Hurd Hatfield was born in 1917 in New York City. He came to fame with his role in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” with Angela Lansbury. His other roles include “El Cid”, “King of Kings” and “The Boston Strangler”. He lived in Ireland and died there in 1998.
El Cid
The Left Handed Gun
The Picture of Dorian Gray
King of Kings
Crimes of the Heart
Destination Murder
The Boston Strangler
The Diary of a Chambermaid
His obituary by Tom Vallance in “The Independent”:
THE ACTOR Hurd Hatfield will always be associated with the film role that made him a star, that of the aesthetic young man who remains youthful through the years while a portrait of himself in the attic displays the aberrations of his life, in MGM’s film version of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
He would later say, however, that the role was a curse as well as a blessing, for within five years he was appearing in B movies, and throughout the rest of his life he would be associated with that single role, despite a long and varied career in film, television and particularly theatre. “I have been haunted by The Picture of Dorian Gray,” he said. “New York, London, anywhere I’m making a personal appearance, people will talk about other things but they always get back to Dorian Gray.” Coincidentally, until recently Hatfield’s appearance remained remarkably youthful, and he became accustomed to being asked if he kept a painting of himself in his attic.
He was born William Rukard Hurd Hatfield in New York City in 1918. He won a scholarship to study acting at Michael Chekhov’s Dartington Hall company in Devon, England, and made his professional debut in the spring of 1939 playing the Baron in scenes from The Lower Depths at the company’s theatre. Returning to the United States with Chekhov’s company, he toured as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Caleb Plummer in Cricket on the Hearth, and Gloucester in King Lear, before making his Broadway debut as Kirilov in The Possessed (1939).
This adaptation of several Dostoevsky works into one sombre 15-scene play ran for only 14 performances, with both the acting and Chekhov’s direction deemed excessively stylised. While the company was playing on the West Coast, Hatfield was signed by MGM and cast as Lao San in the studio’s 1944 adaptation of Pearl Buck’s epic novel Dragon Seed, about the effect of Japanese invasion on a family of Chinese farmers. “That was some experience,” said Hatfield later. “A nightmare! Walter Huston was my father, Katharine Hepburn my sister, Aline MacMahon from New York my mother, Turkish Turhan Bey my brother, Russian Akim Tamiroff my uncle – it was a very odd Chinese family!”
Hatfield then auditioned for the role of vain young sensualist who trades his soul for eternal youth in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). “Oscar Wilde’s original Dorian is blond and blue-eyed,” he said later, “and here I was, this gloomy-looking creature. I almost didn’t go to the audition, and when I did, all these blond Adonises were to the right and left of me. I looked like one of their agents!”
The director Albert Lewin had just written and directed a successful transcription of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, and he was given a large budget to make an opulent and literate version of Wilde’s novel, though critics objected to the many liberties that were taken with the story. The strict censorship of the time worked to some extent in the film’s favour, making the suggestions of corruption and decadence all the more telling for being oblique.
Harry Stradling’s photography, which blazed into colour from black-and- white when it showed the ageing, increasingly dissolute portrait (by Ivan Albright), won an Academy Award. George Sanders was ideally cast as the cynical misogynist Lord Henry Wotton and Angela Lansbury won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sybil Vane, the music-hall singer whose plaintive rendition of “Little Yellow Bird” wins Gray’s heart before he is persuaded by Wotton to jilt her cruelly.
Hatfield’s enigmatic, passive performance was given a mixed reception (one critic described his lack of facial animation to that of an actress playing Trilby while under the hypnotic spell of Svengali). Variety reported, “He plays it with little feeling, as apparently intended, and does it well . . . he’s singularly Narcissistic all the way.” The majority felt that the actor’s immobile features and flat tones suggested the mixture of beauty and depravity called for, but although the film was a great success it failed to ignite Hatfield’s film career. “The film didn’t make me popular in Hollywood,” he commented later. “It was too odd, too avant- garde, too ahead of its time. The decadence, the hints of bisexuality and so on, made me a leper! Nobody knew I had a sense of humour, and people wouldn’t even have lunch with me.”
His next film was an independent production, the off-beat Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), adapted by Burgess Meredith from Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel Le Journal d’une femme de chambre and directed by Jean Renoir, who was a great admirer of Paulette Goddard, Meredith’s wife and the star of the film. In this strongly cast production, Hatfield held his own as the consumptive son of a wealthy landowner who finds strength and redemption through the love of a chambermaid, but the film, now regarded as a minor classic, was only a succes d’estime at the time of its release, and Hatfield returned to MGM to play a subsidiary role as one of the scientists working on the atom bomb in the studio’s semi-documentary of the weapon’s development, The Beginning or the End (1947).
He had a better role in Michael Curtiz’s enjoyable thriller The Unsuspected (1947), as an artist driven to alcohol by his wife’s infidelities. In Walter Wanger’s costly but ponderous Joan of Arc (1948), Hatfield played Father Pasquerel, chaplain to Joan (Ingrid Bergman), but, when this was followed by roles as the villain in two B movies, The Checkered Coat (1950, as a psychotic killer called Creepy) and Chinatown at Midnight (1950), he decided to return to the stage.
In 1952 he appeared on Broadway as Dominic in Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed, directed by Laurence Olivier, and the following year played Lord Byron and Don Quixote in Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real, directed by Elia Kazan. He was Prince Paul in the Broadway production of Anastasia (1954), played the title role in Julius Caesar in the inaugural season of the American Shakespeare Festival at Connecticut, Stratford (1955) and appeared as Don John in John Gielgud’s legendary production of Much Ado About Nothing (1959).
He occasionally returned to Hollywood, notably for two sexually ambivalent roles: the epicene follower of Billy the Kid (Paul Newman) in Arthur Penn’s film of Gore Vidal’s The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and a homosexual antique dealer considered a suspect in The Boston Strangler (1968) – the scene in which he is questioned by a liberal police officer (Henry Fonda) was one of the most potent in the film. He was in two of 1965’s epics, King of Kings and El Cid, and in 1986 returned to the screen to play the ailing grandfather of Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Diane Keaton in Crimes of the Heart.
His prolific television work included The Rivals and The Importance of Being Ernest (both 1950), the title roles in The Count of Monte Cristo (1958) and Don Juan in Hell (1960), episodes of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Murder She Wrote, and in 1963 an Emmy-nominated performance as Rothschild in The Invincible Mr Disraeli. In recent years he toured Germany, Northern Ireland, Latvia and Russia in The Son of Whistler’s Mother, a one-man play about James McNeill Whistler, and in July 1997 he made a personal appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in connection with an exhibition of paintings by Albright (including Dorian Gray).
A bachelor, Hurd Hatfield had lived for many years on an estate in Ireland (he also owned a house on Long Island), commuting for acting assignments. He recently stated that he had accepted his permanent association with the role of Gray, even though the film had for him been “a terrible ordeal in self- control, everything being so cerebral”. He added, “But not many actors are fortunate enough to have made a classic. One friend told me it’s a good thing I didn’t make Dracula and have my entire professional life dominated by that!”
William Rukard Hurd Hatfield, actor: born New York 7 December 1918; died Monkstown, Co Cork 25 December 1998.
For “The Independent” obituary on Hurd Hatfield, please click here.
George Brent made his screen debut in “Under Suspicion” (1930). Initially a slightly tough talking New York type, Brent proved an effective romantic foil to a wide variety of dominant female stars of the 1930s and 40s, most notably at Warner Brothers, where he was tenured from 1932 to 1942. Capable of playing the strong but silent type, or the urbane and cynical, Brent often spent his screen time desiring his leading lady or being pursued by her. His playing was invariably professional and amiable if not dynamic or idiosyncratic, and so he proved a natural in “women’s films” in which the focus was securely on a more galvanizing female actor who was a bigger star. Among his female paramours over the years were Bebe Daniels (“42nd Street,” 1933), Greta Garbo (“The Painted Veil,” 1934), Ginger Rogers (“In Person,” 1935), Myrna Loy (“The Rains Came,” 1939), Barbara Stanwyck (“My Reputation,” 1946), and Claudette Colbert (“Bride for Sale,” 1949).
Brent most often appeared as romantic lead in deferential support to three of Warners’ classiest star actresses: Kay Francis (“Living on Velvet,” 1935, “Give Me Your Heart,” 1936, “Secrets of an Actress,” 1938); Ruth Chatterton (“The Crash,” 1932, “Female,” 1933), to whom he was married from 1932 to 1934; and, particularly, Bette Davis (“Front Page Woman,” 1935, “Jezebel,” 1938, “Dark Victory,” 1939, “The Great Lie,” 1941). He also occasionally enjoyed a role off the beaten path, as in Robert Siodmak’s memorable Gothic melodrama, “The Spiral Staircase” (1946).
Brent sustained his prolific output after he and Warners parted company, but his films gradually diminished in importance in the later 40s. Very much a leading man type, he never made the transition to character roles, and so left the cinema in 1953 after appearing in a series of minor efforts. Two of his other four wives were actresses Constance Worth and Ann Sheridan (opposite whom he made “Honeymoon for Three,” 1941). Brent came out of retirement for 1978’s “Born Again”. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
For an article on George Brewnt please click here.
Angel On The Amazon, poster, US poster art, George Brent (left), Constance Bennett (second left), Vera Ralston (center), 1948. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Submarine D-1, poster, Wayne Morris, Pat O’Brien, George Brent on window card, 1937. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)TWIN BEDS, US poster, top from left: George Brent, Joan Bennett, bottom: Mischa Auer, 1942 Courtesy Everett Collection ACHTUNG AUFNAHMEDATUM GESCHÄTZT PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xCourtesyxEverettxCollectionx MCDTWBE EC002The Purchase Price, poster, from left: George Brent, Barbara Stanwyck, 1932. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)The Great Lie, poster, George Brent, Bette Davis, 1941. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Brent, George (1904–79), actor, was born George Nolan 15 March 1904 at Main St., Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, son of John Nolan, shopkeeper, and Mary Nolan (née McGuinness). Orphaned in 1915, he moved briefly to New York where he was cared for by an aunt, returning later to Dublin to finish his education. He took up acting at the Abbey Theatre, where he had already played some minor roles but, suspected by the British authorities of IRAinvolvement, he fled to Canada, where he continued to act, working in stock companies for two years. He again travelled to New York, finding work with stock companies and founding three of his own. His appearances on Broadway in the late 1920s were noticed in Hollywood. He was talented, but his good looks and reliability were as important in ensuring that he achieved over a hundred screen credits during his career. Most of these were in Warner Brothers productions (1930–53).
Never a powerful box-office draw, he was employed by the studio to carry middle-ranking projects while providing support to A-list stars in larger undertakings. Unambitious and without pretensions, he was happy to take the money while performing quietly and professionally. This led unkind reviewers to describe his performances as having ‘all the animation of a penguin’ and as varying between those in which he was with or without a moustache. Once he abandoned the ‘rugged hero’ roles in which he was initially cast, he provided competent but understated portrayals, making him an ideal foil for the domineering leading ladies of this period. In 1934 he delivered just such a performance opposite Greta Garbo in the screen adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s ‘The painted veil’. He was also a good foil for Merle Oberon, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck (four times), Ruth Chatterton (four times), and Bette Davis (eleven times). Davis was one of the many leading ladies with whom he had affairs and Ruth Chatterton was the second (1932–4) of his six wives. He married two other actresses, Constance Worth (1937) and Ann Sheridan (1942–3).
His best performances were probably in Jezebel (1938), for which Davis won an Oscar; Dark victory (1939) with Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan; The rains came (1939), a disaster movie with Tyrone Power; and The spiral staircase (1945), a horror-thriller set in England. He never filmed in Ireland, but starred with James Cagney in a movie about an Irish-American regiment, The fighting 69th (1940). His career entered a terminal slide in the late 1940s when he appeared in dross such as The corpse came C.O.D. (1947), a severe decline for someone who had acted in 42nd Street (1933). When the movie offers dried up he starred in a TV series, Wire service (1956–9), before retiring to run his horse-breeding ranch in California. He made one more brief cameo in the movies playing a judge in the dire Born again (1978), the story of Nixon aide George Colson’s discovery of Christianity when jailed after Watergate. He died of emphysema 27 May 1979 in California
Liam Neeson has starred in a whole range of notable films – “Schindler’s List”,”Michael Collins”, “Kinsey”, “Les Miserables” and the “Gangs of New York” to name a few. He was born in Ballymeana in Northern Ireland in 1952 and started his acting career with the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. One of his first major stage successes was in Brian Friel’s “Translations” and one of his first early movies was John Boorman’s “Excalibur”. On Broadway he appeared opposite Natasha Richardson in Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie”. The couple married and had two sons. Tragically Natasha Richardson died after an accident in 2009. In the last few years he has surprisingly carved out a prolific career as an action here in thrillers. An interesting interview in “Hollywood Life” with Liam Neeson can be accessed here.
Neeson was born on 7 June 1952[1] in Ballymena, County Antrim, the son of Katherine “Kitty” Neeson (née Brown), a cook, and Bernard “Barney” Neeson, a caretaker at the Ballymena Boys All Saints Primary School.[4] Raised Roman Catholic,[5] he was named Liam after the local priest.[6] The third of four siblings, he has three sisters: Elizabeth, Bernadette, and Rosaleen.[7] Neeson said growing up as a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant town made him cautious,[8] and once said he felt like a “second-class” citizen there,[9] but has also said he was never made to feel “inferior or even different” at the town’s predominantly Protestant technical college.[10] Neeson has described himself as out of touch with the politics and history of Northern Ireland until becoming aware of protests by fellow students after Bloody Sunday in 1972, during the Troubles. That experience encouraged him to learn more local history.[10][11] In a 2009 interview, Neeson said, “I never stop thinking about it [the Troubles]. I’ve known guys and girls who have been perpetrators of violence and victims. Protestants and Catholics. It’s part of my DNA.”[12]
At age nine, Neeson began boxing lessons at the All Saints Youth Club, going on to win a number of regional titles before discontinuing at age 17.[13] He acted in school productions during his teens. In 1971, Neeson was enrolled as a physics and computer science student at Queen’s University Belfast, before leaving to work for the Guinness Brewery.[16] At Queen’s, he discovered a talent for football and was spotted by Seán Thomas at Bohemian FC. There was a club trial in Dublin, and Neeson played one game as a substitute against Shamrock Rovers FC but was not offered a contract.
After leaving university, Neeson returned to Ballymena, where he worked in a variety of casual jobs, from a forklift operator at Guinness to a truck driver. He also attended teacher training college for two years in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, before again returning to his hometown. In 1976, Neeson joined the Lyric Players’ Theatre in Belfast, where he performed for two years. He got his first film experience in 1977, playing Jesus Christ and Evangelist in the religious film Pilgrim’s Progress (1978). Neeson moved to Dublin in 1978 after he was offered a part in Ron Hutchinson’s Says I, Says He, a drama about The Troubles, at the Project Arts Centre. He acted in several other Project productions and joined the Abbey Theatre (the National Theatre of Ireland).[citation needed] In 1980, he performed alongside Stephen Rea, Ray McAnally and Mick Lally, playing Doalty in Brian Friel’s play Translations, the first production of Friel’s and Rea’s Field Day Theatre Company, first presented in the Guildhall, Derry, on 23 September 1980.[18]
In 1980, filmmaker John Boorman saw him on stage as Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men and offered him the role of Sir Gawain in the Arthurian film Excalibur. After Excalibur, Neeson moved to London, where he continued working on stage, in small budget films and in television. He lived with the actress Helen Mirren at this time, whom he met working on Excalibur.[19] Between 1982 and 1987, Neeson starred in five films, most notably alongside Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins in 1984’s The Bounty and Robert De Niro and Jeremy Ironsin 1986’s The Mission. Neeson guest-starred in the third season of the television series Miami Vice in 1986 and moved to Hollywood to star in more high-profile roles in the next year.[19] That year, he starred alongside Cher and Dennis Quaid in Suspect, a role that brought him critical acclaim. In 1988, he starred alongside Clint Eastwood in the fifth Dirty Harry film, “The Dead Pool”, in the role of Peter Swan, a horror film director. In 1990, he followed this with a starring role in Sam Raimi‘s Darkman. Although the film was successful, Neeson’s subsequent years did not bring him the same recognition. In 1993, he joined Ellis Island co-star and future wife Natasha Richardson in the Broadway play Anna Christie. They also worked together in Nell, released the following year.
