two hours every morning before filming, and would often be sitting in class next toDonny Osmond, whom I had a big crush on. We lived in a council house in London, but in Hollywood we had a plush apartment with its own pool. I got the role after casting directors trawled schools looking for children with London accents. I was asked to attend an audition at Pinewood, where I had to stand up and tell a funny story. I talked about how horrible my older brothers were to me. I was a big fan of Mary Poppins and couldn’t believe I was going to be in a Disney film. When I returned to Britain, my school friends were massively jealous and stopped talking to me. It marred the premiere for me. After a few unhappy months, I decided to use my fee of £3,000 to attend a private school that specialised in drama.”[2]
O’Callaghan managed to maintain—in her own words—”an averagely successful career”, doing lots of theatre as well as television work.[2] She has appeared in numerous television programmes throughout the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s, including ITV‘s The Bill, Casualty, Specials, Boon, Rumpole of the Bailey, Woof! and as Linda Kennedy in the BBC soap opera Triangle, among others. She has also appeared in films, including Hanover Streetand I.D.
O’Callaghan attended university in 2000, and in 2004 it was reported that she had given up acting to become a child psychologist. She commented “Four years ago, I decided to go to university and am now training to be a child psychologist. I just wanted to do something that was more fulfilling.”[2] However, O’Callaghan has appeared on television since this time, in the 2005 documentary The 100 Greatest Family Films, where she discussed the movieBedknobs and Broomsticks, along with co-stars Angela Lansbury and Ian Weighill, who played Charlie Rawlins in the film.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Marion O’Dwyer was born in 1960 in Dublin. She had a major role as the friend of Anjelica Huston in “Agnes Browne” in 1999. Other movie roles include “Colour Me Kubrick” and “Ondine”.
“Irish Examiner”:
Sunday, September 16, 2012
By Hilary Fennell
One of the reasons I act is because I love figuring out a character.
I often liken it to doing crosswords, the figuring out part. Lots of actors love crosswords, myself included.
A Woman of No Importance, the Oscar Wilde play that I’m in at the moment, is packing them in. I love playing Lady Hunstanton. It’s unusual for me to play a lady of such high status! But she has a very warm heart and she’s a bit scatty, so I suppose we have quite a lot in common.
My worst habit is being lazy around the home and all that side of things. It’s a bit chaotic as I’m not very organised.
As an actor, it can be hard to manage your time off as you’re either madly busy or there’s nothing very much happening at all. At the moment, things are hectic as I’m rehearsing for a play in the Absolut Fringe during the day and appearing in The Gate at night. But I enjoy the changes of pace. The down side is that this business can affect relationships as the work becomes so important.
My first job was in a radio play that my father produced. He had been an actor himself before he went on to run the radio drama department in RTÉ.
When I told them I wanted to act, my parents were keen that I had something to fall back on. So, I did a secretarial course and got a job in the bank and acted at night until I got the chance to go full time. I think my mum shed a few tears at that point.
Michael Colgan in The Gate was always very encouraging. I had a lot of firsts in The Gate – my first few lines in a grown-up production and then my first proper part in Fathers and Sons. When Michael gave me the part, I asked him if I was actually getting paid? That made it pretty hard to negotiate my salary. After that, I got an agent!
Going full time into acting didn’t take much courage. It was what I’d always wanted.
At the moment, I’m writing a play in collaboration with my good friend and fellow actor Maria McDermottroe. I’m enjoying the process, I did a radio play before but this is my first attempt at actually performing my own work.
One of the biggest challenges life has thrown at me was losing my dad. He was ill for a few years. When someone dear to you passes away, you learn how to make it part of you. You certainly become a better person.
If I could change one thing in our society, I’d make sure every person got the same top quality health care. It’s appalling that we haven’t sorted that one out yet.
You need to be health conscious in this game, as the merest sore throat could have ramifications on stage. I’d say 80% of the time it’s healthy organic stuff and the other 20% its super noodles.
It’s important to live by some moral code. I can’t say I believe in God the way we were brought up to do so but I certainly pray in the wings before I go on.
My father always told me that the time to be nervous is when you are not nervous. The terror before a first night eases off as you get into the run. You learn to control the nervous energy and turn it to positive use and it can be what gives you your edge.
My guilty pleasure has to be trashy TV, stuff like X Factor and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. At least with that it won’t take over your life. They’re only in the jungle for three weeks.
I don’t have great self-discipline around money, but I admire it in others. Budget? What budget?
So far, life has taught me to be kinder than you need to be as you never know what the person you are dealing with is going through.
The above “Irish Examiner” page can also be accessed online here.
Maureen Potter was one of Ireland’s best loved performers. She was born in 1925 in Dublin. She was a popular child performer during the 1930’s. She had a long professional association with the actor Jimmy O’Dea and they spent several years in various touring shows with the occasional legit stage performance such as “Finian’s Rainbow”. In her later years she acted in dramatic roles such as “Juno and the Paycock”. Her few film performances include “The Rising of the Moon” in 1957, Gideon’s Day” and “Portrait of the Artist s A Young Man” in 1977. She died after a long illness in 2004.
Stephen Dixon’s “Guardian” obituary:Ireland’s best-loved entertainer, Maureen “Mo” Potter, who has died aged 79, enjoyed a 70-year career that embraced variety, pantomime, television, cinema and straight theatre. She was in the spotlight from the time she became the junior Irish dancing champion at the age of seven until ill-health forced her into retirement two years ago.
Billed as the Pocket Mimic, she toured Britain as a Shirley Temple impersonator with Jack Hylton’s band in the 1930s, alongside GH Elliott, Robb Wilton, the Crazy Gang, Hetty King and Wilson, and Keppel and Betty. She appeared at the London Palladium and, in 1938, performed in front of Hitler in Berlin. Enchanted by her performance, he sent her a handwritten note, which she proudly showed to her mother, who promptly threw it in the waste bin.
Potter stood just under 5ft in height, but there was nothing small about her personality and voice. Years of loneliness touring as a child – she borrowed a birth certificate because she was officially too young to work – made her appreciate her own fireside in Dublin, and she spent almost all her career in Ireland, in spite of overseas offers.
Born in the Dublin suburb of Fairview, she was discovered performing in local clubs by Ireland’s most popular comedian, Jimmy O’Dea, who put her in one of his pantomimes when she was 10. Two years later, she joined Hylton’s troupe.
After the war, she resumed a professional association with O’Dea that was to last for 30 years. Each epitomised the archetypal “Dub” – impoverished but resilient and proud, contemptuous of authority, and quick with the smart answer and the withering put-down – and they worked together brilliantly. Potter began as O’Dea’s “feed”, but, by the time of his death in 1965, the public saw her as her mentor’s equal.
She became the queen of pantomime at Dublin’s Gaiety theatre, most notably working with comedian and dancer Danny Cummins, and starred in a comedy show, Gaels Of Laughter, that ran for 15 summers. She was a fine singer and tap-dancer, but what captivated the public were her comic characters, like the exasperated mother of the 14-year-old Christy, and the Dublin “auld wan”, a version of the duologues she had performed with O’Dea as Dolores And Rose.
For generations of Irish children, Potter was an introduction to the magic world of theatre. In her pantomimes, she made a point of memorising the names of birthday children during the interval, then reeling them off in the second half without a prompt card – her record was 67. After the show, she would entertain them, drinking milk to set a good example, though with a tot of whiskey in it.
A woman of great sharpness, dignity and humility, Potter treated everyone she met – from the Taoiseach to Dublin street traders – with warmth and respect. Even the poet Patrick Kavanagh, as the grumpiest man in Dublin, once walked up to her and said: “Do you know what? You’re not a bad little woman at all.”
However, years of pratfalls and tap-dancing took a toll on Potter’s health, at a time when traditional variety was anyway in decline. So, with the adaptability of an old pro, she changed direction and became a straight actor. She appeared, to much acclaim, in several plays, notably at the Gate as Maisie Madigan in Sean O’Casey’s Juno And The Paycock (1986) – the production also had a New York run – and as Mrs Henderson in Shadow Of A Gunman (1996).
Potter was given the freedom of Dublin in 1984 and an honorary degree by Trinity College in 1988. In 1999, her life was celebrated at the Gaiety theatre, and, two years later, she became the first star to put her handprints in the theatre’s walk of fame. She made many television appearances in her later years, and wrote a series of children’s books.
In 1959, she married Jack O’Leary, an army officer she had known since 1943; she said she fell for him when she saw him, resplendent in his uniform, eating a bag of chips. The real reason probably involved a shared sense of humour, for O’Leary wrote most of Potter’s subsequent material. He, and their two sons, survive her.
· Maureen Potter, comedian, dancer and actor, born 1925; died April 7 2004
The above “Guardian” article can also be accessed online here.
Potter, Maureen (1925–2004), variety artiste, comedian, and actress, was born Maria Philomena Potter (the baptising priest supposedly refused to countenance ‘Maureen’ as an acceptable Christian name) on 3 January 1925 at 7 St Joseph’s Terrace, Philipsburg Avenue, Fairview, Dublin, the only daughter among three children of James Benedict Potter, a commercial traveller, who died when Maureen was seven, and his wife Elizabeth (née Carr); Maureen was a fifth-generation Dubliner. Her mother was a talented singer, who shared a concert platform with John McCormack (qv) and Margaret Burke Sheridan (qv). Reluctant to commence her schooling, at age five Maureen agreed to attend her first day at St Mary’s national school, Fairview, on condition that she be allowed also to take dancing lessons. Duly enrolled in dancing classes locally, she proved remarkably talented, becoming at age seven all-Ireland junior dancing champion. Referred to the city-centre dance school of Connie Ryan on Abbey Street – the training school for juvenile dancing troupes who performed in the principal Dublin theatres – she soon was appearing in variety shows in Dublin and elsewhere. Throughout a sixty-year career in show business, dancing remained Potter’s first love.
CHILD STAR
While performing in the Star cinema stage show in Bray, Potter was scouted, on Ryan’s urging, by Jimmy O’Dea (qv), Ireland’s leading contemporary stage comedian, who placed her, at age ten, in his 1935 Christmas pantomime, ‘Jack and the beanstalk’, in Dublin’s Olympia theatre, as a fairy guarding the giant’s castle; with her precocious talent for mimickry, she also performed a sketch impersonating Dublin’s colourful lord mayor, Alfie Byrne(qv), costumed in miniature morning suit and stick-on moustache. After appearing in Dublin as the Pocket Mimic in the stage show of visiting English band leader and showman Jack Hylton, at age 12 she left school and toured with Hylton’s troupe throughout Britain and on the Continent (1937–9) – bearing a borrowed birth certificate because she was two years under Britain’s minimum legal working age – presented as a Shirley Temple impersonator, costumed and coiffed accordingly, an image that she loathed, and in later life remembered as totally incongruous with her features and physique. Making a huge impression while touring Germany in 1938 (owing to the novelty character there of child entertainers), she performed at the Scala theatre, Berlin, before the top Nazi leadership – including Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels – and was presented with a commemorative wreath; on her return to Dublin her mother angrily binned the memento, exclaiming ‘That filthy man, Hitler!’ (The likelihood that the incident occurred only after Potter’s returning to her Dublin home upon the British declaration of war in 1939 lends credence to what might otherwise be suspected as a revisionist recollection.)