Director Steven Spielberg offered Neeson the role of Oskar Schindler in his film about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List,[20] after seeing him in Anna Christie on Broadway. Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson and Warren Beatty all expressed interest in portraying Schindler,[21][22] (the last auditioning),[21] but Neeson was cast in December 1992 after formally auditioning for the role.[22] Neeson read the Keneally book and concluded that his character “enjoyed fookin’ [sic] with the Nazis. In Keneally’s book, it says he was regarded as a kind of a buffoon by them… if the Nazis were New Yorkers, he was from Arkansas. They don’t quite take him seriously, and he used that to full effect.”[23] His critically acclaimed performance earned him a nomination for a Best Actor Oscar, and helped the film earn Best Picture of 1993. (The best actor award went to Tom Hanks for his performance in Philadelphia.) Neeson also garnered BAFTA and Golden Globes nominations for his performance as Schindler. Soon after these accolades, Neeson became an in-demand leading actor. He starred in the subsequent period piecesRob Roy (1995) and Michael Collins (1996), the latter earning him a win for Best Starring Role at the Venice Film Festivaland another Golden Globe nomination. He went on to star as Jean Valjean in the 1998 adaptation of Victor Hugo‘s Les Misérables and in The Haunting (1999) as Dr. David Marrow.
In 1999, Neeson starred as Jedi MasterQui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Director George Lucas cast Neeson in the role because he considered him a “master actor, who the other actors will look up to, who has got the qualities of strength that the character demands.”[24] As the first Star Wars film to be released in 16 years, it was surrounded by a large amount of media anticipation. Neeson’s connection to Star Wars started in the Crown Bar, Belfast. He told Ricki Lake, “I probably wouldn’t have taken the role if it wasn’t for the advice of Peter King in the Crown during a Lyric reunion.”[clarification needed] Despite mixed reviews from critics and fans,[25]The Phantom Menace was an enormous box-office success and remained the most financially successful Star Wars film unadjusted for inflation until Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).[26] Neeson’s performance as Qui-Gon received several positive reviews[27][28] and a Saturn Award nomination. A stock recording of his voice from The Phantom Menace can be heard during a scene in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002).[29] Neeson was later reported to be appearing in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), portraying Qui-Gon again,[30] but ultimately did not. In the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008–14), Neeson reprised the role of Qui-Gon once again by voicing the character in two episodes of the third season and one episode of the sixth season.[29]
In 2004, Neeson hosted an episode of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live. He starred as a redneck trucker, Marlon Weaver, in an “Appalachian Emergency Room” sketch and as a hippie in a one-off sketch about two stoners (the other played by Amy Poehler) who attempt to borrow a police dog to find their lost stash of marijuana. Despite vowing not to play any Irish stereotypes, Neeson did play a stereotypically Irish man named Lorcan McArdle in the home makeover show parody “You Call This A House, Do Ya?”[32]
Neeson voiced the main character’s father, James, in the video game Fallout 3.[35] Executive producer Todd Howard said, “This role was written with Liam in mind, and provides the dramatic tone for the entire game”.[36]Fallout 3, the third game in the Fallout series, was extremely well received by critics and shipped 4.7 million copies by the end of 2008, the year it was released.
In 2008 Neeson starred in the action film Taken, a French-produced film also starring Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace, based on a script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Pierre Morel. Neeson plays a retired CIA operative from the elite Special Activities Division who sets about tracking down his teenage daughter after she is kidnapped. Taken was a worldwide box office hit, grossing $223.9 million worldwide, making almost $200 million more than its production budget. Neeson has said in interviews that he believed that Taken had put some people off the idea of actually travelling to Europe.[39]Taken brought Neeson back into the center of the public eye and resulted in his being cast in many more big-budget Hollywood movies. That year he also narrated the documentary Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity and again lent his voice to Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008).[40] He also provided a voice for Hayao Miyazaki‘s anime film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which received an August 2009 release.[41]
In 2011, Neeson starred in the action-thriller Unknown, a German-British-American co-production of a French book filmed in Berlin in early 2010, and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. This film led to a collaboration between Neeson and Collet-Serra on a series of similar action films including Non-Stop (2014), Run All Night (2015) and The Commuter (2018).
Neeson reunited with Steven Spielberg with plans to star as Abraham Lincoln in the 2012 film Lincoln, based on the book Team of Rivalsby Doris Kearns Goodwin. In preparation for the role, Neeson visited the District of Columbia and Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln lived before being elected, and read Lincoln’s personal letters. Neeson eventually declined the role, claiming he was “past his sell date” and had grown too old to play Lincoln. He was replaced by Daniel Day-Lewis.
It was announced in July 2010 that Neeson would guest-star on the new Showtime series The Big C.[49]In 2011, he played himself in BBC2’s series Life’s Too Short. In late 2011, Neeson was cast to play the lead character, a journalist, in a new album recording and arena production of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. He replaced Richard Burton, who had posthumously appeared in the arena production through CGI animation. Neeson did not physically appear on the stage, instead playing the role through the use of 3D holography. In 2012, Neeson starred in Joe Carnahan‘s The Grey. The film received mostly positive reviews and Neeson’s performance received critical acclaim. He also starred in Taken 2, a successful sequel to his 2008 blockbuster.[50] That year, he once again played Ra’s al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final film in Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Trilogy. He narrated the first trailer for the film.
On 31 January 2014, it was reported that Neeson would work with director Martin Scorsese again in an adaptation of the novel Silence.[51] Neeson had a supporting role as the henchman Bad Cop/Good Cop in the animated film The Lego Movie, which was a critical and commercial success. Neeson later played Bill Marks in the 2014 action film Non-Stop. The film was released on 28 February 2014. He also appeared, uncredited, as God in the BBC2 series Rev.. Neeson stars in the 2014 film A Walk Among the Tombstones, an adaption of the best-selling novel of the same name, in which he plays former cop Matthew Scudder, a detective hired to hunt the killers of a drug dealer’s wife.
During Super Bowl XLIX, Supercell did a Clash of Clans commercial with Neeson playing the game as “AngryNeeson52” and vowing revenge on his opponent “BigBuffetBoy85” while waiting for his scone at a bakery.[52] The appearance was a parody of his role in Taken. In 2016 Neeson narrated the RTÉ One three-part documentary on the Easter Rising, 1916.[53] In 2016, he voiced the Monster in the Spanish film A Monster Calls.[54]
Neeson opposes what he sees as the unrestricted right to own firearms in the United States[55] and has made calls for gun control.[56] In January 2015, he repeated his views, calling US gun laws a “disgrace” in an interview with Emirati newspaper Gulf News when replying to a question about the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris earlier that month.[57] In response, U.S gun manufacturer Para USA, which provided the weapons used by Neeson in the Taken film series, expressed regret at working with him, saying: “We will no longer provide firearms for use in films starring Liam Neeson and ask that our friends and partners in Hollywood refrain from associating our brand and products with his projects.”[57]
In 2014, he protested against the anti-carriage horse campaign of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said he would outlaw horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once he took office. Neeson wrote an opinion page published in The New York Times citing the carriage trade as a safe one for employees, horses and tourists and noted it was a livelihood for many immigrants.[58]
In September 2017, Liam Neeson compared the presidency of Donald Trump to the Watergate scandal of Richard Nixon, saying: “Democracy works and no man—and certainly not the President—is above the law. He has to be accountable.”[61]
Neeson met actress Natasha Richardson while performing in a revival of the play Anna Christie on Broadway in 1993.[74] They were married on 3 July 1994[75] and had two sons together.[76][77] In October 1998, they won £50,000 ($85,370) in libel damages after the Daily Mirror wrongly claimed that their marriage was suffering. They donated the money to victims of the August 1998 Omagh bombing.[78] In August 2004, they purchased an estate in Millbrook, New York.[79][80][81] On 18 March 2009, Richardson died when she suffered a severe head injury in a skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant Resort, northwest of Montreal. Neeson donated her organs following her death.[82]
Neeson holds British, Irish and American citizenship, having been naturalised as an American citizen in 2009. In 2009, nearly four decades after he was an undergraduate in physics and computer science at Queen’s University, Belfast, Neeson was awarded an honorary doctorate. It was presented to him in New York by Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Gregson.In March 2011, he was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.Neeson is a patron of Belfast-based charity and film festival CineMagic, which encourages and helps young people to get involved in the movie industry.
A heavy smoker earlier in his career, Neeson quit smoking in 2003 while working on Love Actually. When he took the role of Hannibal for the 2010 film adaptation of The A-Team, Neeson had reservations about smoking cigars (a signature trait of the character) in the film due to being an ex-smoker, but agreed to keep that trait intact for the film.[89] In June 2012, Neeson’s publicist denied reports that Neeson was converting to Islam. Neeson has expressed an affection for the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, that he grew accustomed to while filming Taken 2 in Istanbul: “By the third week, it was like I couldn’t live without it. It really became hypnotic and very moving for me in a very special way. Very beautiful.” He also expressed admiration for the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.[91]
In the year 2000, Neeson was offered the “Freedom of the Town of Ballymena” by the Ballymena Borough Council, but because of objections made by members of the Democratic Unionist Party regarding his comments that he had felt like a “second-class citizen” growing up as a Catholic in the town, he declined the award, citing tensions. Following the controversy, Neeson wrote a letter to the council, stating; “I will always remain very proud of my upbringing in, and association with, the town and my country of birth, which I will continue to promote at every opportunity. Indeed I regard the enduring support over the years from all sections of the community in Ballymena as being more than sufficient recognition for any success which I may have achieved as an actor.” Subsequently, on 28 January 2013, Neeson received the Freedom of the Borough from Ballymena Borough Council at a ceremony in the town.
John Kavanagh is an outstanding actor whose work has mostly been on the stage with occasional forays into film. His first film ws “Paddy” in 1970. He was excellent in the television adaptation of William Trevor’s “The Ballroom of Romance” as Bowser Egan. He travelled to the U.S. to make “The Black Dahlia” in 2006. He starred recently in TV’s “Father and Son”. as the father of Dougray Scott. Further details on John Kavangh’s career can be found on “The Agency” website here.
John Kavanagh had attended the Brendan Smyth Academy since he was 19-years-old and following it, attended Abbey Theatre. In 1967 he joined the company and stayed with them for 10 years before becoming freelancer.[1]
John Kavanagh
John Kavanagh is an Irish character actor. He began his career with the Irish comedy Paddy (1970), where he played the small role of Willie Egan. That same year, he played another small role in the World War II film The McKenzie Break (1970), about a P.O.W. camp in Scotland whose prisoners are preparing an escape.
The next twelve years brought Kavanagh no new films, though he continued to act on stage. Finally, he decided to return to screen acting with the theatrical film The Ballroom of Romance (1982), which put him in a romance with actress Brenda Fricker. The film was followed up with the small film Attracta (1983), and the made-for-television movie The Country Girls (1984), starring Sam Neill.
Maureen Potter
Kavanagh’s next theatrical film was one of the most famous films of his career: the Irish film Cal (1984), starring Helen Mirren and John Lynch. The film was about a young member of the IRA (Lynch) who is seeking to get out of the organisation. He meets the widow of one of the IRA’s victims (Mirren) and they begin a love affair.
Moving on from this film, Kavanagh acted in a number of films and television series. He participated in the thriller The Fantasist (1986), the crime drama Bellman and True (1987), the action film Joyriders (1988), and the independent film 4 Play: In the Border Country (1991), among others.
Kavanagh’s career picked up considerably in the mid-nineties. He acted alongside such classic actors as Mia Farrow and Jim Broadbentin the John Irvin film Widows’ Peak (1994). Kavanagh then guest-starred in the Sharpe series (starring Sean Bean and Hugh Fraser), where he played the holy man Father Michael Curtis. That same year, he acted in Braveheart (1995) as one of the nobles who routinely changed sides from Scotland to England in the Scottish wars of independence. Kavanagh next acted in Some Mother’s Son (1996), a prison film written by Jim Sheridan, and reunited with Brenda Fricker in Pete’s Meteor (1998).
After a number of smaller films, Kavanagh acted in another historical epic: the Oliver Stone film Alexander (2004), starring Colin Farrell, Val Kilmer and Anthony Hopkins. Kavanagh played the role of Parmenion, the old general who questions Alexander’s actions. After a plot to kill the young leader is foiled, Parmenion is accused of being the mastermind behind it and is murdered. While the film was a triumph overseas, its domestic box office was a fraction of the budget, and it received negative reviews for a number of reasons. After this, Kavanagh acted in Brian De Palma‘s murder film The Black Dahlia (2006) which failed at the box office.
Kavanagh rebounded with the successful television series The Tudors (2007). Starring fellow Alexander cast member Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the series plays out the story of England’s turmoil in the time of Henry the Eighth and his life as he breaks from the Catholic Church. In 2012 Kavanagh was cast in Michael Hirst‘s TV series Vikings.
Kavanagh collaborated as vocalist with Paul Brady on the record The Green Crow Caws, a musical celebration of the words of Seán O’Casey.
John Kavanagh is the father of actress Rachel Kavanagh.
Laurence Oliver died in 1989, just as Kenneth Branagh was launching the film of ‘Henry V’, which he wrote and directed and in which he starred. The coincidence made some journalists, especially in the U.S. wonder whether Branagh as the new Olivier.
Then, when Branagh’s performance was nominated for the annual awards at the end of the year he seldom looked like being strong competition against Daniel Day-Lewis.
For ‘My Left Foot’ this second young British actor swept all before him. That is not to say that Day-Lewis is the next Oliver, for which over the years there have been many failed claimants.
Certainly it does not look likely that Day Lewis will seek greatness on the stage, as Olivier did. But it would seem that we have a chameleon, one gifted with sensitivity and authority.
Because of his looks and the Oscar won while so young he may become a leading romantic actor in Hollywood – of that is what he and Hollywood want ( and with the British film industry in its depressed state let us at least hope he will dazzle us with his versatility from there). But the closest analogy with Olivier is one that both actors probably would appreciated – that other actors are in awe of him”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The Independent Years”. (1991).
One Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;Original Cinema 1-Sheet Poster – Movie Film Posters
Daniel Day-Lewis has created a gallery of terrific characters since his first major film in 1985. He was born in 1957. His range is astonishing. Witness his Christy Brown in “My Left Foot” and compare it to Hawkeye the scout in *Last of the Mohicans”, Bill the Butcher in “Gangs of New York” or the right-wing punk in “My Beautiful Launderette”. As he is very selective about what work he takes on, one can be deprived of his great acting for long periods of time. Each new performance is always highly anticipated.
When he was making “The Boxer”, I met him when traveling to London from Dublin when we were beside each other on the plane. He was very friendly and spoke about his various films especially about “The Last of the Mohicans”.
Interesting interview in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.
Colin Farrell was born in 1976 is an Irish actor. Farrell appeared in the BBCdramaBallykissangel
In 1998, made his film debut in the Tim Roth-directed drama The War Zone in 1999, and was discovered by Hollywood when Joel Schumacher cast him as the lead in the war drama Tigerland in 2000.
He then starred in Schumacher’s psychological thriller Phone Booth (2003) where he plays a hostage in a New York city phone booth, and the American thrillers S.W.A.T. (2003) and The Recruit (2003), establishing his international box-office appeal.
Barbara Mullen was an Irish actress well known in the UK for playing the part of Janet McPherson, the housekeeper in Dr. Finlay’s Casebook. Although the role of Janet brought her fame in later years, she already had made her mark in the theatre.
Mullen’s parents, Pat and Bridget, were from a fishing family on Inishmore island off the coast of County Galway, Ireland. The family had emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, where Mullen was born. She made her stage debut as a dancer at the age of three. When her father returned to Aran, later contributing to the making of Man of Aran, the classic documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty,[3] her mother stayed in the U.S. to bring up the 10 children. Mullen sang and danced in various theatres all over the U.S. and then moved to the UK in 1934, where she trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.
She wrote Life is my Adventure, her autobiography, at 23. A year later she made her London debut, acting the title role in the London West End production of Jeannie, a comedy about a Scottish girl taking a European holiday after coming into money. She became an overnight star.
Mullen repeated the role of ‘Jeannie’ on television and in the 1941 British film, which was her cinema debut, alongside Michael Redgrave, and she followed this with appearances in 20 more films, including A Place of One’s Own, Corridor of Mirrors and Innocent Sinners. She also played a notable role in the 1942 film version of Robert Ardrey‘s Thunder Rock as Ellen Kirby, the feminist who is jailed for her subversive ideas.[4]
She was married to documentary film-maker John Taylor, Man of Aran’s cameraman, [1]and they had two daughters, Briged and Susannah.
She appeared on television in America and Britain in programmes such as Juno and the Paycock and The Danny Thomas Show before being offered the role in Dr. Finlay’s Casebook, which began on the BBC in 1962. Her character, Janet McPherson, was the ever-efficient housekeeper to Doctors Finlay and Cameron at Arden House in the fictional Scottish village of Tannochbrae. When the series finished on television nine years later, it transferred to radio, running until 1978.
Barbara Mullen died of a heart attack in London, England on 9 March 1979.
Barbara Mullen was born in 1914 in Boston U.S.A of parents who came from the Aran Islands. When she was 24 she wrote her autobiography “Life Is My Adventure”. In 1935 she became an overnight star on the London stage with her performance in the lead in the play “Jeannie”. She later replaced Celia Johnson in the London stage adaptation of Daphene Du Maurier’s “Rebecca”. Her greatest fame though came from the long-running BBC series “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” where she played the housekeper Janet. The series ran from 1962 until 1971 and then ran on radio until 1978. Barbara Mullen died in 1979. Interview from 1974 in “The Catholic Herald” can be accessed here. Good biography on Oxford database here.
Aaron is a brilliant young Irish actor best known for his stage work with Druid Theatre of Galway. He was born in Cavan in 1980. He has featured in films in “Ella Enchanted” and “Deep Breaths”. He was born in Canan in 1980.
Article from “Galway Independent” in November 2013:
Fans of Galway’s inimitable Druid Theatre will be well acquainted with Cavan actor Aaron Monaghan, who has become a fixture in the company’s work over the past ten years. Having been centrally involved in both the DruidSynge and DruidMurphy collaborations, Aaron is once again treading the boards under the direction of Garry Hynes in Druid’s upcoming production of ‘The Colleen Bawn’, which opens at the Black Box Theatre on Thursday 5 December.
The play is now in its fourth week of rehearsals and despite being smothered with a winter flu, Monaghan’s enthusiasm for the challenge of the project is clear, as he reports that it is “all singing, all dancing, all laughing at the moment”.
The Boucicault work pushes music to the centre of the action, with live musicians performing at each show on the play’s nationwide tour. Describing the development process as “tough”, Cavan actor Monaghan predicts that the finished production will have “a lot of music in it, a great love story and a lot of comedy as well”.
“The live aspect is great because I think Boucicault wrote so much music into it, both as musical numbers and stage direction, that it highlights certain emotions that the characters are going through and underscores that. When you are playing that live, it is great to have musicians watching that drama unfold and supporting it. It feels like it is happening in the moment and brings a fresh aspect to it,” he says.
Monaghan plays Danny Mann, a character he describes as a “complicated” one, who brings together a blend of darkness and “huge innocence”.
“He is a servant of one of the heroes of the play and he is absolutely in love with him, he can do no wrong. He doesn’t like to see his master caught in any bad situations and hates to see him in this situation of being married beneath him and married to a woman that he can’t quite bring into the world,” he explains.
“He’s quite a loyal character but, in a way, there is a darkness to him as well. He almost oversteps the mark out of love for his master and brings about the ruin. He sets up a lot of plot and put a lot of things into work that carry the story of the play.”
‘The Colleen Bawn’ will be staged at the Black Box next month and Monaghan says he is looking forward to the experience, feeling that the widescreen aspect of the theatre will lend itself to the “cinematic scope” of the play.
“It is one of those plays that is so epic. Boucicault was writing for big auditoriums and asks the actors and production to live up to that level of performance. It will be interesting with the Black Box as it will allow us to play with that size so we are really looking forward to getting in there and seeing if we can live up to that.”
Monaghan was last month unveiled as one of the actors in Druid’s new permanent ‘Druid Ensemble’ who will be associated with the company and productions for the next three years. Others include Marie Mullen, Marty Rea, Rory Nolan, Maelíosa Stafford and Garrett Lombard and Monaghan describes the achievement as an “absolute honour” that will allow he and his fellow actors a more creative and collaborative role in the direction of upcoming Druid projects.
He adds that the ensemble model also allows for the development of a “shorthand” between the actors and director Garry Hynes, a benefit that is already reaping dividends for the company.
“There’s always been an unofficial relationship anyway but I think it changes things in the room. People are pitching in constantly now in a way that you wouldn’t in an ordinary rehearsal room because you’d feel ‘it’s not my right to say this’ or you might feel a bit wary. It’s led to a much more productive environment, it’s great. Everybody is helping everybody out and there’s no hierarchy. It’s great.”
Having filmed two movies earlier this year, Monaghan admits that he also hopes to develop his television and film career in the years to come but adds that theatre will remain his “first love”.
“The TV/film thing is something that I would like to get a bit more experience with and get better at because they are such different mediums and such different ways of working,” he said.
“I went off to do a show in London during the summer and the thing about that was I was completely terrified on the first day of rehearsal because I didn’t know anybody in the room. It was like being back in college and that was really wonderful; it was the challenge that I was looking for. That said, it was lovely to know that I was coming back home to Druid and very familiar waters with what feels like a family now.”
The above article can also be accessed online here.
Born to a Catholic nationalist family in Belfast, Ireland. Although her mother died when she was two, her father was a landowner farmer, insuring that the family always had income from family land. He soon left for Australia and McGlade was brought up by an aunt, studying at St. Dominic’s School, Belfast, convent schools and inParis. Thinking she would pursue teaching, she enrolled in the South Kensington School of Art.
Before taking up teaching duties, she enrolled in the Abbey School of Acting (affiliated with Dublin‘s Abbey Theatre). She changed her name when she began her acting career with the Abbey Theatre. One her earliest appearances was in George Bernard Shaw‘s The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet in which she played the part of a swaggering American ranch girl. The production played in Dublin as well as in New York, opening 20 November 1911 at the Maxine Elliott Theatre, marking O’Connor’s American debut. By 1913 she was based inLondon where she appeared in The Magic Jug, Starlight Express (1915-16 at the Kingsway Theatre), and Paddy the Next Best Thing. In the early 1920s she appeared as a cockey maid in Plus Fours followed in 1924 by her portrayal of a cockney waitress in Frederick Lonsdale‘s The Fake. In a single paragraph review, an unnamed reviewer noted “Una O’Connor’s low comedy hotel maid was effectively handled.” The latter show also played in New York (with O’Connor in the cast), opening 6 October 1924 at the Hudson Theatre. A review of the New York performances of The Fake recounts details of the plot, but then mentions
…two players of more than ordinary excellence. In the third act of The Fake occurs a scene between Una O’Connor and Godfrey Tearle, with Miss O’Connor as a waitress trying a crude sort of flirtation with Mr. Tearle. He does not respond at all and the longing, the pathos of this servant girl when she has exhausted her charms and receives no encouragement, is the very epitome of what careful character portrayal should be. Miss O’Connor is on the stage for only this single act, but in that short space of time she registers an indelible impression. Rightly, she scored one of the best hits of the performance.
These two plays in which she portrayed servants and waitresses appear to have portended her future career. Returning to London, she played in The Ring o’ Bells (November 1925), Autumn Fire (March 1926), Distinguished Villa (May 1926), and Quicksands of Youth (July 1926). When Autumn Fire toured the U.S., opening first in Providence, Rhode Island, a critic wrote: “Una O’Connor, who plays Ellen Keegan, the poor drudge of a daughter, bitter against life and love, does fine work. Her excellence will undoubtedly win her the love of an American public.”
She made her first appearance on film in the 1929 Dark Red Roses, followed by Murder! (1930) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and an uncredited part in To Oblige a Lady (1931).
Distinguished Villa, a play by Kate O\’Brien, Little Theatre, London, starring Una O\’Connor and Ivor Barnard.
1926
Despite her lengthy apprenticeship she had not attracted much attention. British critic Eric Johns recalled meeting her in 1931 in which she confessed “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t get work…The end of my savings is in sight and unless something happens soon, I’ll not be able to pay the rent.”[Her luck changed when she was chosen by Noël Coward to appear in Cavalcade at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1933. Expressing surprise that Coward noticed her, Coward responded that he had watched her for years and wrote the part with her in mind. She portrayed an Edwardian servant who transforms herself into a self-made woman. When the curtain came down after a performance attended by Hollywood executives, they exclaimed to each other “We must have that Irish woman. That is obvious.” Her success led her to to reprise her role in the film version of Cavalcade, and with its success, O’Connor decided to remain in the United States.
Among O’Connor’s most successful and best remembered roles are her comic performances in Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933) as the publican’s wife and in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) as the Baron’s housekeeper. She appeared in such films as The Informer (1935). Feeling homesick, in 1937 she went back to London for twelve months in the hope of finding a good part but found nothing that interested her. While in England she appeared in three television films. After her return to America, the storage facility that housed her furniture and car was destroyed in one of The Blitz strikes, which she took as a sign to remain in America.
Her film career continued notably with The Bells of St. Mary’s (1944). She also appeared in supporting roles in various stage productions and achieved an outstanding success in the role of “Janet McKenzie”, the nearly deaf housemaid, in Agatha Christie‘s Witness for the Prosecution at Henry Miller’s Theatre on Broadway from 1954–56; she also appeared in the film version in 1957, directed by Billy Wilder. As one of the witnesses, in what was essentially a serious drama, O’Connor’s character was intended to provide comic relief. It was her final film performance.
After a break from her initial forays in television, she took up the medium again by 1950. In 1952 she was able to state that she had been in 38 production that year alone. In a rare article that she authored, O’Connor called working in television “the most exacting and nerve-racking experience that has ever come my way. It is an attempt to do two things at once, a combination of stage and screen techniques with the compensations of neither…” Noting that many actors dislike television work, O’Connor said that she liked it because it allowed her to play many parts. She lamented that preparation for television work was too short a period for an actor to fully realize the depths of role characterization, but that it showed an actor’s mettle by the enormous amount of work needed. “Acting talent alone is not enough for the job. It requires intense concentration, an alert-quickmindedness that can take changes in direction at the last minute…” O’Connor concluded presciently: “It sounds fantastic and that is just exactly what it is, but it also an expanding field of employment that has come to stay. As such it is more than welcome here, where the living theatre seems determinedly headed the opposite way.”
Reportedly she was “happily resigned” to being typecast as a servant. “There’s no such thing as design in an acting career. You just go along with the tide. Nine times out of ten one successful part will set you in a rut from which only a miracle can pry you.”
Her weak heart was detected as early as 1932, when her arrival in America began with detention at Ellis Island because of a “congenital heart condition.” By the time of her appearance in the stage version of Witness for the Prosecution she had to stay in bed all day, emerging only to get to the theater and then leaving curtain calls early to return to her bed. Her appearance in the film version was intended to be her last.
Eric Johns described O’Connor as
…a frail little woman, with enormous eyes that reminded one of a hunted animal. She could move one to tears with the greatest of ease, and just as easily reduce an audience to helpless laughter in comedies of situation. She was mistress of the art of making bricks without straw. She could take a very small part, but out of the paltry lines at her disposal, create a real flesh-and-blood creature, with a complete and credible life of its own.
She admired John Galsworthy and claimed to have read all his works. She once said “Acting is a gift from God. It is like a singer’s voice. I might quite easily wake up one morning to find that it has been taken from me.”
Aislin McGucklin is from Newry, Co Down in Northern Ireland.She is best known for her role in “Heartbeat” as Dr Liz Merrick. She has featured in the films “The Nephew” and “The White Countess”.
Aidan McArdle was born in Dublin in 1970. He studied at RADA in London and then began working with the Royal Shakespearian Company. He featured in the 2004 film “Ella Enchanted”. He played the part of Saul Landau in “Casualty 1909”.
“Independent” article:
I’m one of six children, the only one who earns money from acting, although I would contend I’m the least dramatic and theatrical of all my siblings. I used to go to Betty Anne Norton’s drama class in Dublin when I was a child because my brother and sister went there.
I saw my brother Paul playing a stooge in The Dracula Spectacular and thought, “My God – that’s amazing!” (When he was eight, he was in a TV biopic of Sean O’Casey but he had no interest in acting really.) At that time I would have been four and in “low babies” at St Joseph’s National Catholic School.
I suspect that the curriculum was similar to that taught in the Fifties; we learnt things by rote. It was only when I was halfway through St Joseph’s that corporal punishment was abolished. Yet there was a rigour in that education that I am glad I experienced.
I went to Terenure College when I was 12. It was a fee-paying school with entrance exam, uniforms, swimming-pool and gym. I enjoyed my time greatly but there seemed to be a feeling among some of the teachers that you weren’t really a full member of the school unless you were on the rugby team.
The most important teacher of my school years was a wonderful woman called Helen Muloney who set up a theatre group to do an annual modern play with the younger pupils. It was through her encouragement and belief that I began to think I might do this acting lark for a living.
I did pretty well at “Inter Cert”, which you took at 15, with eight or nine “honours” but I had blank spots – selective idiocy – at certain subjects. I was appalling at Latin and started bunking off the classes. At 18 I did seven or eight subjects for “Leaving Cert”; I got an A in English, three Bs and the rest Cs.
I went to University College Dublin and got a 2.2 in English and history; I actually think I did a degree in “Am I good enough to be an actor?'” as I immersed myself in the university drama society, playing everything from a women in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine to a very, very woolly-bearded King Lear.
I remember meeting a fellow student on Portobello Bridge and getting the syllabus for one of the history papers – the day before the final exam. Not clever.
In my last year I spent my 21st birthday money on flying over to audition for drama schools in England. I had written my own piece for Rada set in a psychiatric observation unit and the adjudicator thought that this was where I belonged, so I didn’t get past the first round.
I was then offered a part in The Iceman Cometh at the Abbey Theatre and a year’s contract as a player. That year’s experience gave me a confidence to audition for Rada again and this time I got in.
I was aware that I was very lucky. There was a magnificent ratio of teachers to pupils. We had comprehensive training in dance, singing, Alexander Technique, voice and Laban movement.
But there is an exercise I will never forget. We were all brought to the local park, told to pick a tree and then say: “I, tree, am looking at you, and you, tree, are looking at me’.” I remember thinking of the trials and tribulations myself and my mother had in trying to raise sponsorship for me to go to Rada, and I wondered, “What would my mam think?”
For interview with Aidan McArdle in “The Independent” in 2010 see here.
Stuart Townsend was born in Dublin 1972. His father is Peter Townsend the well-known professional golfer and his late mother Laura was a model. In 1996 he made his feature film debut in “Trojan Eddie”. He appeared opposite Helen Mirren on the London stage in Tennessee William’s “Orpheus Descending”.
On film he was in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “Queen of the Damned”. He made his directorial debut with “Battle in Seattle” in 2008. Article on Townsend in the “Irish Independent” can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
A handsome, dark-haired Irish actor with a sweet schoolboy look and an abundance of charm, Stuart Townsend was an affirmed film lover but gave no thought to acting until a drama student girlfriend led to his enrolling in Dublin’s Gaiety School of Acting.
Upon graduating in 1994, he formed the theater company Ether for Lunch with friends. In 1995 he was cast in Gillies MacKinnon’s “Trojan Eddie” (released in the USA in 1997), playing Richard Harris’ nephew and Stephen Rea’s assistant. A small role as the Irishman who sparks a sexual obsession in troubled Iris (Samantha Morton) in Carine Adler’s gripping “Under the Skin” (1997) followed.
Lynch was born in Corrinshego, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. He attended St Colman’s College, Newry. He began acting in Irish language-medium plays at school during the early years of the conflict in Northern Ireland. He is the eldest of five children of an Irish father and an Italian mother from Trivento (Campobasso). His younger sister Susan and his nephew Thomas Finnegan are also actors.
Lynch played the part of football legend George Best in the 2000 film Best. He played the lead in the Australian feature Angel Baby, winning the Australian Film Institute award for best leading actor and the Australian Film Critics award for best actor of 1995. He was nominated for a Satellite Film Award for the film Moll Flanders in 1996. He worked with acclaimed Belgian director Marion Hansel on her adaptation of Booker-nominated author Damon Galgut’s novel, The Quarry (also known as La Faille; 1998), which won Best Film at the Montreal Film Festival. He won Best Actor for the lead role in Best at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival in 2000. He wrote and co-produced the film.
He was nominated for a BAFTA for Cal, as well as for an Irish Film and Television Award for his role in The Baby War. He starred in Five Day Shelter as Stephen, which won a European Film Award and was in competition at the Rome Film Festival. He played the lead in Craig Vivieros’ first feature film, the prison drama Ghosted. He played the role of Wollfstan in Black Death, and appeared in the 2012 film version of Michael Morpurgo‘s novel, Private Peaceful.
Lynch is also a novelist. His first novel, Torn Water, was published in November 2005 by the Fourth Estate, a literary imprint of Harper and Collins, and his second, Falling Out of Heaven, was published on 13 May 2010 by the same publisher.
Cathleen Nesbitt hailed from Belfast where she attended Queen’s University. In 1911 she joined the Irish Players and performed with them in the U.S. in Synge’s “The Well of the Saints” and “The Playboy of the Western World”. She was the love of the poet Rupert Brooke who was to die in World War One. An interesting article on their releationship can be sourced on the Telegraph website here.
Over the next thirty years she made many British theatre and film appearances. In 1951 she was on Broadway with Audrey Hepburn in “Gigi” and made her first American film in 1953 which was “Three Coins in the Fountain”. In 1956 she was back on Broadway again in “My Fair Lady”.Her last film was in 1980 when she made “The Never Never Land” at the age of 92. She died two years later.