PARTNERING O’DEA
Back in Dublin, Potter became a regular member of O’Dea’s company, appearing on the Dublin stage in his annual Christmas pantomimes and summer revues, and touring in variety theatres throughout Ireland and occasionally, after the war, in Britain. Successfully making the transition from child star to adult entertainer, Potter danced, sang, and performed verbal and physical comedy, moving swiftly from minor soubrette roles to regularly setting up O’Dea’s punch lines as his straight ‘feed’, becoming in time his comedy partner, working alongside him as a teamed equal, and allotted a solo or lead spot in every show. Her physicality suited comedy; a shade under five feet (1.52 m) in height, with a round, elfen face, and large, bulbous, twinkling eyes, she was a wren-like presence on the stage: tiny and rotund, darting hither and thither with restless energy, but with a massive speaking and singing voice that issued incongruously from the diminutive frame. Both she and O’Dea (who, at 5 ft 4 in (1.62 m), was as small a man as she was a woman) based their comedy to a large extent on playing the stereotypical working-class ‘Dub’: ‘impoverished but resilient and proud, contemptuous of authority, and quick with the smart answer and the withering put-down’ (Guardian, 13 April 2004). Potter’s recurring comic parts included the cheeky daughter of O’Dea’s most celebrated character, street-trader Biddy Mulligan, ‘the pride of the Coombe’; and Dolores, the ‘fur hur from Furview’, a young, impetuous, and ingenuous Dublin ‘wan’, in tandem with O’Dea’s faded and worldly-wise Rose.
STRAIGHT THEATRE
Though her forte was always pantomime and variety, Potter first played the legitimate stage for a period in the latter 1950s. She performed opposite Cyril Cusack (qv) in two plays at Dublin’s Gaiety theatre in 1956: a revival of ‘The golden cuckoo’ by Denis Johnston (qv), directed by the author, in which she made ‘an uproarious success of her first straight comedy part’ playing a charwoman ‘with itchy fingers and a tongue of vitriol’ (Irish Times, 26 June 1956); and as the Lion in ‘Androcles and the lion’ by George Bernard Shaw (qv). She joined a galaxy of Dublin comics (including O’Dea, Milo O’Shea (qv), Genevieve Lyons, and Aiden Grennell (1920–2001)) who supported Hilton Edwards (qv) in ‘The man who came to dinner’ (1957); playing the hyper-efficient, but love-struck, secretary of Edwards’s Sheridan Whiteside, she ‘subdue[d] her broader comedy gifts to emerge with a most efficiently controlled job of straight acting’ (Irish Times, 11 June 1957). She appeared with O’Dea in the first Irish production of the musical ‘Finian’s rainbow’ (1957); with Micheál MacLiammóir (qv) in his stage adaptation of ‘The informer’ (1958), from the novel by Liam O’Flaherty (qv); and in ‘Harvey’ (1959), the Pulitzer Prize winning comedy by Mary Chase. In Johnston’s ‘The dreaming dust’ (1959), she played Vanessa to Edwards’s Jonathan Swift (qv), as well as ‘a couple of neat Dublin character bits on the side’ (Irish Times, 22 September 1959).
Potter married (30 September 1959) John (‘Jack’) O’Leary , a career army officer three years her senior, whom she had known from the early 1940s; they had two sons, and resided in Clontarf. (Six days before her marriage, Potter had been bridesmaid at the wedding of the recently widowed O’Dea to Ursula Doyle.) Quiet and mild-mannered, with a dry humour, O’Leary complemented Potter’s high-strung ebullience. Hearing her rehearsing lines at home, he would suggest improvements, and eventually became her main scriptwriter, especially of her solo stage and radio sketches.
VARIETY HEADLINER
By the early 1960s Potter was headlining her own variety shows, while still working regularly with O’Dea. She appeared in his swansong, a Gaiety revival of ‘Finian’s rainbow’ (summer 1964). After O’Dea’s death (January 1965), Potter headlined the Gaiety’s annual pantomimes for the next two decades, supported for many years by comedian and singer Danny Cummins (1914–84), and in later years by Brendan Grace, Red Hurley, and others. Thus, from 1932, and on the Gaiety stage from 1939, till her retirement from the genre in 1986, Potter performed in Dublin pantomime in every Christmas season save two: when pregnant (1962/3), and during O’Dea’s terminal illness (1964/5). She described pantomime as her favourite professional activity, owing to ‘all those gleefully participative children’ (Irish Times, 8 April 2004), and named her favourite panto titles as ‘Tom Thumb’ and ‘The pied piper of Hamelin’, the latter because of the inclusion of children in the cast. She was renowned for an uncanny capacity to memorise long lists of names of individual children and groups in an audience, and acknowledge each from the stage before the final curtain. Further belying the actor’s proverbial wariness of performing with children and animals, as a confirmed animal lover (especially devoted to cats), she was obsessively solicitous of the welfare of animals employed in her stage shows (adamantly opposed to blood sports, especially hare coursing, she participated in protests on the issue). Her career having been launched at a time when pantomime was an essential part of most every child’s Christmas, and many a person’s first experience of live theatre, through her perennial skill and boundless enthusiasm for the genre, alongside her enduring personal popularity, Potter did much to preserve the viability of pantomime in Ireland, despite profound cultural changes and changing tastes in popular entertainment.
For fifteen years Potter headlined a series of summer revues at the Gaiety, ‘Gaels of laughter’ (1965–79), directed by O’Dea’s widow, Ursula Doyle, and supported by leading comedians and pop singers, including Milo O’Shea, David Kelly, Rosaleen Linehan, Des Keogh, and Hal Roach. She played the villainous Miss Hannigan in the Irish premiere of the musical ‘Annie’ (1980), her performance described as ‘an original comic creation of great merit, even if the star herself is too kindly a soul ever to strike fear’ (Irish Times, 19 July 1980). Her career seriously restricted by chronic health problems in the mid 1980s – she suffered from recurrent diverticulitis (bowel inflammation), requiring eventual surgery, and from arthritis in the hips and knees, resulting in joint replacements – she retired from pantomime, no longer able to undertake the vigorous dancing and pratfalling: ‘I couldn’t throw myself about any more’ (Irish Times, 26 November 1994).
STAGE ACTRESS
For several seasons in the 1980s–90s she starred in a popular one-woman cabaret show at Clontarf Castle, billed as the ‘Queen of Irish Comedy’; a recording of one such show was released on video (1994). Concentrating also on a return to the legitimate stage, she appeared with Siobhán McKenna (qv) – whose acting style had long been a subject of Potter’s parody – as the two sweetly murderous old ladies in a hit production of ‘Arsenic and old lace’ at the Gaiety (1985). Potter played Maisie Madigan in the Gate theatre production, directed by Joe Dowling, of ‘Juno and the Paycock’ by Sean O’Casey (qv), one of the most celebrated productions in recent Irish theatre history, opposite Donal McCann (qv), John Kavanagh, and Geraldine Plunkett (1986); she toured with the production to Jerusalem (1987) (where she was besieged by Irish-born Israelis who as children had seen her in Dublin pantos), Edinburgh (1987), and to especial acclaim in New York (1988) (where she was forced off her feet between shows by agonising knee pains, but never missed a date). Her performance, directed by Patrick Mason at the Gate, as Mrs Candour in ‘The school for scandal’ (1989) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (qv) was praised as one of the highlights of the production. Less satisfying was her interpretation of Samuel Beckett (qv), in both ‘Footfalls’ and ‘Rockaby’ during the Gate’s Beckett festival (1991); critic Gerry Colgan found her performance ‘too vigorous’ and charged with ‘too much psychic energy’ for the material (Irish Times, 11 October 1991). Potter’s only career appearance at the Abbey theatre was in the premiere of ‘Moving’ (1992) by Hugh Leonard(qv). She played Mother in a revival of Leonard’s most famous play, ‘Da’ (1993), directed by Dowling at the Olympia, opposite McCann and Barnard Hughes (who reprised his Tony-award-winning performance in the title role). She was directed, as Mme Pernelle, by Alan Stanford in a new version by Michael West of Molière’s ‘Tartuffe’ (1992), and returned to O’Casey as Mrs Henderson in ‘The shadow of a gunman’ at the Gate (1996).
OTHER MEDIA
Though primarily a stage performer, Potter appeared on radio, television, and in several films. During the 1940s she was a frequent guest, with O’Dea as host, on Irish half hour, a BBC radio light entertainment programme. For seven seasons she hosted a popular Radio Éireann variety programme, The Maureen Potter show (1960–67), which included comic sketches and monologues, and mild political satire (usually involving Potter’s impersonating politicians); especially beloved by the public were her ‘Christy’ monologues, in which she played the ever solicitous, harried mother of a naughty Dublin child prone to improbable scrapes. She appeared as the storyteller in several episodes of the long-running BBC television children’s programme Jackanory (1966), and co-starred alongside Rosaleen Linehan as two man-mad flatmates in Me and my friend (1967), one of RTÉ television’s first situation comedy series, directed by Jim Fitzgerald (qv). Potter’s Christmas television special topped the RTÉ TAM ratings in 1973. She acted in two films directed by John Ford (qv): The rising of the moon (1957), a triptych in which she played the railway station barmaid in the second segment, ‘A minute’s wait’ (the ensemble cast included O’Dea as the station porter); and Gideon’s day (1958). She was cast by director Joseph Strick in two adaptations of works by James Joyce (qv): in Ulysses (1967) she played Josie Breen, an old flame of Leopold Bloom (played by Milo O’Shea); she played Dante in A portrait of the artist as a young man (1977), opposite T. P. McKenna (1929–2011) as Mr Dedalus, Rosaleen Linehan as Mrs Dedalus, and Desmond Perry as Mr Casey. Her final film was Graham Jones’s How to cheat in the leaving certificate (1997).
HONOURS
Potter wrote a children’s book, The theatre cat (1986; reissued as Tommy the theatre cat (1989)). She was accorded a special tribute programme of RTÉ television’s Late, late show (1976); was granted the freedom of the city of Dublin (1984); was awarded an honorary degree by TCD (1988); and received a special Harvey’s Irish Theatre Award for services to the Irish theatre (1988). A documentary recounting her career, Super trouper, directed by John McColgan, and including archival performance footage, aired on RTÉ television (1994), and an eight-part retrospective series, Maureen Potter looks back, was broadcast on RTÉ radio (1998). The Gaiety theatre staged a special celebration of her life, attended by President Mary McAleese and leading figures in Irish theatre and entertainment (1999). Potter was the first person invited to place her handprints in the walk of fame constructed in the pavement outside the Gaiety theatre (2001).