IMDB entry:
The Calendar by Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), 1929. Lady Panniford, played by Cathleen Nesbitt (1888-1982), left, and Garry Anson, played bu Owen Nares (1888-1943), right. The Play, vol. 55, no. 331, (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images) *** Local Caption ***Family Plot, lobbycard, (aka LA TRAMA), left top to bottom: Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, Alfred Hitchcock, center from left: Cathleen Nesbitt, Barbara Harris, 1976. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Diminutive, genteel Cathleen Nesbitt was a grand dame of the theatre on both sides of the Atlantic in a career spanning seven decades. Among almost 300 roles on stage, she excelled at comic portrayals of sophisticated socialites and elegant mothers. Hollywood used her, whenever a gentler, sweeter version of Gladys Cooper was needed, yet someone still possessed of a subtly sarcastic wit and turn of phrase. Cathleen attended Queen’s University in Belfast and the Sorbonne in Paris. Encouraged by a friend of her father – none other than the legendary Sarah Bernhardt – to enter the acting profession, she was taken on by Victorian actress and drama teacher Rosina Filippi (1866-1930). Cathleen’s first appearance on stage was in 1910 at the Royalty Theatre in London. This was followed in November 1911 by her Broadway debut with the touring Abbey Theatre Players in ‘The Well of the Saints’.
From here on, and for the rest of her long life, she was never out of a job, demonstrating her range and versatility by playing anything from villainesses to being a much acclaimed Kate in Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, Perdita in ‘The Winter’s Tale’, Audrey Hepburn‘s grandaunt in ‘Gigi’, the Dowager Empress in ‘Anastasia’ and the gossipy ‘humorously animated’ Julia Shuttlethwaite of T.S. Eliot‘s ‘The Cocktail Party’. Her Mrs. Higgins in ‘My Fair Lady’, Brooks Atkinson described as played with ‘grace and elegance’, which also pretty much sums up Cathleen’s career in films.
Her first motion picture role was a lead in the drama The Faithful Heart (1922), adapted from an Irish play. She then absented herself from the screen for the next decade, resurfacing in supporting roles in British films, though rarely cast in worthy parts, possible exceptions being Man of Evil (1944) and Jassy (1947). Her strengths were rather better showcased during her sojourn in Hollywood, which began in 1952. In addition to prolific appearances in anthology television, she also appeared in several big budget films, most memorably as Cary Grant‘s perspicacous grandmother in An Affair to Remember (1957) and as gossipy Lady Matheson (alongside Gladys Cooper) in Separate Tables (1958). One of her last roles of note was as Julia Rainbird, who instigates the mystery in Alfred Hitchcock‘s final film, Family Plot (1976).
On the instigation of her friend Anita Loos, author of ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’, Cathleen wrote her memoirs, ‘A Little Love and Good Company’ in 1977. For her extraordinarily long career in the acting profession, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Honours List the following year. She retired just two years prior to her death in 1983 at the age of 93.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Her obituary in “The Los Angeles Times” can be accessed here.
Pierce Brosnan was born in 1952 in Drogheda and brought up in Naven until he was twelve years of age. He then moved to London and began acting initially on the stage. In 1980 he created an impact on film in “The Long Good Friday”. He then made the TV mini-series “The Mannions of America” and was then Hollywood bound. He starred for several seasons in the hit series “Remingtom Steele”. He then began his film career proper with “Nomads” in 1985. To view Pierce Brosnan’s Website, please click here.
TCM Overview:
One Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;
Thanks to his casual charm and self-deprecating comedic chops, Irish-born actor Pierce Brosnan firmly established himself as a commanding presence with his first introduction to American audiences as the sophisticated, but often inept con man-turned-private investigator, “Remington Steele” (NBC, 1982-87). Almost immediately, there were calls in the media for Brosnan to assume the mantle of James Bond from the aging Roger Moore.
But strict contractual obligations for television actors prevented him from departing to take on the role many felt he was born to play. Once free of his contractual obligations, Brosnan made his first of four appearances as the debonair agent 007 in “Goldeneye” (1995), a high-octane adventure that revamped a franchise thought to be on its last legs. After three more blockbuster Bond films, “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997), “The World is Not Enough” (1999) and “Die Another Day” (2002), Brosnan was unexpectedly cut lose by producers with little explanation.
Brosnan managed to subvert his suave image with an uproarious performance as a brash hit man in “The Matador” (2005), which not only helped heal his wounds of losing out on Bond, but also allowed him to demonstrate a wider range many before had thought he lacked.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Jonas Armstrong was born in Dublin in 1981. He was though brought up and educated in the United Kingdom. He graduated from RADA in2003 and immediately went to Northhampton with the play “Quartermaine’s Terms”. In 2006 he starred in the new television series on Robin Hood called “Robin of Locksley”. He complete three series of the show. He recently appeared in a story on “The Street” concerning a soldier who was facially scarred in the Iraq conflict and had adjustments returning to home. Article about Armstrong and his film “Walking With the Enemy” can be viewed here.
In August 2008, the BBC confirmed that Armstrong would be leaving Robin Hood at the end of the third season, which aired on 27 June 2009, citing his statement that he was “looking for new challenges”. BBC replied to his words by explaining that “he’ll be desperately missed”. The show was subsequently not renewed for a fourth series. In 2008 he appeared in the horror filmBook of Blood which is based on a short story by Clive Barker.[
He appeared in Episode 3 of the third series of BBC serial The Street broadcast on 27 July 2009, playing the role of TA soldier Private Nick Calshaw who returns from Afghanistan with a facial disfigurement and a prosthetic hand after being injured by a suicide bomber whom he was unable to shoot. In January 2009, he read four CBeebies Bedtime stories on “The Bedtime Hour”.
Peggy Cummins was educated in Dublin but then left for London where she acted on stage and had some minor roles in British films. She was brough to Hollyood to make the film “Forever Amber”in 1945. However she photographed very young and innocent for the part and was replaced by Linda Darnell. Nevertheless she made several films in the U.S.. In 1949 she made “Gun Crazy” which is one of the absolute film noirs and has acheived cult status. The following year she returned to England and resmed her career in British films. She made two further excellent films, “Night of the Demon” with Dana Andrews and “Hell Drivers” with Stanley Baker. She retired from the screen in 1961 and from television in an episode of “The Human Jungle” in 1965.
Peggy Cummin’s obituary in “The Guardian” by Michael Freedland in 2018:
The British actor Peggy Cummins, who has died aged 92, was discovered by the Hollywood mogul Darryl F Zanuck when she was a teenager and almost immediately given the lead in his big film of the age, Forever Amber, based on the historical romance by Kathleen Winsor. In 1946 she began filming the part of Amber St Clare, a young beauty making her way in 17th-century England, shooting opposite Vincent Price as Almsbury. Hundreds of stills were shot of her in period costume. But then the director was sacked, filming started all over again – and Cummins was replaced (as was Price).
A career that had promised so much for Cummins was reduced to small parts in big films and big parts in small pictures. Among these, her best known performance was in Gun Crazy (1950), directed by Joseph H Lewis, a film about a gun-toting couple, Annie Laurie Starr (Cummins) and Bart Tare (John Dall), on the run – he wants to go straight, she pushes him further in to a life of crime. Based on a short story by MacKinlay Kantor, and with a script co-written in secret by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, it went on to become a revered B-movie film noir, cited as an inspiration for Nouvelle Vague directors and deemed an important forerunner of Bonnie and Clyde. “Until Gun Crazy I’d played pretty blonde types, so I loved the idea of this character,” Cummins said. “This was a meaty part I’d been hoping fo.
Daughter of a mother who did a little acting and a father who was a newspaper editor, Cummins was born in Prestatyn, north Wales, but spent her childhood in Dublin, where she had dancing lessons at the Abbey School of Ballet.
She made her first stage appearances as a child, often playing young boys, at the Gate theatre in Dublin. She did well enough to be invited at the age of 13 to London, where she landed a role in the 1938 revue Let’s Pretend.
She was a big hit and film producers queued up to offer her roles. The first, in 1940, when she was 15, was a part in a British drama set in Ireland, Dr O’Dowd, which was followed in 1944 by Her Man Gilbey (also known as English Without Tears). But the part that seemed to herald a remarkable career was the lead in the West End version of an American play, Junior Miss, in 1943. Zanuck, who had come to London to study British war propaganda, was in the audience and asked her: “How would you like to go to Hollywood?”The search for an Amber had begun to resemble the quest for a Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. Whether Zanuck immediately had Cummins in mind for the part, no one could afterwards be sure. It was announced first that she would appear with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones in Cluny Brown (in a role that was eventually taken by Helen Walker). There were appearances in The Late George Apley and Moss Rose, both released in 1947 and neither a really important movie. By then, Zanuck had decided that Cummins was the Amber he was looking for.
The part was racy, and low-cut dresses had already been designed. The costume department took one look at Cummins, decided these would not do at all, and scrapped them at great cost. This was just the first problem. Halfway through production, Zanuck saw the rushes and decided that the director, John Stahl, had to go. He was replaced by the autocratic Otto Preminger, who decided to start again from scratch – his first decision was to sack Cummins. The early stages of the film itself, he said, looked “hopelessly old-fashioned”. As for Cummins, he declared: “She’s not up to it. She is amateurish and looks too young.” The polite explanation given to the public was that she did not have “costume experience”.
The critic Dilys Powell commented: “The fact is that in its present stage of development, Hollywood simply doesn’t want the beautiful, grave, classical actor, any more than it wants natural vivacity, and that individual dual charm, the young talented actress with a notion to use her talent.”
The disappointment for Cummins, replaced by the US actor Linda Darnell, was palpable: “Maybe I wasn’t the right kind of sexy,” she told Barbara Roisman Cooper for the book Great Britons of Stage and Screen in Conversation (2015). “Maybe I was too young. Maybe I wasn’t voluptuous enough.
I don’t know if there’s even anybody alive today who knows the real story. If I had begun in Hollywood with Cluny Brown I think my career would have been very different.” She went on making films, but everything after that seemed like an anticlimax.
Escape (1948), in which she appeared opposite Rex Harrison, received moderate reviews and every now and again pops up at film festivals. One of her best films was My Daughter Joy (also known as Operation X, 1950), with Edward G Robinson as a millionaire businessman who spoils his young daughter (Cummins). Gun Crazy was her last film in the US.
Later, Cummins returned to Britain and made a well received comedy, To Dorothy a Son (1954), which starred Shelley Winters as a US divorcee trying to prevent her ex from starting a new family. Hell Drivers (1957) was notable not for Cummins’s participation but for an early appearance by Sean Connery.
The horror film Night of the Demon (1957), directed by Jacques Tourneur and adapted from an MR James story, starred Cummins as Joanna, inquisitive niece of a professor (Maurice Denham) who dies in mysterious circumstances being investigated by Dr John Holden (Dana Andrews). She ended her film career in a Pinewood romp, In the Doghouse (1962), about the life of a London vet, Jimmy Fox-Upton (Leslie Phillips) – Cummins played half of a woman-and-chimp act.
In 1950 she had married the businessman Derek Dunnett, and together they ran a sheep farm in East Sussex. Cummins continued to make occasional stage and TV appearances, and was a regular at film screenings and conventions.
Derek died in 2000. She is survived by their son and daughter.
• Peggy Cummins, actor, born 18 December 1925; died 29 December 2017 Topics
IMDB entry:
Peggy Cummins was born on December 18, 1925 in Prestatyn, Denbighshire, Wales as Augusta Margaret Diane Fuller. She is an actress, known for Gun Crazy (1950), Curse of the Demon (1957) and Green Grass of Wyoming (1948). She was married to Derek Dunnett until his death and has two children.Her two best known films are known by alternate titles: Gun Crazy (1950) (aka “Gun Crazy”) and Curse of the Demon (1957) (aka “Curse of the Demon”).On June 14th, 2006 she appeared as guest of honour at a special screening of Curse of the Demon (1957) in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, UK. Looking slim and elegant and nowhere near her age, Peggy answered some questions from the audience before viewing the film for the first time.She went to America for the role of Amber in Forever Amber (1947), but production was suspended after a month for script work, during which time it was decided that she wasn’t well known enough to play the lead. She was replaced by Linda Darnell. Brian McFarlane’s entry in “Encyclopedia of British Film”:In films as a teenager, Cummins is now most famous for two American roles, one she was imported to play but in the event, did not “Forever Amber”and the other as a widly sensual young tearaway in “Gun Crazy” in 1949, a classic film noir. Nothing else in her career can touch this. She could have used some of it’s tough sexiness in “Hell Drivers” in 1957 an otherwise admirable British noir. She is though, always acceptable company in mild comedies like “English Without Tears” in 1943, the glamour arm of a con-team “Always A Bride” and “The Captain’s Table” made in 1958 when she still looked 18.
For interview in Hollywood in 2012, please click here.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has won two Golden Globe Awards, the first for his title portrayal in “Young Elvis” and as Henry 8th in “The Tudors”. His first film was “Michael Collins”. His career highlights include “Velvet Goldmine”, “Bend it Like Beckham” and “August Rush”. He is currently the advertising face or the Hugo Boss collection. “Independent” article on Rhys-Meyers can be accessed here.
IMDB Biography:
Jonathan Rhys Meyers was born Jonathan Michael Francis O’Keefe on July 27, 1977, in Dublin, Ireland, to Mary Geraldine (Meyers) andrew John O’Keeffe, a musician. He and his family moved to County Cork, Ireland, when the actor was nearly a year old, and then, at the age of 3, his father left the family, leaving his mother to care for Jonny and his 3 younger brothers alone.
Rhys Meyers grew up with a tumultuous childhood, spending some time in an orphanage and being permanently expelled from school at age 16. Happy to be out of school, he began spending time iIn a local pool hall where he was discovered by Hubbard Casting. The casting agents were talent-spotting for the David Puttnam production of War of the Buttons (1994), and asked Rhys Meyers to appear for an audition. After three days of auditions, however, he did not get the role, and Rhys Meyers gave up on his acting aspirations. Soon afterward, he received a call to audition for a national ad campaign for Knorr soup, and though embarrassed by the attention from the ad, he soon found himself considered for a major film. His movie acting debut was a very small role in the film A Man of No Importance (1994), where his simple cast credit is as “First Young Man”. His first lead role was in the film The Disappearance of Finbar (1996). During a 6-month postponement in production, he returned home to Cork and there received a call about the film Michael Collins (1996). He traveled to Dublin to meet with director Neil Jordanand successfully won the role of Collins’s assassin. Jordan wrote about his meeting with the actor, “I have found someone to play Collin’s (sic) killer. Jonathan Rees-Myers (sic), from County Cork, apparently, who looks like a young Tom Cruise. [He] Comes into the casting session with alarming certainty. Obviously gifted”.
Rhys Meyers continued working constantly from that point and appeared in such films asThe Maker (1997), Telling Lies in America (1997), and The Tribe (1998). Going on to filmThe Governess (1998), B. Monkey (1998), Titus (1999) and Ride with the Devil (1999), he has received critical acclaim for several performances, most notably as “Brian Slade” inVelvet Goldmine (1998), as “Steerpike” in the British mini-series Gormenghast (2000), and as a sympathetic football coach in Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Rhys Meyers is also a talented singer and musician, having performed his own vocals in Velvet Goldmine(1998) and appearing on the film’s soundtrack. Rhys Meyers still resides in County Cork, Ireland.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has won two Golden Globe Awards, the first for his title portrayal in “Young Elvis” and as Henry 8th in “The Tudors”. His first film was “Michael Collins”. His career highlights include “Velvet Goldmine”, “Bend it Like Beckham” and “August Rush”. He is currently the advertising face or the Hugo Boss collection. “Independent” article on Rhys-Meyers can be accessed here.
IMDB Biography:
Jonathan Rhys Meyers was born Jonathan Michael Francis O’Keefe on July 27, 1977, in Dublin, Ireland, to Mary Geraldine (Meyers) and John O’Keeffe, a musician. He and his family moved to County Cork, Ireland, when the actor was nearly a year old, and then, at the age of 3, his father left the family, leaving his mother to care for Jonny and his 3 younger brothers alone.
Rhys Meyers grew up with a tumultuous childhood, spending some time in an orphanage and being permanently expelled from school at age 16. Happy to be out of school, he began spending time iIn a local pool hall where he was discovered by Hubbard Casting. The casting agents were talent-spotting for the David Puttnam production of War of the Buttons (1994), and asked Rhys Meyers to appear for an audition. After three days of auditions, however, he did not get the role, and Rhys Meyers gave up on his acting aspirations. Soon afterward, he received a call to audition for a national ad campaign for Knorr soup, and though embarrassed by the attention from the ad, he soon found himself considered for a major film. His movie acting debut was a very small role in the film A Man of No Importance (1994), where his simple cast credit is as “First Young Man”. His first lead role was in the film The Disappearance of Finbar (1996). During a 6-month postponement in production, he returned home to Cork and there received a call about the film Michael Collins (1996). He traveled to Dublin to meet with director Neil Jordanand successfully won the role of Collins’s assassin. Jordan wrote about his meeting with the actor, “I have found someone to play Collin’s (sic) killer. Jonathan Rees-Myers (sic), from County Cork, apparently, who looks like a young Tom Cruise. [He] Comes into the casting session with alarming certainty. Obviously gifted”.