ASSESSMENT
An audience favourite over many decades, Potter was perhaps the most popular entertainer of twentieth-century Ireland, with an appeal that crossed generations, social class, and the urban/rural divide, likely seen by more people on the live stage than any other performing artist in the country. The notoriously curmudgeonly poet Patrick Kavanagh (qv) once approached her on a Dublin street and said: ‘Do you know what? You’re not a bad little woman at all’ (Guardian, 13 April 2004). The consummate variety performer, with a masterly command of comic timing, and a stage presence exuding enthusiasm and delight, she also proved adept at acting comic roles in straight theatre; amplifying on the stage adage about comedy being more difficult than tragedy, Potter added that ‘it’s much harder for a comic to do comedy in a straight play’ (Irish Times, 26 September 1985). While reviewers sometimes found her variety shows to be uneven in quality, formulaic, and repetitive, rarely were Potter’s skills as a performer disparaged, the critique usually being that she was burdened with scripts (or with co-stars) unworthy of her talents. Notwithstanding her long experience and audience adulation, she suffered severely from nerves before every performance, sometimes to the point of physical sickness, a condition that only worsened as she aged.
Widely admired by her peers within the theatrical profession, Potter was remembered for her loyalty, consideration, lack of conceit, generosity, and boundless good humour (which never flagged through years of pain and illness). Her favourite recreation was watching television sport, especially soccer and cricket. Down the years she closed performances with a signature closing line: ‘If you liked the show tell your friends; if you didn’t, keep your breath to cool your porridge’.
Potter died 7 April 2004 in her Dublin home; the funeral was from St Brigid’s Roman catholic church, Killester, to Clontarf cemetery.
Sources
GRO (b. cert.); Ir. Times, passim, esp.: 26 June, 3 July 1956; 11 June, 9 July 1957; 11 Nov. 1958; 9 June, 22, 25 Sept., 1 Oct. 1959; 25–7 Dec. 1962; 23, 24 July 1964; 3 Mar., 28 June 1966; 4 July, 23 Nov. 1967; 18 June 1970; 10 July 1975; 2 Aug. 1979; 19 July 1980; 14 June, 26 Sept., 2 Oct. 1985; 11, 16, 17 July 1986; 12 June, 13 Aug. 1987; 23 June, 12, 24 (profile) Dec. 1988; 26, 29 July 1989; 29 Aug. 1990; 7, 28 Sept., 11 Oct. 1991; 7 Oct., 16 Dec. 1992; 12 Mar. 1993; 26 Nov. 1994; 17, 30 July 1996; 4 June 1998 (profile); 16, 19 Jan. 1999; 8, 10 Apr. 2004; Philip B. Ryan, Jimmy O’Dea: the pride of the Coombe (1990); Micheál Ó hAodha, Siobhán: a memoir of an actress (1994); Times, 8 Apr. 2004; Sunday Independent, Sunday Tribune, 11 Apr. 2004; Guardian, 13 Apr. 2004 (www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/apr/13/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1); Independent (London), 13 Apr. 2004 (www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/maureen-potter-549747.html); Deirdre Purcell (ed.), Be delighted: a tribute to Maureen Potter (2004); Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com; Irish Film & TV Research Online, www.tcd.ie/irishfilm; Irish Playography, www.irishplayography.com (websites accessed March 2011
Prior to Stones in His Pockets, Campion’s many stage credits in his native Ireland includedWaiting for Godot, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Northern Star, Poor Superman, The Moon for Misbegotten, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Merchant of Venice, Good Evening Mr Collins, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Miss Julie, Equus, Bent and Translations.
Campion is currently appearing in Oxford Stage Company’s 50th anniversary revival of Brendan Behan’s modern Irish classic, The Quare Fellow, directed by Kathy Burke. After a regional tour, the production transfers for a limited season at the Tricycle Theatre, where, coincidentally,Stones in His Pockets also started its London life in 2000.
Date & place of birth Born 20 December 1959 in Freshford, County Kilkenny in Ireland.
Trained at… I trained at the Focus Theatre in Dublin with Deirdre O’Connell, who was a real mentor to me.
Lives now in… Fulham Broadway, west London. I just moved there in December. I spent a year in London when we were doing Stones in His Pockets. We went on with the show to the States and so on, and after that finished, I decided to come back to London instead of Dublin. It’s easy to commute between one and the other. And now I’ve bought my place in Fulham, so I might well be here for a while.
What do you consider your first big break? Now that’s really tricky, you could offend people, couldn’t you? For me, it was – and I don’t want this to sound corny – but it was the day I walked into Focus and met Deirdre. I came without any knowledge whatsoever, and she was my guiding light about what theatre and acting is all about. She taught me what you should bring to the profession. Also to work at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin at the time that I did, I can’t explain how excited I was about that. I spent two years as a member of company there. That gave me some great opportunities and exposure to a lot of work.
Career highlights to date Being a part of the production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme which was performed at the Abbey Theatre as a way of acknowledging the ceasefire in Northern Ireland at the time. It’s an extraordinary piece of writing by Frank McGuinness and Patrick Mason, then the Abbey artistic director, was directing. On opening night, we had Unionist and Sinn Fein members sitting side by side in the theatre. It was an extraordinary evening.
Also in terms of highlights, I can’t not mention Stones in His Pockets. That was an incredible journey for Conleth Hill and me. It was only meant to be a few weeks in Belfast, but for some reason, we ended up in the West End and then on Broadway. You run out of adjectives very quickly – how do I explain? I loved every moment of it.
How did you find working on Broadway? Neither Conleth nor I had ever even stepped foot in the US before. The evening we arrived, we went down to Times Square and found it so overpowering, we had to duck out because we couldn’t cope. What I really loved about Broadway is that everybody wanted to celebrate your success with you. There was also a wonderful feeling of camaraderie amongst all of the Broadway companies. We were brought together regularly, for baseball tournaments, charity fundraisers and the like. I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of that theatrical community.
Favourite productions you’ve ever worked on Certainly those two and many more: Brian Friel’s Translations, one of the most beautiful plays that has ever come out of the Ireland; Bent, which I did with a young company to a phenomenal audience response; Waiting for Godot, for a lot of different reasons. There’s such a list.
Favourite co-stars I can’t do that! (laughs) I’ve had a kick with just about everybody I’ve worked with. I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out.
Favourite directors Again, I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out. I will say, though, that I’m having a grand time withKathy Burke now on The Quare Fellow. I’ve always been a great admirer of her acting talent. She can do hysterical comedy but then also has the ability to show that much darker side of life – it’s mind-blowing. As an actor herself, she understands how we work and what we need, and as the director of this play, her understanding of Brendan Behan and what she wants from the piece is very impressive. She’s terrific. Okay, I’ll also just mention the Abbey’s Patrick Mason. The breadth of work he’s covered is phenomenal and his love of theatre is unequalled. To be in a rehearsal room with Patrick is always an education.
Favourite playwrights Of those whose plays I’ve appeared in, I’d say Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Samuel Beckett and, of course, Marie Jones. Also Shakespeare, if only for King Lear alone. I could go on forever. As for playwrights I haven’t worked with, Marina Carr comes to mind. She’s a young Irish playwright with a very distinctive voice.
What roles would you most like to play still? I have no idea on that, it’s just too broad. The phone could ring tomorrow and you could say yes or no. That’s how it goes.
What was the last thing you saw on stage that you really enjoyed? Can I say two or three things? Michael Frayn’s Democracy definitely – I want to go back and see it again – and Conleth is terrific in it. Also, a few months back, just as an exercise, I went to see first the Icelandic Theatre Vosturport’s Romeo and Juliet at the Young Vic and Shakespeare’s R & J in the West End. What I loved was that they were both using the possibilities of the stage and what it can do. I loved the imagination and the risk involved. That’s what theatre is about.
What would you advise the government to secure the future of British theatre? Where does one begin? I think I’d say, wake up and realise that theatre is not a luxury and it does need to be subsidised properly. I’m completely convinced that theatre can affect change, but also entertain and educate. It does have a place. At the moment, it seems to be perceived as a luxury with only token gestures made towards it.
Favourite holiday destinations I have never been to Australia but I’d really like to go, all around. It’s a country I’m intrigued by. I love the notion of this outdoor culture, a small population living in such a vast country with so many types of landscapes. It’s the difference in the cultural mentality that appeals, too. I went to Japan a few years ago with a production of Othello, and I’ll never forget stepping off the plane and thinking, I know nothing about this. It could have been a different planet.
Favourite books I’m a fan of William Kennedy’s novels, most of which are set in Albany in upstate New York.
Favourite after-show haunts During the year we spent with Stones in His Pockets on and off St Martin’s Lane, we became regulars at the Harp Bar just off Trafalgar Square. They’re great in there.
Favourite websites Yahoo, because I can never remember how to find anything on the web!
If you hadn’t become an actor, what would you have done professionally? I thought I wanted to be a hotel manager – that was going to be the life for me. But then I spent a couple of years in a hotel and realised it was certainly not the life – I had no patience with the public.
Why did you want to join this production of The Quare Fellow? I wasn’t aware of the play before. The only Behan I was familiar with was The Hostage and Borstal Boy. So I was curious. When I read it, I was taken by surprise. The play is set in an Irish prison on the night before a hanging, and it looks at how that’s affecting the prisoners and the warders. When Joan Littlewood did it at Stratford East, she used lots of songs and exposition, but beyond all that, there’s an extraordinary piece of writing about humanity and the notion of capital punishment, writing with a lot of humour but that’s not afraid to go to the darker side. Then I met Kathy and she explained that her intention was to lose a lot of the vaudeville, take the ‘Oirishness’ out of it and just go for the meat. Having spoken to her, I knew I wanted to be there.
How would you describe your character? Regan is the moral centre of the play. He’s a warder who’s been working in the prison for 20 years. He understands that the system doesn’t necessarily have to be cruel – there’s a way of dealing with people that has benefits for everybody. Because of that attitude, he’s also the person people ask for at the end, but he’s got to a point where he can’t deal with that anymore. He’s got his own demons to deal with, in relation to all those years of hangings.
What’s your view on capital punishment? I’m totally against it. I don’t believe anybody has the right to take someone else’s life. It seems so hopeless. I hate to think there’s no chance of rehabilitation or some element of redemption. I’m probably overly idealistic. I do suffer from idealism occasionally.
What’s it like working with a 17-strong all-male cast? It would be great if I could say it’s a nightmare, but it’s not. One or two of the other actors I knew before. We’re a group that’s bonded so well – the generosity is remarkable – and we’re having great fun on the road together. It’s not exclusively male, of course. In the rehearsal room, Kathy, her assistant Ro McBrinn and Maggie Tully were a force amongst themselves. They’re the three sisters keeping these boys in check.
The above “What’s On Stage” interview can also be accessed online here.
The “Agency” page:
His theatre work includes The Importance of Being Earnest, Macbeth, Big Maggie, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Silver Tassie, Sive and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme – all at the Abbey Theatre and Good Evening Mr Collins, Hubert Murray’s Widow, Antigone, Calvary/Resurrection, Cuirt An Mhean Oiche– at the Peacock Theatre.Most recently, Sean has appeared in The Quare Fellow at The Tricylce Theatre, directed by Cathy Burke.
Other work includes Transalations, Bent (Red Kettle Theatre Co); Equus, Canaries(Gaiety Theatre); Mutabilitie, Tarry Flynn (Royal National Theatre); A Moon for the Misbegotten (Dubbeljoint Theatre Co.); Miss Julie (Everyman Palace); Poor Superman(Muted Cupid Theatre Co.); Northern Star (Tinderbox/Field Day Theatre Co.); The Mayor of Casterbridge (Storytellers Theatre Co.), Waiting for Godot (Lyric Theatre) and most recently The Dead School (Livin’ Dred Theatre Co.).
Film/TV work includes Glenroe, Fair City (RTE); Echoes (Channel 4); Most Important(Parzival Productions), Saving Grace (Independent), Eastenders (BBC 1) Holby City(BBC), RAW (RTE), Borgia (Atlantique Productions), and Identity (ITV). Most recently he has reprised his role as Virginio Orsini in Borgia.
2013 has seen Sean has cast as the Earl of Kent in the Abbey Theatre’s production ofKing Lear, directed by Selina Cartmell, and United Passions a feature directed by Frédéric Aubertin in which he plays the role of Werner Lutzi.
Frank Patterson was a famous Irish tenor who had an international reputation. He only made a few films but one is regarded as a classic, John Huston’s final film “The Dead” in 1987. The scene where he sings the “The Lass of Aughrim” while Anjelica Huston stands on the staircase is one of the most heartbreaking on film. He was also featured in “Michael Collins” singing “Macushla”. He was born in Clonmel in 1938 and died in New York in 2000. He was married to Eily O’Grady the famous concert pianist.
“New York Times” obituary:
Frank Patterson, an Irish tenor whose light, pleasing voice, honest expression and endearing style generated a worldwide following and earned audiences with two presidents and a pope, died on Saturday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan. He was 61 and lived in Bronxville, N.Y.
The cause was a brain tumor, said his manager, Vincent Mitchell, of Port Washington, N.Y.
As ”Ireland’s Golden Tenor,” Mr. Patterson considered himself the heir to the legacy of another great Irish tenor, John McCormack. Although he had recorded Berlioz with Sir Colin Davis and sung Bach with the BBC, his recitals followed the standard McCormack format of light-classical repertory and sentimental Irish ballads, including the ubiquitous ”Danny Boy,” of which he said he never tired. In 1993, he became the first Irish artist to have his own show at Radio City Music Hall, where he sold out the 6,000-seat hall, accompanied by Ms. O’Grady and their son, Eanan, a violinist.
Although he had sung for President Ronald Reagan and President Clinton, Mr. Patterson considered the highlight of his career to be his performance at the papal mass in Phoenix Park, Dublin on the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit to Ireland. He serenaded the pope again on his visit to New York in 1996, when he sang Schubert’s ”Ave Maria” in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Mr. Patterson made his first public appearance as a boy soprano in his hometown, Clonmel, County Tipperary. After leaving school at 14 to work in the family printing business, he began vocal studies in Dublin in 1962, where he also studied acting at the National Academy of Theater and Allied Arts. Two years later, he won all of the major vocal awards at the Feis Ceoil singing competition, 61 years after McCormack’s similar victory.
After catching the ear of a Philips Record Company executive in Paris, he went on to record 36 albums in six languages, including a recent compilation featuring him singing Handel arias and songs by Hugo Wolf with Herman Prey, Ely Ameling, Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carerras.
Mr. Patterson made his acting debut as a fictional tenor in John Huston’s last film, ”The Dead,” and more recently, appeared in Neil Jordan’s ”Michael Collins.”
In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by his mother, May Patterson, and two brothers, Maurice and Noel, all of County Tipperary, and a sister, Imelda Malone, of Naples, Fla.
The above “New York Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Mairin D. O’Sullivan was an Irish actress who was nominated for a Tony Award on Broadway for her performance in 1966 in “Philadelphia Here I Come”. She was married to actor Eamon Kelly. Among her film appearances are “A Purple Taxi” and “Da”. She died in 1987.
Patrick Magee was born in Armagh in 1922. He is best known for his extensive stage roles and his film work with Stanley Kubrick in “A Clockwork Orange” in 1971 and “Barry Lyndon” in 1975. His other movie roles include “The Masque of the Red Death” in 1964 and “The Final Programme”. He died at the age of sixty in 1982.
IMDB entry:
Born in Armagh, Northern Ireland, Patrick Magee is a classic example of how certain actors rate the stage far more highly than the screen. Magee was well aware that the vast majority of the films that he appeared in were dreadful (he mostly played sinister villains in horror films), but the money came in very handy in financing his distinguished stage work (he was a favorite actor of Samuel Beckett one of whose greatest plays, ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, was written specifically for him). However, he did do some outstanding work on film, most notably in Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange (1971) as the crippled writer Mr.Alexander, and in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), as the chevalier. He also appeared in Joseph Losey‘s The Servant (1963), Peter Brook‘sMarat/Sade (1967) and William Friedkin‘s The Birthday Party (1968). He also appeared in films by such cult directors as Roger Corman, Lucio Fulci and Walerian Borowczyk.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>
Belfast Telegraph article in 2017.
He’s the wild-eyed, controversial Ulster actor who numbered playwrights Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter among his closest friends and who appeared in iconic movies like A Clockwork Orange and Chariots of Fire.
Yet Patrick Magee is an almost forgotten figure in his homeland -and not just because he shared his name with the Brighton bomber.
But now the gravel-voiced star of stage and screen, who died in August 1982, is to be commemorated with a blue plaque by the Ulster History Circle at his former family home in Armagh’s Edward Street.
Belfast actor Stephen Rea, who appeared on stage with Magee in London, will unveil the plaque later this month during the John Hewitt summer school.
The recognition comes after a campaign to honour Magee was backed by the University of Reading where celebrated Armagh-born poet Dr Conor Carville, an associate professor, has been instrumental in championing his cause.
Dr Carville whose brother Daragh is a playwright, is also publishing a book about Magee, who was 60 when he died from a heart attack in London.
“Patrick Magee is a very important and unjustly forgotten figure who represents an important aspect of the cultural ferment of the 1960s and 1970s in Britain,” Dr Carville says.
Magee was born Patrick George McGee, but later changed his name to avoid confusion with another actor.
He was born into a middle-class family, the oldest of five children, but the man who would become addicted to drink and gambling loved to tell interviewers that he was “a street fighter from Armagh”.
He was, however, a committed republican who joined up with acting colleagues Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson to campaign on social issues of the day.
He was also instrumental in persuading his union Equity to boycott South Africa because of apartheid in 1976.
Forgotten genius: actor Patrick Magee
Magee was educated at St Patrick’s College in Armagh where he excelled in a number of school productions.
He went on to join the Group Players in Belfast in 1948 and he appeared in fondly-remembered productions like Mountain Post by Ballymoney playwright George Shiels and Harry Sinton Gibson’s Bannister’s Cafe.
He stayed with the Group for nearly three years before he and a number of his colleagues went to England under the auspices of the renowned theatrical director Tyrone Guthrie to take part in a series of Irish plays, staged at the Lyric Hammersmith as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Magee returned to tour Ireland with Shakespeare plays in a company put together by Monaghan-born Anew McMaster, whose advertisement for actors was answered by, among others, Harold Pinter.
Determined to establish a foothold as an actor in England, Magee went into repertory theatre and later recalled how he was just about to eke out a living. However, in 1958 – the year he married Armagh woman Belle Sherry – he made his film debut in Rag Doll, directed by Lance Comfort.
But he never made a secret of the fact that he preferred the stage to the big screen.
Magee in Dr Baxter
He’d also carved a reputation for himself on radio as a definitive interpreter of the work of playwright Samuel Beckett, whom he met in 1957 and who was so impressed by him that he wrote his acclaimed play Krapp’s Last Tape with Magee in mind.
The friendship endured and a film of Krapp’s Last Tape, which is on YouTube, is testimony to Magee’s prowess, as is his performance in the Joseph Losey prison drama The Criminal, a film which also starred Stanley Baker.
In 1964, Magee joined the Royal Shakespeare Company after Harold Pinter said he wanted him to be in his play The Birthday Party.
And the following year, after a production of Marat/Sade was transferred from London to New York, Magee won a Tony award for his portrayal of the Marquis de Sade.
However, Magee still struggled financially, in part due to his drinking and gambling, and he accepted roles in low budget British horror films. His performances of sinister characters caught the eye of cult European directors like Walerian Borowczyk and Lucio Fulci.
But there were more mainstream movies too, like A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon during the Seventies.
The theatre still called him back, and in 1976, he was in Beckett’s Endgame in a cast which included Stephen Rea.
Magee Masque of the Red Death
Magee’s career hit its lowest point, however, when he starred along with a young Helen Mirren (right) in a production of Brian Friel’s play The Faith Healer at the Royal Court theatre in London.
Despite a towering performance as Frank McCabe in the central role, Magee was eventually sacked because he was drunk on stage.
Playwright Thomas Kilroy, who was in rehearsal for another play at the Royal Court, told the Irish Times: “I have never been so frightened in the theatre. Most of those nights Magee was so drunk that he barely made it into the spot on stage.
“To compound matters, Mirren was giving a performance of matching power and you ached for even one respite to allow these two performances to speak to one another.
“It never quite happened because of the real danger that Magee was about to fall head over heels into the front rows of the stalls.”
One of Magee’s final roles before his death was in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire.
Magee in Masque of the Red Death
Despite his problems on and off stage, Conor Carville said he regarded him as one of the finest actors in the British Isles, adding: “The persona he had off-stage was that of a hell-raiser, and this blended into the roles he was cast in.
“He was at the forefront of theatrical and cinematic experiment of the time, and yet, as a BBC stalwart on both radio and TV and a West End actor, he was also ensconced in the mainstream.
“As well as this, his immersion in the new British horror genre meant he moved in underground circles.
“My research has revealed an undercurrent of desperation in his career, as he took on such roles for the income they provided.”
Dr Carville’s research on Magee for his book has drawn on Beckett’s letters to Magee and his wife held at Trinity College; letters between Magee and Pinter held at the British Library, the BBC archives in Caversham, near Reading, as well as the V&A Theatre and Performance Collections in London.
He also drew on the extensive Samuel Beckett Collection at the University of Reading, the world’s largest collection of resources relating to the writer.
The Ulster History Circle’s blue plaque to honour Patrick Magee will be unveiled by Stephen Rea tomorrow, at 2 Edward Street at noon
Malachy McCourt was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York but raised in Limerick. He is the brother of the author Frank McCourt. Among his movies are “Two for the Seesaw” in 1962, “The Molly McGuires” in 1970 and “The Brink’s Job”. Access his website here.