Rhys Meyers continued working constantly from that point and appeared in such films asThe Maker (1997), Telling Lies in America (1997), and The Tribe (1998). Going on to filmThe Governess (1998), B. Monkey (1998), Titus (1999) and Ride with the Devil (1999), he has received critical acclaim for several performances, most notably as “Brian Slade” inVelvet Goldmine (1998), as “Steerpike” in the British mini-series Gormenghast (2000), and as a sympathetic football coach in Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Rhys Meyers is also a talented singer and musician, having performed his own vocals in Velvet Goldmine(1998) and appearing on the film’s soundtrack. Rhys Meyers still resides in County Cork, Ireland.
Del Henney was born in Dublin in 1942. He has spent most of his career working in the United Kingdom. His most famous role was as one of the thugs in Sam Peckinpah’s violent thriller “Straw Dogs”. He has made many television appearances over the years and brings great presence to the roles that he plays. He is one of my favourite actors but I have been unable to find out any recent information about him.
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Del Henney who has died aged 83, was a subtle, understated actor capable of projecting burning intensity whilst seemingly doing very little. His impressive screen career often found him playing roles of simmering masculinity or cold villainy.
Perhaps his most enduring role is Charlie Venner in Sam Peckinpah’s violent feature film Straw Dogs (1971), in which Dustin Hoffman’s ineffectual American mathematician is besieged by thuggish locals in an isolated Cornish farmhouse. The film’s most controversial scene involves Venner sexually assaulting Susan George’s character, Amy. Despite the encounter’s violent initiation Venner’s powerful masculinity ultimately stirs her enjoyment, and Henney’s complex characterisation complements the film’s ambiguous morality well.
Born in Anfield, Liverpool, he was educated at the Liverpool Collegiate before joining the army. He then subsidised his love of amateur dramatics with various manual jobs and it was whilst washing dishes at Butlin’s that he was encouraged by a fellow employee (Jimmy Tarbuck, impressed by Henney’s deft impressions of American film stars) to consider a professional acting career.
Emboldened, he won a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and upon graduating in 1965 was awarded the medal for the student with the most potential. A middleweight with the Maple Leaf Boxing Club in Bootle in the late 1950s, his sportiness helped with early television breaks – he debuted in the football soap United (1966), starred in Colin Welland’s rugby play Bangelstein’s Boys (1969, directed by John MacKenzie) and had a stint in Coronation Street as Weatherfield FC’s star player (1971).
He also guested in most popular television of the period, including three parts in Z-Cars (1970/72/78), two in The Professionals (1978/83) and three in Juliet Bravo (1980/82/84). He played the lead character’s father in A Woman of Substance (1985) and DI Cossall in Resnick (1992/93) and popped up in everything from The Expert (1968) to Midsomer Murders (2001). He was especially memorable as a smoothly arrogant criminal in The Sweeney (1975) and an affable colonel who becomes a cold instrument of murder in Doctor Who (Resurrection of the Daleks, 1984).
Fallen Hero, about a Welsh rugby player injured at the height of his career and having to come to terms with a new life of hard work and bad luck, ran for two series (1978-79). Henney brought a sympathetic edge to the initially macho and misogynistic lead character, Gareth Hopkins. In real life, he studied for an external English degree whilst starring in the show (he had also written a play for BBC2 in 1976).
His film work was sporadic but included Villain (with Richard Burton, 1971), Going Off Big Time (2000) and Devil’s Playground (2010).
The camera loved his piercing eyes and understated simmering, but he was no less effective on the stage. He had a successful stint with the Glasgow Citizens Theatre in 1965 and then played an impressive roster of roles at the Edinburgh Lyceum: Iago in Othello, Biff in Death of a Salesman, Andrei in Three Sisters and and McCann in The Birthday Party.
Del Henney
Other theatre highlights included the lead in John Lennon’s play In His Own Words (Liverpool, 1969), Lenny in The Homecoming (Oxford, 1966), Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire (Gate Theatre, Dublin, 1980), Claudius in Lindsay Anderson’s Hamlet (Theatre Royal, Straford, 1981), and Eddie (a role he’d also played for the BBC) in A View From the Bridge (Ipswich). West End credits included The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Saville Theatre, 1969) and Sleuth (Garrick Theatre, 1973).
He is survived by his partner, the actress Rosemary McHale, and children Tracy, Stella and Jack from previous relationships.
Del Henney obituary from “The Telegraph” in 2019.
Del Henney, the actor, who has died aged 83, brought a powerful machismo to the screen. He will be best remembered for a performance of understated menace as Charlie Venner, leader of a gang of marauding labourers, in Sam Peckinpah’s notorious 1971 film Straw Dogs – which the director described as his “British Wild Bunch”.
Dustin Hoffman starred as the quiet American mathematician David Sumner, taking a break with his English wife, Amy, played by Susan George, in the Cornish village of her childhood. But it was the central scene featuring Venner’s rape of Amy – once his girlfriend – that made the biggest headlines.
The ambivalence, as Amy appears to enjoy the sex after the initial violence, further fuelled the controversy. Henney recalled: “Sam said, ‘This is where it gets tender.’ So I just did what I thought was tender.”
This contradiction was emphasised by the rest of the sequence – missing from the film’s original release – with Amy clearly not enjoying a subsequent attack by one of Charlie’s gang.
For years, Straw Dogs was labelled a “video nasty” and failed to secure a certificate for home viewing. Then, in 2002, the full scene was reinstated and the British Board of Film Classification finally certified it for video and DVD.
“The ambiguity of the first rape is given context by the second rape,” explained the British Board of Film Classification’s official statement, “which now makes it quite clear that sexual assault is not something that Amy ultimately welcomes.”
David Z Goodman’s script was based on Gordon Williams’s novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm, although the author claimed it was a “distortion” of the book. The second half of the film followed Hoffman’s usually timorous academic seeking brutal revenge against the gang – including slashing Venner’s throat with an ornamental man-trap.
Henney with Susan George in Straw Dogs CREDIT: ALAMY
Later, on television, Henney was seen as a more sympathetic character. In Fallen Hero (1978-79), he played Gary Hopkins, a rugby league player rebuilding his life after being forced to retire through injury. The challenge of finding a new job was exacerbated by that of bringing up his baby daughter alone after the break-up of his marriage.
Joseph Derek Henney was born at Anfield in Liverpool on July 24 1935, the eldest of two boys and two girls born to Joseph and May (née Wadkin), who were both of Irish origin.
On leaving Liverpool Collegiate, he worked at the city’s docks until National Service with the Army in Germany. On demob, he moved to London and acted with the amateur Tower Theatre Company in Islington as he went through various jobs, from pipe-fitter’s mate to transporting fireplaces.
While washing dishes at Butlin’s he was encouraged to turn professional as an actor by the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, who was impressed by his impersonations of American film stars. He trained at Rada (1963-65), before joining the rep companies at the Nottingham Playhouse (1965) and Glasgow’s Citizens’ Theatre (1965-67).https://www.youtube.com/embed/yXkqGVfm1mo
He starred in In His Own Write, Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy’s stage adaptation of two books of essays, stories and poems by John Lennon, at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1969, and appeared in the West End in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Saville Theatre, 1969) and Sleuth (Garrick Theatre, 1973).
At the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 1980, he played Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire. His physique and sporting prowess – which had led him to box as a middleweight with the Maple Leaf Boxing Club in Bootle – had seen him cast as Alec Pitman for a short run in the football serial United! in 1966.
Three years later, he starred as a rugby player in Colin Welland’s television play Bangelstein’s Boys, and for a two-month stint in Coronation Street in 1971 he played the Weatherfield County footballer Eddie Duncan, who had affairs with Irma Barlow and Bet Lynch before being transferred to Torquay.
In the 1984 Doctor Who story “Resurrection of the Daleks”, Henney played Colonel Archer, a bomb disposal squad boss killed by the villain’s fellow mercenaries and then cloned.
In between other character roles in many popular dramas, he acted the father of Jenny Seagrove’s young Emma Harte in the mini-series A Woman of Substance (1984) and played Detective Inspector Reg Cossall in the crime series Resnick (1992-93).
Henney is survived by his partner of 25 years, the actress Rosemary McHale, and by a daughter from his 1957 marriage to Patricia O’Brien, another from his relationship with the actress Lorna Edwards, and a son from a relationship with the photographer Sarah Saunders.
Del Henney, born 24 July 1935, died 14 January 2019
Hinds was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Brought up as a Catholic in North Belfast, he was one of five children and the only son of his doctor father and schoolteacher and amateur actress mother.
He appeared in the title role of the RSC’s production of Richard III in 1993, directed by Sam Mendes, who turned to Hinds as a last minute replacement for an injured Simon Russell Beale. Hinds gained his most popular recognition as a stage actor for his performance as Larry in the London and Broadway productions of Patrick Marber‘s Tony Award-nominated play Closer. In 1999, Hinds was awarded both the Theatre World Award for Best Debut in New York and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Special Achievement (Best Ensemble Cast Performance) for his work in Closer. He was on stage in 2001 in The Yalta Game by Brian Friel at Dublin’s Gate Theatre. He appeared on Broadway in The Seafarer by Conor McPherson, which ran at the Booth Theatre from December 2007 through March 2008. In February 2009 he took the leading role of General Sergei Kotov in Burnt by the Sun by Peter Flannery at London’s National Theatre. Hinds returned to the stage later in 2009 with a role in Conor McPherson’s play The Birds, which opened at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in September 2009.
On television, Hinds portrayed Gaius Julius Caesar in the first season of BBC/HBO’s series, Rome in 2006. He has also been featured in a number of made-for-television films, including the role of Michael Henchard in Thomas Hardy‘s The Mayor of Casterbridge in 2004, for which he received the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series. Additional television performances include Edward Parker-Jones in the crime drama series Prime Suspect 3 (1993), Abel Mason in Dame Catherine Cookson‘s The Man Who Cried(1993), Jim Browner in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes episode “The Cardboard Box” (1994), Fyodor Glazunov in the science fiction miniseries Cold Lazarus (1996), Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre (1997), the Knight Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Sir Walter Scott‘s Ivanhoe (1997) and a portrayal of the French existentialistAlbert Camus in Broken Morning (2003).
Hinds was featured in two notable television docudramas: Granada Television‘s docudrama Who Bombed Birmingham? (1990) in which Hinds portrayed Richard McIlkenny, a Belfastman falsely imprisoned for an IRA bombing; and HBO‘s docudrama Hostages (1993), where he portrayed Irish writer and former hostage Brian Keenan. Hinds starred opposite Kelly Reilly in Above Suspicion, a TV adaptation of Lynda La Plante‘s detective story, which was broadcast in the United Kingdom in January 2009; he returned for the sequels The Red Dahlia (2010), Deadly Intent (2011) and Silent Scream (2012). Hinds has performed in audiobook and radio productions as well. He performed as Valmont in the BBC Radio production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and also narrated the Penguin Audiobook Ivanhoe. He also performed in Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter’s Tale as part of The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare, an audio production of Shakespeare’s plays which won the 2004 Audie Award for Best Audio Drama. He read the short story “A Painful Case” for the Caedmon Audio version of James Joyce‘s Dubliners.
In September 2011, Hinds returned to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin to star as Captain Jack Boyle in a revival of Seán O’Casey‘s Juno and the Paycock, alongside Sinéad Cusack as Juno. The production transferred to the National Theatre of Great Britain in November 2011 for a three-month run. He played “Jim” in the film The Shore (2011), written and directed by Terry George. The Shore won the Best Short Film, Live Action category at the 84th Annual Academy Awards (The Oscars) in 2012.
In 2013, he was cast as the wildling leader Mance Rayder in Season 3 of the HBO television series Game of Thrones. He reprised this role in Season 4, and reprised it once more in Season 5. On Broadway at The Richard Rodgers Theater in New York, he was Big Daddy to Scarlett Johansson in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which opened on 17 January 2013, and had previews on 18 December 2012.
In the summer of 2013, he performed at the Donmar Warehouse in London in the premiere production of The Night Alive, a play by Conor McPherson, which transferred in November 2013, with Hinds in the lead role, to the Atlantic Theater Company in New York.
Hinds lives in Paris with Hélène Patarot. They met in 1987 while in the cast of Peter Brook’s production of The Mahabharata and have a daughter, Aoife, born in 1991.
Ciaran Hinds was born in Belfast in 1953. He was the son of a doctor. He began his acting career with the Glasgow Citizens Theatre abd also back in Ireland he acted with Field Day Theatre Company and with the Druid Theatre in Galway. He made his feature film debut in 1981 in “Excalibur” a saga of the Arthurian legend directed by the great John Boorman. This film also featured Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson. He currently plays DCI Langton in BBC’s “Above Suspicion” and “The Red Dahlia” both written by Lynda La Plante. Interview with Ciaran Hinds on his performance in John Banville’s “The Sea” on the RTE website.
Colin Blakely who died in 1987, was an actor of enourmous range and versatility. He was born in Bangor, Northern Ireland in 1930. In 1957 he performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in “Cock-A-Doodle Dandy”. He played the part of Jesus Christ in Dennis Potter’s “Son of Man” to huge critical aclaim. On film, he was very manipulative as the servnt of Paul Scofield’s Sit Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons”. In Billy Wilder’s “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” he was a marvelous Dr Watson to the Holme’s of Robert Stephen. His early death deprived the cinema of one of it’s great character actors.
An article by Kieran McMullan:
Colin Blakely was born in Northern Ireland on 23 September 1930 dying young at 56 years of age on 7 May 1987. He would eventually appear in 78 movies and became one of the UKs best known character actors. He was also a very accomplished Shakespearean actor. I never cease to be amazed at how many Shakespearean actors become Holmes or Watson. Besides movies Blakely was heavily involved in TV as early as 1960. But what is really amazing is his extensive history on the legitimate stage which extends throughout his TV and film career.
At the age of 18 Blakely was working in his families sporting goods store then he moved on to the railroads. He began his theater work in an amateur repertoire company and his first paid job was in the Group Theatre in Belfast. He worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic, and the Royal Court as well as many other organizations. He was married to Margaret Whiting, a British actress and they had three children. He was also quite a sports fan and played rugby and football (soccer) for Northern Ireland. He was a very good, if not great Watson.
Blakely, Colin George Edward (1930–87), actor, was born 23 September 1930 at Bangor, Co. Down, the son of Victor Charles Blakely and Dorothy Margaret Blakely (née Ashmore). Educated at Sedbergh school in Yorkshire, he began work as a salesman in the family sports retail business, Athletic Stores, in Belfast in 1948. He worked there for nine years, during which time he took part in local theatricals, performing with the Bangor Operatic Society. His mother, who had been a professional singer with the D’Oyly Carte company, encouraged him to take up acting as a career. Having made his first professional appearance with the Children’s Touring Theatre, Gwent, in 1957, he returned to Ulster to perform with the Group Theatre, Belfast, first appearing as Dick McCardle in Stanley Houghton’s ‘Master of the house’ (1958). He made his London debut in 1959 at the Royal Court Theatre taking small parts in productions of ‘Cock-a-doodle-dandy’ by Sean O’Casey(qv) and John Arden‘s (qv) ‘Serjeant Musgrave’s dance’. He soon made an impression and later that year secured the role of Noon in Frederick Bland’s ‘The naming of Murderer’s Rock’. This was followed by appearances as Phil Hogan in ‘A moon for the misbegotten’ by Eugene O’Neill (Arts Theatre, 1960), where he played opposite Margaret Whiting; they were married the following year, and had three sons.
On joining the Royal Shakerspeare Company (RSC) in 1961, Blakely took on numerous roles, the most successful being his Touchstone in ‘As you like it’. After further productions at the Royal Court, among them one of his favoured parts, as Schmidt in ‘The fire raisers’ by Max Frisch (1961), he joined the newly established National Theatre Company in 1963, playing Fortinbras in its inaugural production of Hamlet. His years with the company saw some of his greatest performances, among them as Pizarro in Peter Shaffer’s ‘Royal hunt of the sun’, Captain Boyle in O’Casey’s ‘Juno and the paycock’, Proctor in Arthur Miller’s ‘The crucible’, the title roles in Sophocles’ ‘Philoctetes’ and Jonson’s ‘Volpone’, and Kite in ‘The recruiting officer’ by George Farquhar(qv). He toured with the company in Berlin and Moscow. In 1971 he appeared in Thomas Murphy’s ‘Morning after optimism’ at the Abbey Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. That year also saw his return to the RSC, where in 1972 he gave a triumphant performance in the title role of ‘Titus Andronicus’. In 1975 he again won critical acclaim for his Captain Shotover in ‘Heartbreak House’ by George Bernard Shaw (qv) at the National Theatre, and his rendition of the monologue ‘Judgement’ at the ICA Theatre and Old Vic.
After making his film debut in 1960 in Saturday night and Sunday morning Blakely made regular appearances in both films and television drama. His principal films include This sporting life(1963), The private life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, as Watson), and Charlie Bubbles and Equus (1977), while the high-points of his television work were his portrayal of Christ in Dennis Potter’s Son of man (1969) and of Stalin in The red monarch (1983), Landscape(1983), and Paradise postponed (1986). His performance in Drums along Balmoral Drive won him a BAFTA nomination for best actor in 1986; in the same year he made his last stage appearance in Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘A chorus of disapproval’ at the Lyric Theatre, London. Often commended by critics for his vigour and authority, he was regarded as one of the most talented of the post-war generation of British realist actors. He died of cancer in London on 7 May 1987
Jason O’Mara was born in Dublin in 1972. After graduation from Trinity College, he commenced his acting career in London where he acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was featured in many British television series such as “Band of Brothers”, “Monarch of the Glen” and “The Agency”. He went to Hollywood where he made the short-lived series “Life on Mars”. He is currently preparing for Steven Speilberg’s “Terra Nova” to be made on location in Australia.
TCM Overview:
After years of supporting roles in his native Ireland and the U.K., actor Jason O’Mara became the centerpiece for some of the more higher-profile television projects of the 2000s and 2010s, though his first efforts were often short-lived despite unique premises, quality production values and massive buzz. Oâ¿¿Mara first came to attention with American audiences with a small role in Steven Spielbergâ¿¿s award-winning miniseries, “Band of Brothers” (HBO, 2001) before joining the cast for the second season of the CIA thriller series “The Agency” (CBS, 2002-03). From there he co-starred on another short-lived series, “In Justice” (ABC, 2006), before landing the main villain role in “Resident Evil: Extinction” (2007). Oâ¿¿Mara was propelled to leading man status with the main role on the American remake of the British sci-fi procedural, “Life on Mars” (ABC, 2008-09), only to see the show canceled during its maiden season due to low ratings. He went on to a number of guest starring appearances before being cast in the lead for another much-hyped series, “Terra Nova” (Fox, 2011), a time traveling sci-fi adventure from Spielberg that once again failed to attract large audiences. Despite the setbacks in the early stages of his stateside career, Oâ¿¿Mara was a gifted enough performer to earn himself another shot at stardom.
Born in Dublin, Ireland on Aug. 6, 1972, to Veronica and Stephen O’Mara, Jason grew up in nearby Sandycove. His father went through entrepreneurial ups and downs, causing any number of family struggles including not being able to afford groceries or the coal to heat their house in the winters. He attended St Michael’s College (high school), where he excelled at rugby until, at age 15, an injury sidelined him. He picked up a small part in a school play to bide time until he healed. After three performances of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” he had contracted the proverbial acting bug, though he fought it. Graduating high school three years later, O’Mara enrolled in Trinity College Dublin, where he majored in drama and theater studies. Though not officially in the acting program, he kept at it through extracurricular productions, and after graduation, scored some stage work at Dublin’s edgy Peacock Theatre, as well as a small speaking roll in the ultra-B sci-fi flick, “Space Truckers” (1995), which notoriously tapped much of the Irish thespian community.
In search of a more bountiful market, he relocated to London and did the struggling unknown thing for a time before landing no less than a BBC miniseries with “Berkeley Square” (1998), a well-received drama. From there, the opportunities snowballed and the rugged actor scored a number of supporting and recurring roles on shows in the U.K. â¿¿ the highest-profile among them being a six-episode run on the long-running “Monarch of the Glen” (BBC, 2000-05), and two seasons of the satire, “High Stakes” (ITV, 2001). Also in 2001, he joined a bevy of up-and-coming American and British Isles talent to recreate U.S. 101st Airborne’s Easy Company in Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ epic World War II miniseries, “Band of Brothers” (HBO, 2001), though his character died in just the second episode. Looking to further tap into the American market, he sent a TV pilot audition tape to Hollywood and, though he was not deemed right for that project, the producers of a potential new Fox show called “Eastwick” saw the tape. They considered him a fit for a pivotal role: the devilish counterpart to Jack Nicholson’s character from the show’s inspiration, “The Witches of Eastwick” (1987). Suddenly, he was flown to Vancouver to shoot the pilot. Unfortunately, the network wound up passing on the show, but he came out of the process with an agent and essentially his foot in Hollywood’s collective door.
He returned to the Irish stage for a turn as a violent homophobic thug in award-winning filmmaker and playwright Neil LeBute’s “Bash,” staged at the Gate Theater. The role, as directed by Michael Colgan, would earn him a nomination for the Best Supporting Actor the next year at the Irish Theater Awards, and would also put him on another track back to the U.S. “Bash” director Colgan immediately cast him in the Gate’s next production, Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming,” which would tour both to London and New York, where it premiered at no less than the prestigious Lincoln Center. After a number of successful auditions in stateside, he found himself in an enviable position for a young thespian: a choice of which primetime broadcast program show he wanted to be a part of. He chose to join the second season of CBS’ “The Agency” (2001-03), a middle-performing but well-reviewed action thriller series about the CIA. He played agent A.B. Stiles, again putting on his American accent, used to amusing effect in one episode when he went undercover as a member of the Irish Republican Army, leading a teammate to insist he lose “that phony Irish accent.” It was also on “The Agency” that O’Mara met actress Paige Turco. The two would marry the next year.
While all was rosy on the personal front, professionally, O’Mara was quickly learning the disappointments that came with launching American TV programs. CBS opted not to renew “The Agency” so O’Mara resorted to guest shots, a couple of failed pilots, a supporting role in the feature “Resident Evil: Extinction” (2007), a short-lived mid-season replacement series called “In Justice” (ABC, 2006), and a recurring hunk du jour role on the romance-tinged dramedy “Men in Trees” (ABC, 2006-08). He did another promising pilot for ABC in 2007 that cast him as Philip Marlowe in a contemporary update of Raymond Chandler’s iconic private investigator. So impressive was his take on the character that it prompted buzz within the industry. Amongst those taking notice was über-producer David E. Kelley who, along with network brass, decided O’Mara was needed elsewhere.
As early as March 2006, Kelley had struck a deal to mount an American version of the BBC’s hit show, “Life On Mars,” an out-of-left-field tale of a modern day police detective abruptly transported back in time to the more rough-and-tumble, politically incorrect days of the 1970s. Kelly got ABC to bite but had some trouble finding just the right actor to essay the central role of the fish-out-of-water Sam Tyler, who must go on being a cop while also figuring out how to go back to his own time to save his girlfriend. Though he had originally hoped to get the show on the network schedule for fall 2007, Kelley did not settle on O’Mara for the part of Tyler until summer of that year. They shot a pilot, hoping to make the show a mid-season replacement series, but after a flap with ABC execs about the direction of the show, Kelley left the project and Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg took the helm as executive producers. They revamped the story, changing the setting from L.A. to New York, and recast nearly every role except O’Mara’s as well as stacking the luminous supporting cast around him with proven heavy-hitters including Harvey Keitel in his first series TV work.
In 2006, Oâ¿¿Mara had a guest appearance on “Criminal Minds” (CBS, 2005- ) as the Mill Creek Killer and played antagonist Albert Wesker in “Resident Evil: Extinction” (2007). Following a guest turn in an episode of “Greyâ¿¿s Anatomy” (ABC, 2005- ), he starred in the U.S. remake of the popular British series, “Life on Mars” (ABC, 2008-09), a sci-fi drama where he played a New York police detective from the 21st century who mysteriously finds himself transported back to 1973 after a car accident. Despite a promising premise and hype from the network, the show failed to attract an audience and was canceled in 2009. After an episode of the short-lived drama “Trust Me” (TNT, 2009), Oâ¿¿Mara was the lead in another heavily advertised sci-fi series, “Terra Nova” (Fox, 2011), on which he played the head of a family sent back in time from the year 2149 â¿¿ a time where overpopulation and poor air quality threatens life on Earth â¿¿ to 85 millions years in the past, where they find themselves trapped among dinosaurs. Despite a small, but rabid following that tried to save the show, the network canceled “Terra Nova” in early 2012.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
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Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy was born in Cork in 1976. He acted with the Cork theatre group Corcadorca and from there acted in both the play and film of “Disco Pigs” with Elaine Cassidy. He has had a swift path to movie stardom in many different genre of film. Cillian Murphy has also mantained his stage acting and has performed in Druid’s “The Playboy of the Western World”. He showed a profound dept and range in Ken Loach’s “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, He makes both big Hollywood blockbusters and small independent movies in a very deft fashion. In July 2011 he won rave reviews for his performance in Edna Walsh’s “Misterman” at the Galway Arts Festival.
Page at Lisa Richard’s Agency:
illian is currently filming season two of BBC’s gangster saga “Peaky Blinders” where he reprises the role of Thomas Shelby. Upcoming films include the sci-fi drama, “Transcendence” opposite Johnny Depp, Martin Freeman and Kate Mara and “Heart of the Sea” directed by Ron Howard.
Cillian will shortly begin rehearsals for “Ballyturk”, a new play by Enda Walsh which will run as part of the Galway Arts Festival in July 2014 before a National Theatre run.
He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the BIFA for his performance in “Broken” opposite Tim Roth directed by Rufus Norris. He reprises his role as Dr. Jonathan Crane in “The Dark Knight Rises” for Christopher Nolan’s Batman finale. Cillian recently appeared as the lead role of Tom Buckley opposite Robert De Niro and Sigourney Weaver in “Red Lights” directed by Rodrigo Cortes. Cillian appeared in “In Time”, directed by Andrew Niccol, opposite Justin Timberlake, Olivia Wildewild and Amanda Seyfried.
Cillian most recently appeared on stage in the one man show Misterman, written and directed by Enda Walsh for Landmark Productions, the show first appeared at the Galway Arts festival (for which Cillian won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Actor for 2011) and went on to appear in sold out runs at London’s National Theatre (Lyttelton Theatre) and at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NYC where Cillian won the prestigious Drama Desk Award for his performance in 2012.
Cillian appeared in “Inception” (Warner Bros.), a contemporary sci-fi thriller set within the architecture of the mind. The film, which also stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard and Ellen Page, marks Cillian’s third collaboration with director Christopher Nolan. In 2005, Cillian made an indelible impression as Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow in “Batman Begins” and reprised the role in last year’s “The Dark Knight”.
Cillian starred opposite Brendan Gleeson and Jim Broadbent in Ian Fitzgibbon’s “Perrier’s Bounty”, a dark comedy that follows three unlikely fugitives on the run from a gangster kingpin in Dublin. He also stars in Mandate Pictures’ “Peacock”, a psychological thriller about a man with split personalities.
Cillian first garnered international attention for his performance as the reluctant survivor Jim in Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later”. Following “Batman Begins” he starred opposite Rachel McAdams in Wes Craven’s hit thriller “Red Eye” and garnered a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as Patrick “Kitten” Brady in Neil Jordan’s “Breakfast on Pluto”. In Ken Loach’s 2006 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”, Cillian portrayed a guerilla fighter who battles the British Black and Tan squads that attempt to thwart Ireland’s bid for independence. Cillian re-teamed with Boyle and writer Alex Garland (“28 Days Later”) on “Sunshine” (2007), a thriller in which a group of scientists attempt to re-ignite a dying sun.
Cillian’s screen credits also include Beeban Kidron’s “Hippie Hippie Shake”, John Maybury’s “Edge of Love”, John Crowley’s “Intermission”, Peter Webber’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring”, Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain”, “How Harry Became a Tree”, “On the Edge”, “Sunburn” and “Tron: Legacy”.
Cillian made his mark on stage with a stunning performance in Enda Walsh’s “Disco Pigs.” After receiving commendations for Best Fringe Show at the 1996 Dublin Theatre Festival and the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival 1997, “Disco Pigs” went on to tour extensively in Ireland, the U.K., Canada and Australia. Murphy later starred in the film version directed by Kirsten Sheridan. In 2006, Cillian made his West End debut at the New Ambassador Theatre in John Kolvenbach’s “Love Song,” directed by John Crowley. His stage collaborations with Tony Award-winning director Garry Hynes include “The Country Boy,” “Juno and the Paycock,” and “Playboy of the Western World” at the Gaity Theatre in Dublin. Murphy also starred as Konstantin in the Edinburgh Fest production of “The Seagull” directed by Peter Stein, as Adam in Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things” at the Gate Theatre in Dublin and as Claudio in “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Orla Brady was born and educated in Dublin. While completing further studies in London she applied via the French enbassy for a bursary to study theatre in Paris. She was successful and studied in France for a year. She has starred as Cathy in a television adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” and had the lead role in “A Love Divided” opposite Liam Cunningham. She is currently starring in “Mistresses” on BBC. Interview in “The Guartdian” with Orla Brady can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
Orla Brady was an actress who was familiar with the qualities it takes to bring a drama to the big screen. Brady’s early acting career mostly consisted of roles in various films, such as the Geraldine Chaplin historical romance “Words Upon the Window Pane” (1995), “The Luzhin Defense” (2001) with John Turturro and “A Love Divided” (2001). She had a part on the television special “The Rector’s Wife” (PBS, 1994-95). She worked in series television while getting her start in acting, including a part on “Absolutely Fabulous” (Comedy Central, 1993-97). Her passion for acting continued to her roles in projects like “Silent Grace” (2004) and “32A” (2008). She also worked in television during these years, including a part on “Nip/Tuck” (FX, 2003-2010). Brady most recently acted on “Into The Badlands” (AMC, 2015-).
Maxwell Reed was born in Larne in Northern Ireland in 1919. After a short time working as a merchant seaman, followed by a few appearances on stage,
Maxwell Reed moved to London and was signed by the Rank Organisation. He made many British films during the 40s and 50s, rotating between leads in B movies and supporting roles in major productions.
He also appeared in a few Hollywood swashbucklers and TV series before succumbing to cancer in the 70s.
He was a bona fide teen idol in the late 40s, being the heart throb of many a schoolgirl.
He was married to Joan Collins during the early 50s but the marriage ended in divorce. He had a striking screen presence and many of his films deserve a DVD release.
For article on “The Films of Maxwell Reed”, please click here:
Maxwell Reed (Wikipedia)
Maxwell Reed was a Northern Irish actor who became a matinee idol in several British films during the 1940s and 1950s.
He was the first husband of actress Joan Collins, whom he married on 24 May 1952. The marriage ended in divorce in 1956.
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Owen McDonnell was born in Galway in 1974. He studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He has returned to Ireland on several occasions to appear on stage at the Abbey Theatre in plays such as ‘The Plough and the Stars’ and ‘A Doll’s House’, playing Torvald and has a wide theatrical resume of English stage roles. ‘Single-Handed’, filmed in Connemara, is his first regular television series.and is now in it’s third series. He recently guest starred in “Silent Witness” and has a new film in post production called “Swung”.
Originally from Galway, Owen trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Theatre credits include: Translations (Ouroboros), Wunderkind (Calipo Theatre and Pleasance King Dome), Cruel and Tender (Hatch Theatre), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Cork Millennium/Galway co-production), Hitchcock Blonde (Royal Court), Les Liasons Dangereuses (Liverpool Playhouse), This Property is Condemned (Bewley’s Cafe Theatre), Death of a Salesman(Birmingham Rep), Antigone (Warehouse Productions), The Chair (Cochrane Theatre). His appearances at the Abbey Theatre include: A Doll’s House, The Plough and the Stars, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, The Burial At Thebes, Big Maggie and Barbaric Comedies. He appeared in Berlin Hannover Express at the Hampstead Theatre, in The Lonesome West for Galway Town Hall/Cork Opera House, in Frank McGuinness’s Greta Garbo Came To Donegal and Marie Jones’s Stones in his Pockets, both for the Tricycle Theatre.
His film credits include Rewind for Carbon Films, Teacht Abhaile (also Carbon Films), Conspiracy of Silence (Little Wing Films) and Made in Belfast (KGB Films)
Owen has appeared in the lead role of Jack in all four seasons of Touchpaper’s TV’s Single Handed for RTE/ITV. Also for Touchpaper, he appeared as Joseph in TV film Wild Decembers_on RTE. Other television credits include The Galway Races (Great Western Films for TG4), Spooks for Kudos/BBC, Mount Pleasant for Sky, Saving the Titanic for PBS andZDF, A Year of Greater Love for Mammoth Screen and An Bronntanas for TG4 and De Facto Films
Owen is represented in the UK by Rose Parkinson, Lisa Richards, London.
The above page on Owen McDonnell can also be found on the Lisa Richards Agency website here .
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Dermot Walsh obituary in “The Guardian” in 2002.
Hazel Court & Dermot Walsh
Dermot Walsh was born in Dublin in 1924 and studied and acted at both the Abbey theatre and at the Gate. His first film “Hungry Hill” with Margaret Lockwood was made in Ireland. His other films include “Bedelia” and “The |Mark of Cain”. During the 1950’s he made many B movies and then turned to the stage. He was married at one time to Hazel Court. His daughter is the actress Elizabeth Dermot Walsh. He died in 2002.