IMDB entry:
Malachy McCourt was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Limerick, Ireland. He managed to fail every subject in school, except English and recess. In 1952, he returned to America and worked as a longshoreman, dishwasher and laborer. Soon after, he became an actor, and then established the first singles bar in America. He then began a tumultuous radio career in 1970 on WNYC, WMCA and WBAI. They said he was outrageous and opinionated and a disgrace to the Irish, which was quite true. Aside from some temporary stints on WABC, WOR and WNYC, he has not been asked to do a regular show since he got fired in 1976, which celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of free speech in America. Malachy has appeared on stage in plays such as “DA”, “The Hostage”, “Mass Appeal”, “Inherit the Wind” and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”. On television, he was a semi-regular on The Jack Paar Tonight Show (1957), with Jack Paar and Merv Griffin. He appeared in the soap operas, Ryan’s Hope (1975), One Life to Live (1968), as well as The Dain Curse (1978) and other made-for-TV movies. On screen, he can be seen in She’s the One (1996), The Devil’s Own (1997), Reversal of Fortune (1990), Green Card(1990), The Field (1990) and The Molly Maguires (1970). Currently, he is doing a star turn in the new Edward Burns film, Ash Wednesday (2002), followed by another star turn inThe Guru (2002). Malachy is the author of “A Monk Swimming”, which was on the best- seller lists for months in the U.S., Europe and Australia. His new book, “Singing My Him Song”, was published in October of 2000 by Harper Collins. Malachy and his brother,Frank McCourt, developed, staged and acted in “A Couple of Blaguards”, which was performed in St. Petersburg, Florida. The play has been produced throughout America, Australia and the UK. Malachy is happily married to Diana, is the proud father of five children, and the grandfather of three. He lives in New York City, where he writes a weekly column for The West Side Spirit “Sez I To Myself”.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Ciaran O’Shea
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Nora O’Mahoney was born in 1912 in Ireland. In 1947 she appeared in “Captain Boycott” which starred Stewart Granger which was made in Ireland. She also was in “Daughter of Darkness”. By the mid 1950’s she was in Hollywood and was featured in such movies as “Rally Round the Flag Boys” in 1958, “The Remarkable Mr POennypacker” and “Darby O’Gill and the Little People”. When she returned to Ireland she achieved national fame and affection as Granmother in the long running television series “Wanderly Wagon”. She died in 1989.
Liam RedmondHigh Treason, poster, Liam Redmond on poster art, 1951. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Liam Redmond was a wonderful Irish actor who appeared on film in Ireland, Britain and in Hollywood. He was born in Limerick in 1913. In 1935 he joined the famed Abbey Theatre Players in Dublin. He made his first Broadway appearance in “The White Steed” in 1939. His movies include “I See A Dark Stranger” with Deborah Kerr in 1946, “Daughter of Darkness” with Siobhan McKenna and Maxwell Reed, “Kid Galahad” with Elvis Presley in 1962 and “The Playboy of the Western World”. He died in Dublin in 1989.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Born in Limerick on July 27, 1913, versatile Irish actor Liam Redmond was one of four children (the others were Thomas, Mary and Eileen), born to Thomas, a master carpenter who also taught woodworking, and Eileen Redmond, a homemaker. He received his early education at the Christian Brothers junior and secondary schools in Dublin. Upon completing secondary school, he attended UCD (University College, Dublin — a constituent college of the National University of Ireland (NUI) — and originally studied medicine before shifting his career focus to the arts. He met his wife Barbara MacDonagh there while he was the Director of the Dramatic Society and she was the Secretary. They had four children.
It was William Butler Yeats, the renowned Irish poet, dramatist, and literary figure who saw one Liam’s productions at the college and saw a bright promise in him, inviting the young hopeful to join the Abbey Theatre in 1935 as a guest producer. This completely ended any serious designs to return to medicine. Yeates went on to write his play “Death of Cuchullain” particularly for Liam. Wife Barbara’s brother was Donagh MacDonagh, who was not only a judge, but a playwright, poet and author.
Liam made his Abbey Theatre acting debut that same year in Sean O’Casey’s “The Silver Tassie.” In 1939, he made his first stage appearance in New York in “The White Steed.” He left America at the outbreak of WWII and played regularly on the London stage, returning from time to time to the Abbey for a season or performance. Some of his more sterling performances over time included “The Playboy of the Western World” (in the course of his career he played every male role in “Playboy”), “Juno and the Paycock”, “The Square Ring,” “The Doctor’s Dilemma,” “Loot” and “The Island”.
The actor joined the Dublin Verse-Speaking Society and occasionally read poetry on radio. Redmond went back to Broadway in the 50s to play Canon McCooey in “The Wayward Saint” and won the George Jean Nathan Award for his performance.
In later years Liam developed a special interest and talent for cooking. He eventually retired to a quiet life in Dublin and, following a decade of declining health, died at age 76 in his beloved Dublin on October 28, 1989. He was predeceased by wife Barbara.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Andrew Scott was born in Dublin in 1976. He made hismovie debut in “Korea” with Donal Donnelly in 1995. Other films include “Nora” with Susan Lynch and “The American” with Diana Rigg. He is currently to be seen as Moriarty in the hit television series “Sherlock”.
2013 interview by James Rampton in “The Independent”:
At the start of our interview, Andrew Scott and I are squeezing into a booth in the restaurant at the British Film Institute. It is very similar to the one occupied by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s characters in When Harry Met Sally. Quick as a flash, the actor smiles at me and says, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Scott goes on to remark that he often dreads reading interviews with actors and hopes this won’t be another that he recoils from. “Sometimes talking about acting can be reductive and a bit boring. Of course,” he adds, breaking into a wry, self-mocking grin, “I’m not like that. I’m completely fascinating. Everything I say is a bon mot. It’s epigram after epigram. It’s like sitting with Oscar Wilde… Although I have better hair!”
Witty. Mischievous. Charming.
These are precisely the qualities that catapulted Scott to stardom as Moriarty in BBC1’s worldwide hit drama, Sherlock. People were already talking about him as a striking new talent after his first brief, if completely scene-stealing, 10-minute appearance in Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s compelling modern-day reworking of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective stories.
His performance as Holmes’s dastardly foe – by turns mesmerising and menacing – won Scott the best supporting actor Bafta award last year, beating his co-star Martin Freeman (who plays John Watson in Sherlock) in the process.
It was not exactly an overnight success for Scott – the 37-year-old Irishman had for many years been turning in very creditable, if not such conspicuous performances in dramas such as Lennon Naked (in which he gave a memorable Paul McCartney opposite Christopher Ecclestone’s John Lennon), The Hour, John Adams and Band of Brothers.
But Moriarty, who appeared to come to a sticky end at the end of the last series on Sherlock, transformed Scott’s profile. Moriarty is the archetypal baddie who has all the best lines, and his popularity meant that the actor was soon being offered leading roles in ITV1 dramas such as The Town and The Scapegoat.
Scott, who was raised in Dublin, where his father worked in an employment agency and his mother was an art teacher, has the volume turned down in real life and has no need to turn the dial up to 11 in the way that Moriarty does. But you can see that he still possesses the same razor-sharp instincts as Sherlock’s arch-enemy.
Adversaries: Benedict Cumberbatch (left) as Sherlock Holmes and Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty in the ‘Sherlock’ series-two finale ‘The Reichenbach Fall’The actor is the first to acknowledge that playing the role of Moriarty has moved his career up several notches. Picking at a croissant, he reflects that: “Sherlock has changed all our careers, and I’m really pleased about that. It gives you the benefit of the doubt because executives like to see recognisable faces.
“It was overwhelming to be on a TV show that is quite so popular. That took me totally by surprise. People had an instant affection for it from the first episode. The reaction was extraordinary. People still come up to me in the street all the time, wanting to talk about it.”
Sherlock fans are known as some of the most passionate in the business, but Scott says they are generally delightful. “There is this impression that the fans are crazy, but they’re not – they’re very respectful. They don’t overstep the mark. I get a lot of fan mail. Of course, some of it is a bit creepy, but mostly it’s very moving and creative. People send me drawings and their own versions of Sherlock stories. It’s a source of escapism for people and that’s great.
“I’m an enthusiast for people, and I don’t want them to become the enemy. I’ve seen that happen to colleagues who are disturbed the whole time, but there’s a certain degree of control you can have if you keep yourself to yourself. The kind of actors I admire move through different characters and genres. That’s the kind of actor I try to be. If you want that, you have to be circumspect about your private life.”
Scott thinks the character made such an impact because, “Moriarty came as a real surprise to people”. He adds: “He doesn’t have to do the conventional villain thing. He is witty, and people like that. He is also a proper match for Sherlock. He’s very mercurial, too. I have since been offered to play a lot of different characters, and that’s because Moriarty is a lot of different characters. He changes all the time.”
The next legacy of the “Sherlock Effect” is that Scott is starring in a one-off BBC2 drama entitled Legacy. An adaptation by Paula Milne of Alan Judd’s bestselling 2001 espionage novel, this is an absorbing contribution to the BBC’s “Cold War” season. In this film, set at the height of the conflict between the UK and the USSR in 1974, which goes out on Thursday 28 November, Scott plays Viktor Koslov, a KGB spy.
Charles Thoroughgood (Charlie Cox), a trainee MI6 agent, tries to reconnect with Viktor, an old friend from their Oxford days, in an attempt to “turn” him. However, Victor adroitly turns the tables on Charles with a shocking revelation about the British spy’s family. Deliberately shot in Stygian gloom, Legacy captures the murky world of the secret services where cynicism and duplicity are part of the job description. Its tagline could well have been: “Trust no one.”
The film convincingly conjures up the drabness of the 1970s, all three-day weeks, petrol rationing and power cuts. Scott says: “Characters in those days called from phone boxes – whoever does that now? The film fits the era. It has a melancholic tone. It’s very brown and downbeat.”
Scott particularly enjoyed playing the ambiguity of Viktor’s character. “I like the idea that you don’t know who he is. It’s important that you feel for Viktor and his predicament. You have to feel he’s a human being with a family. But both he and Charles are elusive figures – it’s not clear whose side they’re on. It’s not at all black-and-white, and that’s why the film is so shadowy.”
Life after death: Sherlock Holmes killed his character (or did he?) But Andrew Scott returns as Viktor Koslov in ‘Legacy’The actor boasts a terrific Russian accent in Legacy. Where did it come from? “There isn’t a huge amount of footage of Russians speaking English as a second language, so I started looking at Vladimir Putin videos on YouTube. But then Putin introduced anti-gay legislation this summer – so, being a gay person, I switched to Rudolf Nureyev videos instead. It was another Nureyev defection of sorts!”
Scott is low-key on the subject of his sexuality. “Mercifully, these days people don’t see being gay as a character flaw. But nor is it a virtue, like kindness. Or a talent, like playing the banjo. It’s just a fact. Of course, it’s part of my make-up, but I don’t want to trade on it. I am a private person; I think that’s important if you’re an actor. But there’s a difference between privacy and secrecy, and I’m not a secretive person. Really I just want to get on with my job, which is to pretend to be lots of different people. Simple as that.”
Scott is very much getting on with the job at present. He has many intriguing projects in the pipeline, including starring in Jimmy’s Hall, the new Ken Loach movie about a political activist expelled from Ireland during the “Red Scare” of the 1930s. He is also appearing with Tom Hardy and Ruth Wilson in Locke, a film about a man whose life is falling apart, and in The Stag, a movie about a stag weekend that goes horribly wrong. In addition, he is headlining alongside Bill Nighy, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton in Matthew Warchus’s movie Pride, a true story about an alliance between the mine workers and the lesbian and gay community during the 1984 miners’ strike.
If he can possibly find any spare time, Scott is also open to comedy offers. “Everything in life has to have an element of comedy about it. I did Design for Living at the Old Vic in 2010 – Noël Coward was a master of comedy. The audience were convulsing every night. It’s such a joyous feeling to hold a pause and wait for the laughter. There is no better high. Forget about drugs!”