“Guardian” obituary:
Filmgoers in the 1950s had to sit through many a dire, low-budget second-feature, made to satisfy the government ruling that a percentage of films shown in British cinemas must be home-grown rather than Hollywood imports. Dermot Walsh, who has died aged 77, starred in more than 20 such movies, and could have laid claim to be king of the quota quickies.
Tall, dark and handsome, he had once seemed set for true stardom. Born in Dublin, where, while studying law, he went to the Abbey theatre school of acting, he spent three years with Lord Longford’s repertory company, and was in productions at the Gate and Croydon repertory theatre, before being spotted by a Rank talent scout.
His first three films were enjoyably risible melodramas starring Margaret Lockwood, then at the peak of her stardom. Little noticed as a chauffeur in Bedelia (1946), Walsh made an impression later that year, in Hungry Hill. In this adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel about an Irish family feud spanning three generations, he played Lockwood’s profligate son, although he was only eight years her junior. In Jassy (1947), he graduated to being her lover, and was well cast as a dispossessed heir whom the half-Gypsy Lockwood steals from sweet Patricia Roc.
Nothing else Walsh did in features was as good. A few feeble films followed, including Third Time Lucky (1949), in which he starred with Glynis Johns. In the same year, he married Hazel Court, with whom he co-starred in My Sister And I (1948), the first of a number of plays and films they would appear in together. Back on the stage, he was in the first production of Shaw’s Buoyant Billions, as well as in Reluctant Heroes and JB Priestley’s Laburnum Grove.
In 1952, Walsh started his cycle of leading roles in shoestring second features, many of them murky crime thrillers, shot in two weeks, and middlingly directed by John Gilling and Lance Comfort. Despite the functional scripts, Walsh actually gave a good account of himself in, among others, The Frightened Man (1952), Ghost Ship (1952) and The Floating Dutchman (1953).
One of the better of these films, directed by Gilling, was The Flesh And The Fiends (1959) aka Mania, The Fiendish Ghouls and Psycho Killers, about the grave robbers Burke and Hare. In it, Walsh played the medical assistant to Peter Cushing’s Dr Knox, who bought the bodies for experiments. He also played straight man to Arthur Askey in Make Mine A Million (1959). The same year, in Crash Drive, he portrayed a racing driver who believes he cannot walk after an accident.
Because the budgets seldom allowed retakes, Walsh explained that, in one scene, “the doctor is supposed to say to the driver’s wife, ‘I have bad news. Your husband has no legs – I don’t mean literally, I mean metaphorically.’ Instead of that, the actor said, ‘Your husband has no legs – I don’t mean metaphorically, I mean literally,’ and they printed it. Of course, eventually, I get out of the wheelchair and walk.”
When the quota quickies faded, Walsh starred in the 39 episodes of the swashbuckling children’s adventure series Richard The Lionheart (1961-62). His last film appearance was in The Wicked Lady (1983), but he continued to act on stage until fairly recently, in The Rivals at Birmingham Rep, Joe Orton’s Loot in London, and Harold Pinter’s A Kind Of Alaska in Cambridge.
He and Court divorced in 1963; their daughter survives him, as does his son by Diana Scougall and two daughters by his third wife, Elizabeth Knox, who predeceased him.
· Dermot Walsh, actor, born September 10 1924; died June 26 2002 “The Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Aidan Quinn was born in the U.S. of Irish parents in 1959. He spent much of his childhood in Ireland in Birr Co. Offaly. Among his earlier work of note is the television film “An Early Frost” one of the first films to tackle the subject of AIDs. Aidan Quinn has made many films in Ireland including “Michael Collins”, “Desperately Seeking Susan” and “This Is My Father”.
TCM overview:
An actor known for the depth and intensity of his performances, Aidan Quinn eschewed the typical leading man roles in favor of complex characters in projects he found artistically appealing, rather than commercially attractive. After honing his craft in the theaters of Chicago, Quinn auditioned for and won his first feature film role – the lead in the romantic melodrama “Reckless” (1984). Even as he continued to perform on stage, he added to his screen credits with a charming turn in the quirky romantic comedy “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985) and a daring portrayal of an AIDS victim in the made-for-TV drama “An Early Frost” (NBC, 1985). Quinn was endearing as a Baltimore family patriarch in “Avalon” (1990) and played put-upon brothers in films such as “Benny & Joon” (1993) and “Legends of the Fall” (1994). He was affecting as a doomed Irish farmer in love with an underage girl in “This is my Father” (1998), and as a troubled priest on the short-lived series “The Book of Daniel” (NBC, 2005-06). Never content to be confined to a single genre or character type, Quinn moved with ease from low-key family fare like the coming-of-age drama “Flipped” (2010) to the adrenaline-fueled action of “Unknown” (2011), continuing a career that highlighted diversity over publicity.
Born on March 8, 1959 in Chicago, IL to parents Teresa and Michael, Quinn’s family vacillated between the city of Rockford – where his father was a professor of English literature at the community college – and his parents’ home country of Ireland for the majority of his childhood. After graduating from high school, splitting his attendance between schools in the States and in Belfast, Ireland, he returned to Chicago at the age of 19 and began earning a living as a roofer in the construction business, while also taking acting classes at the Piven Theatre Workshop. Almost immediately, Quinn found himself bit by the acting bug and began auditioning with local theater companies. He made his professional stage debut in a Chicago production of “The Man in 605,” later appearing off-Broadway in Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love” in 1983. Quinn launched his film career when he won the lead role of young rebel Johnny Rourke in James Foley’s “Reckless” (1984), co-starring Daryl Hannah as the privileged girl irresistibly drawn to him. The following year he returned to the stage in another Shepard production, “A Lie of the Mind,” before reappearing on the silver screen in that quintessential slice of mid-1980s pop culture “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985). Co-starring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna – the latter in her screen debut – the quirky fairy tale of mistaken identity did big box-office business, propelling Quinn into the upper echelon of young acting talent at the time.
At the height of the AIDS epidemic, Quinn took a risk when he accepted the role of Michael Pierson, a closeted gay man diagnosed with HIV in his first made-for-television movie, “An Early Frost” (NBC, 1985), opposite Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara as his devastated parents. Although the network lost substantial revenue due to several advertisers pulling commercial spots, the controversial film was a ratings winner and Quinn garnered an Emmy nomination for his performance. He made a short, impressive contribution alongside Robert De Niro in “The Mission” (1986) prior to starring in the “Great Performances” production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” (PBS, 1987). Next, Quinn explored his villainous side in John Badham’s buddy-cop comedy “Stakeout” (1987) before taking to the stage as Stanley Kowalski the following year in the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He essayed the title role in “Crusoe” (1989), a poorly-received revisionist adaptation of the oft-filmed 1719 Daniel Dafoe novel. Quinn went on to play the illicit lover of conscripted concubine Natasha Richardson in the problematic adaptation of Margret Atwood’s futuristic novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1990) and played a character based on Barry Levinson’s father in the director’s third film set in his hometown of Baltimore, MD, “Avalon” (1990).
Quinn played an idealistic missionary in the jungles of the Amazon in the well-intentioned, but ultimately disappointing drama, “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” (1991), followed by a turn as a member of a traveling Irish theater troupe courting Robin Wright in “The Playboys” (1992). He then carried the burden of an undeniably thankless role opposite the eccentric performances of Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson in the romantic comedy “Benny & Joon” (1993). Busier than ever, Quinn starred opposite Madeline Stowe in the romantic thriller “Blink” (1994), followed by a small cameo as the captain of a doomed Arctic vessel in the messy Francis Ford Coppola-produced adaptation of “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (1994). He closed out the year in the unenviable position of being overshadowed by the preternaturally handsome Brad Pitt in the historical melodrama, “Legends of the Fall” (1994). Later, he appeared as Richmond in Al Pacino’s ingenious documentary exploration of Shakespeare, “Looking for Richard” (1996), and proved convincing as Harry Boland, co-strategist and romantic rival of “Michael Collins” (1996), Neil Jordan’s epic take on the Irish freedom fighter.
Director Christian Duguay gave Quinn the opportunity to play the unconventional dual roles of Carlos “The Jackal” Sanchez, as well as a naval officer who bears an uncanny resemblance to the international terrorist in the gripping thriller, “The Assignment” (1997). On television that same year, he portrayed Henry Morton Stanley in the historical docudrama “Forbidden Territory: Stanley’s Search for Livingston” (ABC, 1997). Quinn returned to his beloved Ireland for “This is My Father” (1998), a family affair written and directed by his brother Paul and shot by cinematographer brother Declan. Appearing in flashbacks, he deftly played the shy son of poor farmers whose romance with a spirited underage girl was doomed to end in tragedy. As the decade drew to a close, Quinn picked up supporting roles as the love interest of a modern day witch in the whimsical romance “Practical Magic” (1998), and as the concerned husband of nightmare-plagued Annette Bening in the thriller “In Dreams” (1999). He lent his services to efforts like the Pierce Brosnan family drama “Evelyn” (2002) and appeared in the critically drubbed “Stolen Summer” (2002), the first movie produced by the filmmaking reality show, “Project Greenlight” (HBO, 2001-03/Bravo, 2004-05). Quinn was, however, in much better company as part of the esteemed ensemble cast of the award-winning, two-part miniseries “Empire Falls” (HBO, 2005), starring Ed Harris and Paul Newman.
Aidan Quinn
Quinn gave episodic television a shot when he led the cast of “The Book of Daniel” (NBC, 2005-06) as Daniel Webster, a priest who regularly converses with the literal embodiment of Christ, even as he battles his own personal demons. Touted as “edgy” and “challenging” by the network and at the same time maligned by certain church groups, the drama was pulled after just a few episodes. He returned to TV in the role of crusading attorney Julianna Margulies’ husband in yet another short-lived show, the crime drama “Canterbury’s Law” (Fox, 2007-08). Quinn went on to play a dogmatic cosmology professor in the fact-based tragedy “Dark Matter” (2008), the story of a frustrated Chinese foreign exchange student driven to violence after being the victim of perceived academic politics. He played President Grant in “Jonah Hex” (2010), a flawed adaptation of the comic book Western, as well as a loving dad in the Rob Reiner-directed family drama “Flipped” (2010). In the action-thriller “Unknown” (2011), Quinn played a conspirator impersonating a recent accident victim and possible amnesiac portrayed by Liam Neeson. Back on the small screen, Quinn had guest appearances on “White Collar” (USA Network, 2009- ) and “Weeds” (Showtime, 2005-2012), before landing a regular series role as the lieutenant of a rude, crude and occasionally reckless homicide detective (Maria Bello) on the well-received but ultimately short-lived “Prime Suspect” (NBC, 2011-12), a U.S. remake of the popular British series starring Helen Mirren. The following year, he returned with another regular series role, this time playing a New York City police captain genuinely fond of former Scotland Yard consultant Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and his partner, Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), on the critically acclaimed series “Elementary” (CBS, 2012- ). The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Interesting interview with Barry Egan in “Independent.ie” here.
Fidelma Murphy obituary in 2019 in “The Irish Times”.
Cork born Fidelma Murphy made her movie debut opposite Pat Boone in 1963 in “Never Put It in Writing”. On the stage, she acted in Brian Friel‘s play, “Lovers”, at the Fortune Theatre in London, England in a Park Theatre Company production with Joe Lynch, Eamon Morrissey, Anna Manahan and Ruth Durley in the cast. Hilton Edwards was the director. In 1968 she acted in Dion Boucicault‘s play, “The Shaughraun”, in an Abbey Theatre of Ireland production at the Aldwych Theatre in London, England with Cyril Cusack, Donal McCann, Des Cave, Peadar Lamb, Brid Lynch and Maire O’Neill in the cast. Hugh Hunt was the director.Her other films include “The Fighting Prince of Donegal”, “Sinful Davey” and “Philadelphia Here I Come”. She also featured in “Glenroe” as ‘Dick Moran’s’s’ wife. She featured recently with James Nesbitt in an episode of “Murphy’s Law”. Fidelma Murphy died in October 2018.
Fidelma Murphy Who has died aged 74, was an Irish actor lauded as “a child prodigy” and “a national treasure”, with her work in theatre, TV and film in this country, the UK and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
The words quoted above are those of renowned Irish actor Pat Laffan, who was speaking recently to The Irish Times of the extraordinary impact of her early work at the Abbey Theatre to which she was recruited as possibly its youngest-ever member in 1959 aged just 15, and of her appearances in films such as Never Put it in Writing (opposite Pat Boone) in 1964, The Fighting Prince of Donegal (a story of Red Hugh O’Donnell, which was produced by Walt Disney) in 1966 and Sinful Davey in 1969, directed by John Huston, and featuring John Hurt in the title role.
Fidelma had joined the Abbey by a happy coincidence, when she was seen in a school play at St Aloysius’ convent in Cork by someone who knew the then Abbey artistic director, Ernest Blythe. Murphy soon found herself in Dublin, living with her mother in Oscar Wilde’s birthplace on Westland Row, which was run as an actors’ boarding house at the time, and honing her craft at the Abbey School of Acting.
Murphy made her first appearance, to noted critical acclaim, in Richard Johnson’s controversial-for-its-time The Evidence I Shall Give, in 1961. Almost immediately afterwards she played the young pregnant Traveller woman in Bryan MacMahon’s The Honey Spike. This was in effect her big break, and it brought her to the attention of an American film director, Andrew Stone, who cast her as the young female lead opposite Pat Boone in Never Put it in Writing in 1964. At the Abbey, Ernest Blythe had refused her permission for leave to make the film, believing she was too young, but, in the first of many daring decisions in her professional life, she resigned from the Abbey company aged just 19, in 1963.
As well as her film work, Murphy acted in several British television serials in the 1960s, including such then highly-regarded programmes as Armchair Mystery Theatre, No Hiding Place and The Wednesday Play, and, for RTÉ, the ground-breaking dramatisation of Liam O’Flaherty’s Land.
Her theatre work also flourished, and included notable performances in Dion Boucicault’s The Shaughran, opposite Cyril Cusack, at London’s Aldwych Theatre in 1968. She played Laura in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie in 1964 with the Group Theatre in London, and, also in London, in a famous production of Brian Friel’s Lovers, as the young female student opposite Eamonn Morrissey’s young man, at the Fortune Theatre in the West End, directed by Hilton Edwards.
Murphy was to reprise this latter role when Phyllis Ryan brought the play to New York the following year in a new production opposite Patrick Dawson and directed by Barry Cassin, which received very favourable reviews from the notoriously hard-nosed US theatre critics.
She based herself increasingly in London from the early 1970s. Actor Wesley Murphy (no relation) recently told The Irish Times she was not afraid to court controversy, appearing with him in England’s Ireland, a play by David Hare, Snoo Wilson and Howard Brenton, highly critical of British policy in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972: “Originally the play was to have opened at the Bristol Old Vic, but it was pulled because of the political situation and we had to open eventually in Amsterdam. It was highly controversial agitprop theatre. Eventually we opened in London at the Royal Court, and later at the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm.”
Notable film work at this time included a cinematic version of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia Here I Come in 1977, playing Katie Doogan with Donal McCann as Gar Public. Controversy
Controversy also surrounded one of Murphy’s last theatre performances at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1983, when she appeared in the first-ever female nude scene on an Irish stage with five other women in Nell Dunn’s comedy Steaming.
Although it seems risible today, the nude scene, in which six women friends dive into a swimming pool naked, sparked outrage.
Murphy’s work was mostly for television in the 1970s and 1980s, with parts in TV films and serials including The Sinners (1970), Napoleon and Love(1974), Oil Strike North (1975), Off to Philadelphia in the Morning (1978), Whose Child? (1979), Painted Out (1984) and Echoes (1988).
After the 1980s, and a move to the New York, where she played with the Irish Repertory Company, Murphy’s acting career gradually slowed, and she moved into the real estate and antique businesses, buying apartments and houses in Dublin and New York. Her last home, a beautiful Georgian apartment in Dublin at the corner of Crow Street and Dame Street, was a showcase for some of her best antiques purchases over the years.
She was born in Cork in 1944 to Timothy Murphy, a former senior police officer in the Hong Kong police, who had been awarded the King’s Police Medal, the highest such decoration for a serving officer in the British Empire, and his wife Mary, nee Colbert. Her father had retired in 1937, and the family had settled in Kinsale at Drumderrig House overlooking the bay.
Fidelma Murphy never married, and is survived by her sisters Tanis and Moonyeen. She was predeceased by her brothers Timothy jnr and Fergus, and by her sister Colleen.
Dubbed the ‘new Grace Kelly’, Irish actress Constance Smith was a big-screen starlet before drink and drug addiction led her to an impoverished death 10 years ago. As a fusion of dark beauty queen, femme fatale and flawed heroine, Smith was a film performer whose own life might have served the plot of a lush fifties melodrama, say one directed by Douglas Sirk.