But despite the fact that producers are now cold-calling him like overeager mis-sold PPI salesmen, Scott won’t be rushing into the first role he’s offered. One positive by-product of his success is his ability to be choosy about what he does. He observes: “You have to be brave to turn things down, but there is a certain power to that. I’ve had offers to do more regular TV series, but I don’t regret rejecting them. If money and fame are not your goals, then it becomes easier. American agents use the expression, ‘this could be a game-changer’. The implication is that you want the game to change. But I don’t. I don’t have a plan. I like unpredictability and randomness.
“People get distracted by box-office figures and take jobs because they think it will advance their careers. Of course, it’s nice to get a big cheque and be able to buy a massive house, but my view is that we’re not here long, so why not do something of value?”
So Scott is very happy with where he’s at. “To do all these different things is a dream for me. My idea of a successful actor is not the most recognisable or the richest – it’s someone who is able to do a huge amount of different stuff. I don’t want to be known for just one thing.”
It’s true that Scott is now broadening his career far beyond Moriarty. But I can’t resist one final question on the subject: Is there any chance that Moriarty will, like his nemesis, be making a Lazarus-like comeback in the new series of Sherlock? Scott has, after all, been photographed filming scenes for the upcoming third season.
“People ask me that every day. It’s a small price to pay for having been in such a wonderful show,” he teases. But he is forbidden from spilling the beans about Moriarty’s fate in Sherlock even to close family members.
So has Moriarty played one more dastardly trick on us by faking his own suicide? Or are the scenes the actor has been shooting merely flashbacks? Scott could tell us, but then – like some ruthless Cold War spy – he would have to kill us…
The above “Independent” interview can also be accessed online here.
Brid Ni Neachtain is a brilliant actress from Connemara. She starred as Rose in the stage version of “Dancing at Lughnasa”. She is married to Fiach Mac Conghail of the famed Abbey Theatre. Her movies include “Cre na Cile” in 2007.
Lisa Richard’s agency page:
Biography – Brid is a native of Galway and was member of the Abbey Theatre Company until 1999. Amongst her favourite productions were:Translations, Mary Makebelieve, Boss Grady’s Boys, The Mai, Lower Depths,Riders to the Sea, The Playboy of the Western World (Hong Kong Arts Festival), The Well of The Saints (Perth International Festival), The Great Hunger (Edinburgh Festival, London, Paris, New York, and Moscow). Bríd played Rose in the world premiere of Dancing At Lughnasa (Abbey Theatre, Royal National Theatre, West End and Broadway). She appeared in Fishamble’s production of Consenting Adults and as the Mother/Witch in Hansel and Gretel for Storytellers Theatre Company. She appeared in Portia Coughlan directed by Brian Brady at the Peacock Theatre and in the role of Auntie Ah in Woman and Scarecrow directed by Selina Cartmell at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin. She appeared as Juno inJuno and the Paycock directed by Andrew Flynn for the ART and Cork Opera House on national tour across Ireland. Brid appeared as Bridget in the Frank McGuinness play There Came a Gypsy Riding directed by Padraic McIntyre for Livin’ Dred Theatre Company and appeared in Here We Go Again Still by Christian O’Reilly for Decadent Theatre Company, Galway. Brid appeared in Marina Carr’s Woman and Scarecrow directed by Geoff Gould for the West Cork Theatre Festival and she recently appeared in Marina Carr’s new play 16 Possible Glimpses directed by Wayne Jordan at the Peacock Theatre for Dublin Theatre Festival 2011. Brid recently appeared in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, in a new adaptation by Anne-Marie Casey, directed by Michael Barker-Caven in the Gate Theatre. Her most recent theatre appearances include Doubtdirected by Andrew Flynn for Decadent Theatre Company, Woman and Scarecrow directed by Geoff Gould for Blood in the Alley Theatre Company and Skull in Connemara directed by Andrew Flynn for Decadent Theatre company on national tour.
Brid has also worked extensively with Taidhbhearc Na Gaillimhe, appearing there in Moonfish Theatre’s production of an Irish language version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (Namhaid don Phoba). For an Taidhbhhearc she also notably appeared in Cré Na Cille (for which she was nominated for an Irish Times/ESB Award for Best Actress , 2003) and in the feature film version of Cre Na Cille as the central character Caitriona, directed by Robert Quinn for TG4/Telegael for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Award in the Irish Film and Television Awards 2008. She appeared in Wildfire Films Irish language comedy drama An Crisis on TG4. Brid most recently appeared in Rasai Na Gaillimhe directed by Robert Quinn for TG4/Telegael and will soon appear in Corp agus Anam produced by Magmamedia for TG4.
Other Film and Television includes: The Clinic (Parallel Films/RTE), Pure Mule (RTE), Seacht (TG4), Love is the Drug (RTE), Dying for a Drink (RTÉ),The Family (BBC/RTÉ), Ros Na Rún (Tyrone/TG4), Lipservice (Brother Films/TG4), Clare sa Spéir & An t-é Ná Fuil Láidir (TG4), Cuirt an Mhean Oiche (RTE).
Tom Murphy’s The House opened in The Abbey Theatre on the 13th of June and will run until the 14th of July. The play debuted in the national theatre in 2000 and although revisiting its origins in one sense, a little over a decade later is now being performed for an audience with a very different perspective on emigration – a central theme of the drama. Lauren O’Toole spoke withDeclan Conlon, who assumes the role of Christie, in advance of the play’s opening.
In The House you play Christie, a returned emigrant, can you tell us a little about your character’s personal circumstances?
Christy is a working class west of Ireland man who grew up in a council house in a small town to an abusive father and a loving mother who died when he was still a small boy. She had a job working for a local well to do family, the ‘De Burcas’ and often brought him with her to the house where he was treated with love by the family, particularly the mother, mrs De Burca. He now lives in London where he makes his living in a dubious way, in the sex trade. But his ideal is the De Burca family and their house’ Woodlawn’ and every summer he returns for a holiday to the place that he considers his spiritual home.
This play is set in 1950s Ireland, when emigration was rife but immigration practically unheard of; debuted in 2000 when the opposite was the case and now, in 2012 the Irish people are once again being faced with the necessity of emigration. How has the social climate impacted on the revival of this play?
When the play debuted in 2000 there was a generation of young people to whom the the idea of emigration was nothing more than a piece of history. We were in the throes of what we now know was a bubble of supposed prosperity and so I think the play was seen as a harkening back to a world that we’d left far behind. Now, suddenly, because of the economic situation we find ourselves in, it feels much closer to our reality, but it’s our perceptions that have changed, the play, like all great works of art is what it is too big to be defined by a ‘topic’ such as emigration. It’s not a sociological tract, it’s a.complex examination of a series of characters and their desires and longings, and as such is I think universal in it’s appeal.
The topic of property is touched on in the play, not merely as commodity but rather for its sentimental value – how do you feel this will resonate in our property obsessed society?
Well I think the idea of ownership of land is a very potent one in Ireland but christy, the character that I play doesn’t want the house because it’s a status symbol or for the bricks and mortar , it’s a longing for an idealized world, a place that he associates with happiness and openness in a town where these things were in short supply. It’s the gap between our reality and the selves that we long to be, and the tension that exists between these two , that is I tqhink where the drama of the play lies.
You embarked on a fairly epic international tour with Terminus last year? That must have been an exhilarating yet demanding experience. How does it compare with performing in The Abbey on home turf?
Performing in the Abbey Theatre is always a great honor, the oldest state subsidized theatre in the world where so many great writers and actors have worked, and to be a part of this production of what I feel is a masterpiece by one of iIrelands greatest writers Tom Murphy is a joy. Touring Terminus was a great experience too, traveling across America and playing in the Sydney opera house was an unforgettable experience and to be taking the work of Mark O Rowe, one of Ireland’s best and most exciting and original young writers to a new audience was fantastic, if exhausting. Traveling from Chicago to philidelphia to Boston and playing a couple of nights in each venue then moving on is demanding in it’s own way. Living in hotels for 6 weeks not being able to cook or relax in a way that you can when at home can be tough, but getting to experience the reaction to fresh Irish work from forign audiences is wonderful.
Thomas Kilroy has written on the generation of Irish playwrights who were born out of the harsh conditions of the 50s – he included Tom Murphy in this wave. Do you feel as though we are experiencing a similar occurrence in Irish Theatre now?
I think that theatre is uniquely placed to respond quickly to the changes that are happening in Ireland, and I have no doubt that we will see creative explorations of our present difficulties and more importantly what led us to this place over the coming years. It is at times like this, when people are questioning our collective responsibly for what we chose to prioritize over the last 15 years that culture , and particularly theatre, can offer an alternative forum to newspapers and news media when exploring what Ireland is in 2012 and what it can be in the future.
The above “Entertainment.ie” can be accessed online here.
Actor Bio: Declan’s appearances at the Abbey and Peacock Theatres include “True West”, “All My Sons”, “Henry IV”, “A Whistle in The Dark”, “Famine”, “The Hamlet Project”, “The Last Ones”,”The Patriot Game” and most recently “A Month in the Country”. He also appeared in Rough Magic’s new production ‘Improbable Frequency’ for the Dublin Theatre Festival (2004) which transferred to the Abbey Theatre in 2005. Other theatre work includes: “The Walls”, “The Ends of The Earth”, “The Machine Wreckers” (Royal National Theatre), “As You Like It”, “La Lupa”, “The Mysteries”, “The Spanish Tragedy”, “Henry VI Part III” (RSC), “Macbeth” (West End), “Our Country’s Good” (Young Vic), “Juno and The Paycock” (Gaiety), “Decadence”, “Hamlet”, “Endgame” (Naked Theatre Company), Rough Magic’s “Copenhagen” and “The Book of Evidence” (Kilkenny Arts Festival/Gate Theatre), “True West” (Lyric, Belfast), ‘Heavenly Bodies’ directed by Lynne Parker, Television includes: “Proof”, “Anytime Now”, “Bachelor’s Walk”. “Hot House”, “Dangerfield” and “The Family”. Film includes “All Souls’ Day” and “The Truth About Sex”. Declan recently appeared in ” Julius Caeser”, at the Abbey Theatre and most recently appeared as John Proctor in Patrick Mason’s acclaimed production of “The Crucible” at the Abbey Theatre and appears as Mendoza, in “The Tudors”, Season I, (Showtime/Working Title).
Tom Murphy was one of Ireland’s finest young actors before his untimely death at the age of 39 in 2007. He was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe in 1968. He first came to public attenton with his brilliant performance as Ray in Martin McDonagh’s play “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” which was staged by the Druid Theatre in Galway, Dublin, London and then on to Broadway and Australia, winning several Tony Awards in New York. His films include “The General”, “Adam and Paul” in 2004 and “Small Engine Repair” in 2006.
“Playbill” obituary:
Tom Murphy, the Dublin-born actor who won a Tony Award playing a bored Irish teenager in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, died Oct. 6, 2007. He was 39 according to his friend, Kris Stone.
The cause was a quickly spreading lymphatic cancer, said Stone.
In McDonagh’s gorey domestic drama, Mr. Murphy lent comedy to the proceedings as the gangly, fidgety rural lad Ray Dooley, who unknowingly comes between the play’s three primary characters: the middle-aged, lovelorn Maureen; her interfering mother Mag; and her potential beau Pato. At one point, waiting to deliver a letter that will prove a major plot device, a frustrated Ray turned himself upside down in his chair, groaning with boredom over his chore.
“Mr. Murphy offers comic relief without ever presenting it as such,” wrote Ben Brantley in The New York Times. “His, more than any other character, must embody the provincial society beyond the women’s home, and Ray’s irritable restlessness is eloquent on the subject.” Mr. Murphy beat out his castmate Brian F. O’Byrne for the Tony.
A mid-sized man with short-cropped hair, large ears and an expressive face, Mr. Murphy’s film work included a lead role in the movie “Adam and Paul.” He also acted in “The Snapper,” “Michael Collins” and the television series “Pure Mule.”
According to BBC News, Marie Mullen, his co-star in Leenane, led a round of applause at the Oct. 6 curtain of Long Day’s Journey Into Night at the Gaiety Theatre. So did many other theatres in Dublin.
Emer O’Kelly’s obituary in “Independent.ie”:
UPDATED 25 NOVEMBER 2012 07:02
When local actors die it’s frequently said, “he could have made it big”. Tom certainly could have; 10 years ago, after he won a well-deserved Tony award on Broadway, pressure was brought to bear on him to move to Los Angeles. But Tom was at heart a stage actor, despite continuing success in high-quality, low-budget films, blockbusters weren’t his style, and the integrity of his acting was never diminished.
I first saw him on stage in 1996, and he was a revelation. It was the original opening night in Galway of Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and at that stage McDonagh was being hailed as Irish and, as people left the theatre, as “the new Synge”. I didn’t agree, but I had a lot to think about, much of it about the lugubriously hilarious performance of a new talent.
Tom Murphy was playing a bored and malevolent teenager, the deus ex machina of a plot which turns on an undelivered letter. The character, it seemed to me, was one of best flights in the play: bored to insanity in Leenane, the kid wants out, and he has high ambition. He wants to become a heroin-addicted drop-out in a Manchester squat. Tom could have hammed such outrageous comedy. Instead, he perched gnomically on a table edge, seeming to throw the lines away. He was 28 years old; he looked 15. Two years later he still looked 15 when he won a Tony award for the role.
He was also a haunting Johnny Boyle in Juno and the Paycock at the Abbey, his slight stature again a marvellous weapon, his nightmare meanderings as the one-armed, doomed target of an execution squad an echo and a precursor of the filthy work of today’s Sinn Fein inheritors of the Republican tradition. Tom’s performance, I suspect, would have won enthusiastic applause from O’Casey himself, who wrote his three great tragedies as an indictment of all nationalism, despite subsequent attempts to hijack them.
I only knew Tom Murphy very slightly but it felt as though I knew him well and fondly: anyone who spoke of him did so with deep affection and you immediately recognised that he was as liked as he was admired. “No side” was the universal judgement. Everybody liked him in a world where envy of the talent and acclaim of others can be rampant.
It is always a tragedy when somebody dies before their allotted time. For Tom Murphy, the cancer that took him rampaged through his compact little body like an all-consuming whirlwind. I hope that in his sadly short life he felt he had achieved at least some of his ambitions. He deserved that satisfaction and happiness: he was a wonderful talent and I am just glad that we saw at least some of it.
The above “Independent.ie” article can also be accessed online here.
Irish Independent tribute in 2007:
The actor Tom Murphy was only 39 when he died just over a week ago. It was far, far too young. But I hadn’t realised he was even that old: Tom was small and slight, and he had the chameleon face and body of the true actor. He could look like a kid on stage or screen, and frequently did. He could also look old and ravaged, as he did in his best-known role for film, that of a Dublin drug addict in Adam and Paul, in which he starred with his friend Mark O’Halloran, the pair directed by Lenny Abrahamson.
When local actors die it’s frequently said, “he could have made it big”. Tom certainly could have; 10 years ago, after he won a well-deserved Tony award on Broadway, pressure was brought to bear on him to move to Los Angeles. But Tom was at heart a stage actor, despite continuing success in high-quality, low-budget films, blockbusters weren’t his style, and the integrity of his acting was never diminished.
I first saw him on stage in 1996, and he was a revelation. It was the original opening night in Galway of Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and at that stage McDonagh was being hailed as Irish and, as people left the theatre, as “the new Synge”. I didn’t agree, but I had a lot to think about, much of it about the lugubriously hilarious performance of a new talent.
Tom Murphy was playing a bored and malevolent teenager, the deus ex machina of a plot which turns on an undelivered letter. The character, it seemed to me, was one of best flights in the play: bored to insanity in Leenane, the kid wants out, and he has high ambition. He wants to become a heroin-addicted drop-out in a Manchester squat. Tom could have hammed such outrageous comedy. Instead, he perched gnomically on a table edge, seeming to throw the lines away. He was 28 years old; he looked 15. Two years later he still looked 15 when he won a Tony award for the role.
He was also a haunting Johnny Boyle in Juno and the Paycock at the Abbey, his slight stature again a marvellous weapon, his nightmare meanderings as the one-armed, doomed target of an execution squad an echo and a precursor of the filthy work of today’s Sinn Fein inheritors of the Republican tradition. Tom’s performance, I suspect, would have won enthusiastic applause from O’Casey himself, who wrote his three great tragedies as an indictment of all nationalism, despite subsequent attempts to hijack them.
I only knew Tom Murphy very slightly but it felt as though I knew him well and fondly: anyone who spoke of him did so with deep affection and you immediately recognised that he was as liked as he was admired. “No side” was the universal judgement. Everybody liked him in a world where envy of the talent and acclaim of others can be rampant.
It is always a tragedy when somebody dies before their allotted time. For Tom Murphy, the cancer that took him rampaged through his compact little body like an all-consuming whirlwind. I hope that in his sadly short life he felt he had achieved at least some of his ambitions. He deserved that satisfaction and happiness: he was a wonderful talent and I am just glad that we saw at least some of it.
Tom Murphy during filming of ‘Pure Mule’ (2005)Tom Murphy during filming of ‘Pure Mule’ (2005)
Derrick O’Connor made three films with Terry Gilliam, he took on Mel Gibson in hand-to-hand combat as a memorable and particularly nasty South African villain in Lethal Weapon 2 in 1989 and he wound up in the Pirates of the Carribean franchise.
But O’Connor honed his craft on stage in Edinburgh in the 1960s and 1970s, working with both the Traverse and Royal Lyceum theatre companies before heading for Hollywood, where his talents seemed to fit comfortably into a string of roles as criminals and priests.
He was born in Dublin in 1941, but grew up in London and in his twenties relocated to Edinburgh, where he appeared in several Traverse productions in the late 1960s, including Megan Terry’s experimental “theatre game” Comings and Goings and The Lunatic, The Secret Sportsman and The Woman Next Door, satirical theatre by the one-time Scotsman television critic Stanley Eveling.
O’Connor worked with the Royal Lyceum Theatre company at a particularly auspicious time when Richard Eyre was director in the early 1970s. He was Biondello in The Taming of the Shrew, with Antony Webb as Petruchio and Kika Markham as Katharina. His other Lyceum productions included Oh! What a Lovely War and Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker.
By the early 1970s he was also getting small roles in television and film. His association with Gilliam began on the 1977 fantasy film Jabberwocky, which was inspired by the Lewis Carroll poem about the eponymous monster. O’Connor was credited in the role of “flying hogfish peasant”.
He was the robber leader in Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) and played Dowser, a sinister Central Services character in Gilliam’s Kafkaesque comedy-drama Brazil (1985).
In audio commentary for the DVD releases, Gilliam revealed that unlike most actors O’Connor was very happy to cut down on his number of lines. In Time Bandits he communicates in grunts. In Brazil he spent much of his time echoing the dialogue of his partner Spoor, played by Bob Hoskins.
Other credits from around the time include The Missionary (1982), Hope and Glory (1987) and the starring role in the Australian television comedy-drama series Stringer (1988), about a journalist who links up with a taxi driver to pursue new business ventures. He also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He got his big Hollywood break when he dyed his hair blonde and adopted a South African accent to play Pieter Vorstedt in Lethal Weapon 2. Vorstedt was a vicious South African agent involved in illegal drugs who clashes with Gibson’s character Martin Riggs. At the climax of the film the two come face to face in Los Angeles’s dockland area. Vorstedt tries to stab Riggs, but Riggs turns the knife on Vorstedt and finishes him off by dropping a cargo container on him, prompting audience cheers. CinemaBlend website noted: “Not enough good things can be said about what Derrick O’Connor brought to Lethal Weapon 2, as Pieter Vorstedt remains one of the franchise’s best characters… If you are looking for a reminder of how strong his performance was in that particular film, you can check out the scene in which he reveals that he murdered Riggs’s wife.”
Whereas some actors might fill their delivery with a perverse glee, O’Connor relates the story matter-of-factly, with only a hint of delight in his adversary’s torment.
O’Connor decided to stay on in California after Lethal Weapon, made his home in the Santa Barbara area and found fairly regular work in American television and movies, while maintaining his interest in theatre as well.
Having fallen out with Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 2, he got on no better with Arnold Schwarzenegger in End of Days (1999). Schwarzenegger plays an ex-cop working in private security. O’Connor’s character is a priest called Thomas Aquinas, who effectively announces the “End of Days” when he tells Schwarzenegger: “The thousand years has ended, the Dark Angel is loosed from his prison.”
Schwarzenegger is forced to kill him to save himself, but is arrested and police refuse to believe him as it transpires Aquinas had no tongue and therefore no power of speech.
O’Connor had a major recurring role as one of the heads of a crime organisation in the second season of Jennifer Garner spy drama Alias (2002), he played another priest, lecturing Ben Affleck, in the 2003 superhero movie Daredevil, and he had a small role as an old man who signs up with Johnny Depp’s crew in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006).
O’Connor also worked in theatre in San Francisco and Los Angeles and he directed a stage production of Krapp’s Last Tape, by his Nobel Prize-winning compatriot Samuel Beckett, and a play called Rock Justice, by Marty Balin, better known as a member of the rock band Jefferson Airplane than for his theatre work.
He continued working until recently and is survived by his wife Mimi and son Max.
Creighton Hale was born Patrick Fitzgerald in Cork in 1882. He acheived US fame for his role in “Inian Summer” on Broadway. In 1914 he made his film debut in the silent “The Exploits of Elaine”. He starred opposite Lillian Gish in “Way Down East” in 1920 and “Orphans of the Storm” with Lillian and her sister Dorothy. His career survived the coming of sound and he was featured in films such as “The Maltese Falcon” in 1941 and “Casablanca”. He died in 1965.
Aideen O’Kelly is a distinguished Irish actress now based in the U.S. who was born in Dalkey, Dublin in 1940. She began her career in Dublin and in 1960 made her film debut in “Boyd’s Shop”. Her other movies include “The Webster Boy” and “A War of Children”. She has featured on American television on such shows as “Law & Order” and “Third Watch”. She died in 2015.
“The Actor’s Fund” interview:
Actor Aideen O’Kelly Irish charm: Born in a small town about 12 miles outside Dublin, Ireland. Notables: Broadway production of Othello (1982) as Emilia with Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones; Brian Friel’s Philadelphia Here I Come! (1994); the Nurse in Long Wharf Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet (1981), opposite Mary Beth Hurt’s Juliet and Peter Gallagher as Benvolio. Of her time at Dublin’s Gate Theatre: “I did some great classics with them,” working with founders Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir. “Micheál was a dream, a ladies’ actor. He sat and talked with me at length. We were rehearsing a play by Jean Anouilh in which he starred and Hilton directed. He could sit and talk to me for hours about Anouilh and French writers.” Titania in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream at the Gate: “It was a beautiful production. The Gate was superb. It was very sophisticated at that stage concentrating mainly on new European plays and classics.” (The photo of Aideen at right is from the production.) On meeting Samuel Beckett: “He wanted to read with me—the play was Happy Days. My terror, even at my age, of having to read with Sam… During it, I was staring, because both eyes were staring into my face. With every muscle he was watching my face, no doubt. All of a sudden, right at the back of his eyes I could see something—in these amazing eyes—something was coming at me from the eyes, and there was a twinkle there… I started to giggle, and he said, ‘What are you laughing at?’ And I said, ‘At you, you’re very funny.’ Well, he slapped my knee and roared laughing, and he said, ‘That’s it!’ Apparently hardly anyone gets it—that it is funny. And his manager said, ‘You know, I’ve never known Sam at an interview to laugh like that, he was thrilled.’ And he was apparently thrilled with me, because I understood the play.” Advice for young actors: “There was one of the old, old actors, F.J. McCormick, who died too young, actually, he was one of the great ones, really great. I asked him, ‘F.J., I’ve done a few plays. Give me some advice.” And he just stared at me and he said, ‘Just listen.’ And I said, ‘Yeah…? Well…?’ He started to grin, ‘Yeah, listen.’ He was absolutely right. Because in life, you wouldn’t be able to interact at all with people unless you listen to what they’re saying to you, and on stage it’s the same.” Aideen is part of a very special community of unique individuals who reside at The Actors Fund’s Lillian Booth Actors Home. The Home is the jewel in The Fund’s housing crown and a recipient of U.S. News and World Report’s coveted “Best Nursing Homes in America” award, bestowed on the best 2,700 of the 17,000 facilities nationwide. Our 124 residents represent a diverse cross-selection of the entertainment industry – from stagehands to writers to producers and, of course, dancers and actors, too. Nearly every entertainment union is represented under one roof in Englewood, New Jersey. This interview originally appeared in Marquee, the official newsletter of The Actors Fund. Join The Fund today! Not only will you receive your own copy of Marquee twice yearly, plus all the benefits of membership, you’ll also play an important role in helping everyone in our creative community in times of need, crisis or transition and continue The Actors Fund tradition of caring for our own in entertainment. Top photo: Joann Coates – See more at: http://www.actorsfund.org/about/publications/blog/MeetArtistsAideenOKelly#sthash.zBdZwezi.dpuf
Michael MacLiammoirMichael MacLiammoir.Michael Mac Liammoir
Michael Mac Liammoir was born in London in 1899. In the 1920’s he came to Ireland and with Hilton Edwards established the now famed Gate Theatre in Dublin. Actors to work at the Gate include Orson Welles, James Mason and Geraldine Fitzgerald. Primarily a stage actor he had made the occasional film including John Huston’s “The Kremlin Letter” in 1970 and “What’s the Matter with Helen” with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters which he made in Hollywood. He died in 1978.
“Wikipedia” entry:
As Alfred Willmore, he was one of the leading child actors on the English stage, in the company of Noël Coward. He studied painting at London’s Slade School of Art, continuing to paint throughout his lifetime. In the 1920s he travelled all over Europe. Willmore was captivated by Irish culture: he learnt Irish which he spoke and wrote fluently and he changed his name to an Irish version, presenting himself in Ireland as a descendant of Irish Catholics from Cork.[1] Later in his life, he wrote three autobiographies in Irish and translated them into English.[2]
While acting in Ireland with the touring company of his brother-in-law Anew MacMaster, Mac Liammóir met his partner and lover, Hilton Edwards. Their first meeting took place in the Athenaeum, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, which is currently in a state of disrepair. Deciding to remain in Dublin, where they lived at Harcourt Terrace, the pair assisted with the inaugural production of Galway‘s Irish language theatre, An Taibhdhearc; the play was Mac Liammóir’s version of the mythical story Diarmuid agus Gráinne. Mac Liammóir and Edwards then threw themselves into their own venture, co-founding the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928. The Gate became a showcase for modern plays and design (even as Mac Liammóir himself maintained an ongoing fascination with Celticism). Mac Liammóir’s set and costume designs were key elements of the Gate’s success. His many notable acting roles included Robert Emmet/The Speaker in Denis Johnston’s The Old Lady Says “No!” and the title role in Hamlet.
In 1948, he appeared in the NBC television production of Great Catherine with Gertrude Lawrence. In 1951, during a break in the making of Othello, Mac Liammóir produced Orson Welles‘s ghost-story Return to Glennascaulwhich was directed by Hilton Edwards. He played Iago in Welles’s film version of Othello (1952). His Iago is unusual in that Mac Liammóir was about fifty (and looked older) when he played the role, while the play gives Iago’s age as 28. This may have been because of Welles’ intended interpretation – he wanted Iago played as an older “impotent” consumed by envy for the younger Othello.[3] The following year, he went on to play ‘Poor Tom’ in another Welles project, the TV film of King Lear (1953) for CBS.
Mac Liammóir claimed when talking to Irish playwright, Mary Manning, to have had a homosexual relationship with General Eoin O’Duffy, former Garda Síochána Commissioner and head of the quasi-fascist Blueshirts in Ireland, during the 1930s. The claim was revealed publicly by RTÉ in a documentary, The Odd Couple, broadcast in 1999. However, Mac Liammóir’s claims have not been substantiated.
Mac Liammóir is the subject of the 1990 play The Importance of Being Micheál (also published as a book) by John Keyes.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Dudley DiggesDudley DiggesThe Narrow Corner, poster, from left: Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Patricia Ellis on midget window card, 1933. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Digges, (John) Dudley (1880–1947), actor, stage manager, and director, was born 9 June 1880, son of James Dudley Digges, clerk, of 16 Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin, and Catherine Digges (née Forsythe). He was educated by the Christian Brothers (1886–90), and at St Mary’s college, Rathmines (1890–93). After studying theatre methods under Frank Fay (qv), in 1898 he joined the Ormond Dramatic Company run by Frank and his brother William Fay (qv), performing in sketches such as ‘The comic tutor’ at St Theresa’s Hall, Clarendon St. He was a member of the Celtic Literary Society at the time of its merger with Cumann na nGaedhael (1900). A member from 1899 of William Fay’s Comedy Combination, he performed in W. Bayle Bernard’s farce ‘His last legs’ at the Coffee Palace Hall, Townsend St., in 1901. When William Fay formed the National Dramatic Company in 1902, Digges acted as Naisi in the first public production of ‘Deirdre’ byGeorge Russell (qv) (‘Æ’), and in ‘Kathleen ni Houlihan’ by William Butler Yeats (qv), at St Theresa’s Hall (2–4 April). A founding member of the Irish National Theatre Society (February 1903), Digges played the Wise Man in Yeats’s ‘The hour glass’ at the society’s premiere performance, in Dublin’s Molesworth Hall (14 March). After the controversial first performance of ‘In the shadow of the glen’ by J. M. Synge (qv) (10 October 1903), Digges walked out in protest along with Maud Gonne MacBride (qv) and Mary Quinn (the future Mary Digges (qv)), and resigned from the society. He directed a series of plays – including Henry Connell’s ‘Robert Emmet’, in which he played the title role – for the Cumann na nGaedhael Theatre Company at the 1903 Samhain theatre festival. He worked under Arthur Griffith (qv) as a secretary on the United Irishman in 1904, while performing with the Celtic Players at the Dublin Workman’s Club, York St.
In 1904 Digges travelled to America to perform with Quinn and P. J. Kelly at the St Louis world exhibition; involved in a fracas with the stage manager, Luke Martin, over supposed anti-Irish elements in one of the offerings, he was fired from the company, having appeared only in Russell’s ‘Deirdre’. Remaining permanently in America, in 1905 he performed at the Garrick Theatre, New York, in ‘John Bull’s other island’ by George Bernard Shaw (qv), and in 1906 acted with Ben Greet’s Shakespearean company. He married Mary Quinn in 1907; it is not recorded that they had children. Touring with the Fiske Theatre company, Digges became friendly with the noted English actor George Arliss. He collaborated with visiting Irish actors to perform ‘The rising of the moon’ by Lady Gregory (qv) at the Savoy Theatre, New York, in 1908, under the management of Charles Frohman, and he acted with his wife and Frank Fay in ‘The building fund’ by William Boyle (qv; 1853–1923) at Powers Theatre, Chicago. Over the next decade he worked primarily as a stage manager, with Frohman productions (1908–12) and for Arliss (1912–19). A founding member of the New York Theatre Guild in 1919, he performed in its first production, Jacinto Benavente’s ‘The bonds of interest’. His sensitive and highly praised acting as the unsavoury tradesman James Caesar in ‘John Ferguson’ by St John Greer Ervine (qv) at the Garrick Theatre (1919) won him star status, and helped establish the lasting reputation of the Theatre Guild. He appeared in over 3,500 performances for the guild, most notably as Mr Zero in Elmer Rice’s landmark expressionistic play ‘The adding machine’ (1923). He also directed plays with the guild, including Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’, ‘Heartbreak house’, ‘The doctor’s dilemma’, and ‘Man’s estate’. He was a director of the Actors’ Theatre, New York (1924–5), and staged Shaw’s ‘Candida’ and Ibsen’s ‘The wild duck’. Moving to Hollywood in 1929, he embarked on a prolific film career, his roles including that of Casper Gutman in the first filmed version of The Maltese falcon(1931), and the ship’s surgeon in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).
Presented with a gold medal by the American Irish Historical Society in New York for his defining role in the creation of the modern Irish theatre, Digges delivered an acceptance address entitled ‘A theatre was made’, dealing with his early theatrical experiences (1939). He was vice-president of Actor’s Equity, and belonged to the Lambs and Players clubs. In his last performance for the Theatre Guild, on Broadway in 1946, he played Harry Hope in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘The iceman cometh’ to wide critical acclaim. He died after suffering a stroke in his residence at 1 West Sixty-fourth St., New York, on 24 October 1947, survived by a sister and two brothers living in Ireland; his wife had died only two months earlier. An elegiac poem, ‘The dead player’, by Padraic Colum (qv), was published in the Dublin Magazine in 1953
Dudley Digges was born in Dublin in 1879. He came to the U.S. in 1904 and was in Hollywood by 1930. Among his movie credits are “Tess of the Storm Country” in 1932 and “The Light that Failed” in 1939. He died in 1947.
Though his on-screen persona never seemed to vary much from that of, say, Ebenezer Scrooge, he was a very well-respected stage actor and director, with a particular fondness for the works of Henrik Ibsen. Digges enjoyed an enormously successful career as a Broadway actor and director (active there from 1906-1947) in addition to his work as a character actor in Hollywood.
Acted on stage from 1902 and moved to the U.S. two years later. Was briefly stage manager for Charles Frohman and George Arliss, before embarking on a prolific Broadway career (1906-47) which lasted until his death.