Constance who?
People might wonder if they’ve either forgotten her name or never even heard of her, but in the 1950s she was a promising Hollywood newcomer to the Fox studio and presented an award at the 1952 Oscars, a responsibility that carries the peer respect of the film industry. She was born impoverished in Limerick city, in 1928 and last month marked 10 years since her death, in London, almost penniless and almost completely forgotten.
Despite this, Smith’s lifetime experiences almost reflected the arc traced by any memorable movie character or story protagonist. Talk about ups and downs. Smith followed a path from poverty to celebrity to notoriety to obscurity. As a young actress she was, for a short period, the special muse of Darryl F. Zanuck, invited and initially welcomed into the rarefied air of Hollywood.
As an older woman she was, for a short period, the special guest of Her Majesty, imprisoned for knifing her husband in a drunken domestic dispute. The husband, maverick documentary maker Paul Rotha, escorted her to the prison gates and met her there on her release. Smith and Rotha then remained a couple, on and off, for decades until his death.
But Smith’s dusky sexual allure always had a bewitching effect on her men. She had three husbands, including one who was the son to an Italian Fascist senator, who regarded his daughter-in-law as a shoeless Irish peasant. More significantly, she married Bryan Forbes, the challenging British film-maker who madeWhistle Down the Wind (1961) and The L-Shaped Room (1962).
Forbes witnessed first-hand how the studio system first supported then crushed Smith in her Hollywood career, and it’s tempting to imagine that some of what he saw influenced his dystopian sci-fi drama The Stepford Wives (1975).
Having been first cosseted by Zanuck and the Fox studio, Smith was summarily dumped. Fox had forced her into an abortion and tried, unsuccessfully, to make her change her name. Forbes later wrote: “When the blow fell… the Hollywood system allowed of no mercy. She was reduced to the status of a Hindu road sweeper.” The difficulty for Smith was making her mark in American cinema when Irish performers were thought suited to mildly-exotic, fiery or fantastical roles, rather than the darker, sultry ones that fitted her looks. Yet with Jack Palance in Man in the Attic (1951) and in Impulse (1957), she showed signature noir-like qualities. Palance once called her the “Dublin Dietrich”
. Elsewhere she was dubbed “an intelligent man’s Elizabeth Taylor” and she was frequently termed the new Maureen O’Hara or Grace Kelly. Smith originally earned her chance in movies by winning a Hedy Lamarr look-a-like competition and perhaps her acting development was hindered by constant comparisons to established figures. Later, when she fell out of the limelight and into drink and drugs addiction,
15th October 1955: Irish film actress Constance Smith (1928 – 2003) is featured for the cover of Picture Post magazine. Original Publication: Picture Post Cover – Vol 69 No 03 – pub. 1955. (Photo by IPC Magazines/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
she worked as a cleaner and workmates remarked that she looked familiar but they couldn’t place her. “It seems regrettable that Constance Smith should have been so completely forgotten given that she was once, if briefly, a Hollywood star,” observes Ruth Barton, film scholar and author of Acting Irish in Hollywood.
It’s to Barton’s credit that she does the proper work of an historian, which is to retrieve from the past those details that make us rethink what we believe we know. How few of us knew there was an Irish film figure of such intrigue? We might nowadays recall Smith’s name with the likes of O’Sullivan, O’Hara and Kelly, had her fortunes not turned so sour. In Emeralds in Tinseltown, Steve Brennan and Bernadette O’Neil’s glossy span of the Irish influence upon Hollywood, the authors relegate Smith to the also-rans section. Barton, meanwhile, rescues her from the dustbin of history.
But while we should remember Constance Smith, we should not pity her. While perhaps we should mourn her as a faded talent, we should not patronise her as a tragic victim. Instead, she was a survivor, even an inspiring one, who found some success in a most demanding field, absorbing the blows as best she could when the sinister side of that success turned upon her.
Perhaps Hollywood was over-subscribed with dark-haired beauties in the forties and fifties, when Dorothy Lamour, Jane Russell, Gene Tierney and Ava Gardner literally dominated the scene.
Certainly we should not see Constance Smith as tragic merely because she lost her fame, a phenomenon that’s often a hollow reed. What’s sad is that she never fully realised her potential as a drama performer, even while her own life was so dramatic.
She was not quite right for those flamboyant, flame-haired roles played by Maureen O’Hara or the pristine, ice-queen personas of Grace Kelly. She was more a Scarlett O’Hara type, who rolled with the punches as her world crumbled around her, and lived by the mantra that “tomorrow is another day.”
For Irish Post article on Constance Smith, please click here.
Limerick Life article in 2016.
Constance Smith was born in 1928 at 46 Wolfe Tone Street, just a short walk from Limerick train station. It was to be an auspicious sign for the little girl who would grow to be a celebrated actor; her extraordinary life would transport her from that small terraced house in Limerick to a convent in Dublin, from a Hollywood mansion to an Italian villa and finally, from Holloway Prison to a sad, troubled end in a London hostel.
While most film fans are familiar with Irish movie stars of the past such as Maureen O’Hara, Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris, few people, even in Limerick, are aware of Constance Smith and her short-lived Hollywood career. Ruth Barton is an academic and author of Acting Irish in Hollywood: from Fitzgerald to Farrell in which she dedicates a chapter to Constance Smith, to retrieve her and other lost stars “from historical oblivion”. Much of what you’ll read below emanates from her painstaking research.
Constance Smith was born to Mary Biggane, a Limerick native, and Sylvester Smith, a former British soldier and veteran of World War One. Initially, her father, a Dubliner, worked as a labourer at the Ardnacrusha plant, but when the project was completed in 1929, he moved his family back to the capital. There they settled in a one-room tenement in Mount Pleasant Buildings, Ranelagh, described by the Irish Times as a ghetto, “used by the Corporation as dumping grounds for problem families.”
Life was arduous and often dangerous in the slums of Mount Pleasant. Communal toilets were poorly maintained, overflowing rubbish bins were infested with rats, and cold, lung-choking air seeped through the damp brick walls; it was little wonder that Irish infant mortality rates were among the highest in Europe at the time. Indeed, many of Constance’s ten siblings did not make it to adulthood.
The only respite from the grinding poverty was a sort of ad-hoc community theatre which developed among the residents. Groups gathered together in the evenings, sang songs from penny-sheets, performed skits for one another and, if the owner was feeling generous, listened through open windows to the street’s one wireless radio. It was in this way that Constance likely received her first training in the dramatic arts.
Constance’s father died when she fifteen. Unable to support her surviving children on her own, Mary Biggane sent her daughter to St. Louis Convent School in Rathmines. The headstrong teenager escaped early, however, taking casual jobs as a shop girl and housemaid to support herself.
It was this latter position that set her on the path to stardom. In 1945 she was placed in a ‘big house’ in Rathmines and the family for whom she worked encouraged her to enter a ‘Film Star Doubles’ contest in The Screen, an Irish film-industry publication. She went on to take first place – dressed as Hedy Lamarr in a borrowed dress – at the magazine’s ball, attended by local actors, theatre producers and crucially, international talent scouts.
She was invited to screen-test at Denham Studios in England by Rank Organisation, who saw potential in the beautiful, sultry-eyed young woman. In 1946 she signed a seven year contract with the group and was put through the rigours of their ‘charm school’ at Highbury, in London. This was essentially a factory for starlets, in which young ingénues were taught elocution, breathing exercises and comportment, along with more traditional drama lessons and script rehearsals. Objecting, perhaps, to spending her time balancing books on her head, Constance lasted only a few years in the school. She resisted attempts to change her name (‘Tamara Hickey’ was suggested, straddling the line between thrillingly exotic and reassuringly local) and steadfastly clung to her Irish accent, a refusal which eventually led to her dismissal from Rank Organisation. Her private life was faring better, however, as she became engaged to British film producer John Boulting.
Once again, life was to take a fortuitous turn for Constance. She won a small part playing an Irish maid in the film The Mudlockin 1950, receiving £20 per day for five weeks. In four short years, she had come a long way from a position as a housemaid for £2 a week. She was spotted in this film by Darryl Zanuck, a legendary Hollywood mogul and co-founder of the movie studio 20th Century Fox. He took a close interest in her – whether his intentions were purely professional is unknown – and championed her as an undiscovered star. She was granted a seven year contract with the studio and placed opposite Tyrone Power in The House in the Square, to begin shooting in London in 1950. The movie was a big, all-star production, and the media fanfare began early.
However, the young, untrained actor struggled to perform alongside experienced heavy-weights such as Power. Midway through filming she found herself unceremoniously dumped from the picture, losing all the publicity and career momentum it had brought. The studio cited illness, and replaced her with Ann Blyth, reshooting all her scenes at a rumoured cost of £100,000. Constance was devastated, but found comfort on the shoulder of a successful British actor named Bryan Forbes (best known for directing The Stepford Wives, 1975), whom she married in 1951.
Back in Hollywood, she found herself packaged and presented as a beautiful but feisty Irish ‘colleen’, the new Maureen O’Sullivan (remembered as Jane in the Tarzan movies). Whether acting on her own volition or that of the studio’s, Constance had an abortion just before Christmas of 1951. 20th Century Fox paid the $3,000 fee.
Her marriage failed soon after, but her career was steady. She shot a number of films, receiving praise for her sensuous, noirish performances from fellow actors (Jack Palance referred to her as the ‘Dublin Dietrich’) and the occasional breathless review from critics. One paper, in the parlance of the time, noted that she possessed “a pair of the nicest gams to ever leave the Old Sod.” In 1952 she was invited to present a trophy at the Annual Academy Awards.
Having parted company with 20th Century Fox, she signed with Bob Goldstein in 1954, who promptly put her to work filming the thriller Tiger in the Tail, in London. Frustrated by the lack of first-rate roles, she left for Italy in 1955, casting off her rebel charm to reinvent herself as the descendent of Irish aristocrats. There, she met an Italian photographer named Araldo di Crollolanza and married him a year later, at the age of twenty-eight. His father – a Fascist senator who had served under Mussolini – reportedly disinherited his son upon learning of the union, even going so far as to refer to his new daughter-in-law as a ‘barefoot Irish peasant’. She made four films in Italy, but her career began to falter and she took an overdose of sleeping tablets in 1958. Her husband left her and she returned to England.
In 1959 she met Paul Rotha, a married man of fifty-two and a much-celebrated filmmaker and writer. They couldn’t have made a more different pair; a neat, precise and serious Englishman, who fell in love with a tempestuous, free-spirited and creative Irishwoman. Theirs was a predictably fiery relationship, only made more difficult by their mutual propensity for hard drinking. They shared similar socialist-leaning political beliefs though, both avowedly anti-fascist and anti-imperialist. Constance was no longer acting, but she remained well-known in film-industry circles in London. She was, one contemporary noted, ‘an intelligent man’s Elizabeth Taylor’.
Together, she and Rotha travelled to Germany to research a documentary on Adolf Hitler’s life. There, they met close aides to the dictator, as well as survivors of the concentration camps. She was said to be greatly affected by this experience.
In 1961, the couple visited Constance’s birthplace, calling to the house on Wolfe Tone Street in Limerick. They were greeted with much fanfare by Constance’s former neighbours, many of whom clamoured for photographs and autographs. The purpose of the visit, Rotha told reporters, was for research – he intended to write a book on his Constance’s life, entitled ‘A Weed in the Ground’, a project which failed to materialise.
Back in London, the couple’s relationship was growing increasingly turbulent. Their fights were frequent and quite often physical; after one altercation Rotha’s face was so badly bruised that he had to postpone an overseas trip. In 1961 a particularly nasty row very nearly turned fatal when Constance stabbed Rotha, leaving him lying on the floor of his flat, bleeding heavily. She also tried to slash her own wrists.
Rotha recovered from his extensive injuries, and supported his lover during her trial in 1962. In court, Constance’s defence team made much of her poverty-stricken childhood, her failed movie career and her traumatic experience in post-war Germany. She was given a three month sentence, and upon her release from Holloway Prison she was met at the gates by Rotha.
They were reunited, but the period was not a happy one. They sold their story to a tabloid newspaper, which salaciously reported their living together out of wedlock. Constance’s mental health deteriorated and she spent time in psychiatric care. In 1968, she stabbed Rotha again, this time sinking a steak knife into his back. The court placed a restraining order against Constance but again, Rotha stood by her. They eventually married in 1974, some fifteen years since they had first met. It was to be her third and final marriage.
Time in prison hadn’t quietened her demons however, and Constance was back in Holloway Prison in 1975, for yet another stabbing offence. While she made a half-hearted attempt to leave Rotha, she quickly returned to him, and together, they descended into a spiral of alcohol abuse, poverty and physical violence. The once highly-respected author and filmmaker took to charging visitors £50 for interviews, along with a bottle of Scotch for himself and Vodka for his wife.
By 1978 they were effectively homeless, and Constance had taken a job as a hospital cleaner. Around this time, after almost twenty years together, the couple broke up. Rotha wrote at the time, “my wild Irish wife has finally left me, gone God knows where.”
Constance Smith’s final act was slow to play out, despite the fiercely harsh circumstances of the latter years of her life. She lived for a while in destitution, losing toes to frostbite and drinking on the streets of Soho. She spent the next two decades on a miserable carousel of psychiatric hospitals, hostels and homelessness, before eventually dying of natural causes in Islington in 2003.
She lived through a fascinating era of modern history; born in the infancy of the Irish Free State, she found herself living in a Blitz-ravaged London a year after VE Day. She went on to work with black-listed artists during the infamous Red Scare in Hollywood and married the son of a Fascist Senator in Italy. She worked with one of Britain’s best-known documentary makers and interviewed survivors of the Holocaust. The life of Constance Smith is more interesting, more dramatic and more poignant than any Hollywood blockbuster. Perhaps it was just too much, too soon for the girl from Wolfe Tone Street.
In her book, Ruth Barton writes perhaps the most sympathetic and understanding epitaph for the Irish actor who flew too close to the sun. Constance, she writes, was, like many almost-stars of the period, “overwhelmed by an unforgiving system for which their background left them unprepared.”
Today, Constance Smith is fondly remembered by those neighbours for whom she signed autographs in 1960, and her memory is maintained by Ms Barton and her fellow academics, by interest groups such as the Limerick Film Archive and by artists like Kate Hennessey.
If you happen to pass Ms Hennessey’s mural on Clontarf Place, stop for a moment and cast your eyes upwards. Among the many Limerick women celebrated there, you’ll find the dark-haired, smiling face of Constance Smith, just a stone’s throw from her family home.
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Constance Mary (1928–2003), actor, was born in January or February 1928 in Limerick. Her father, a Dublin native who had served in the British army during the first world war, was working on construction of the Ardnacrusha power station; her mother Mary was from Limerick. On completion of the station in 1929 the family moved to Dublin; her father died soon thereafter. One of seven or eight children, Constance was reared in extreme poverty in a one‐room flat in Mount Pleasant Buildings, Ranelagh, and was educated at St Louis convent primary school, Rathmines. She worked in a local chip shop, an O’Connell Street ice‐cream parlour, and as a domestic servant. A blue‐eyed brunette, strikingly beautiful from a young age, in January 1946 she won a special prize in the Dublin film star doubles contest (as Hedy Lamarr), on foot of which she was screen-tested by the Rank Organisation, and signed to a seven‐year contract. Moving to London, she was groomed in etiquette, poise, and acting technique in the Rank acting school (the so‐called ‘charm school’). She first appeared on screen in an uncredited, but eye‐catching role, as a cabaret singer in the underworld classic Brighton rock (1947); she was engaged for a time to the film’s director, John Boulting. Though never cast in a Rank film, she appeared in several independent productions, including Room to let (1950), as the daughter of a landlady whose mysterious new tenant turns out to be Jack the Ripper. About 1950 she was sacked by Rank, supposedly for objecting to criticism of her Irish accent; she also resisted the studio’s efforts to change her name.
Her vivacious performance as an Irish maid in The mudlark (1950) attracted the attention of Darryl Zanuck, head of production at Twentieth Century Fox, who signed her to a seven‐year contract, and vigorously promoted her as his Emerald Isle discovery. En route to Hollywood, she worked on location in Canada in Otto Preminger’s impressive film noir The 13th letter (1951), as the wife of a hospital doctor (played by Charles Boyer) in a small Québec village, who is suspected, on the basis of poison‐pen letters, of an adulterous involvement with a newly arrived English doctor (played by Michael Rennie). Cast in a coveted role opposite Tyrone Power in The house in the square (1951), she returned to London for filming, but was soon embroiled in studio politics, and uncomfortable in a part too demanding for her experience and skills. After six weeks on set she was abruptly dropped, her role was recast, and her scenes re‐shot.
Despite this setback, for the next few years she was cast by Fox in starring roles opposite some of the studio’s leading male actors. Nonetheless, her own star status seems to have been generated more by intensive studio publicity than by the quality or success of her movies. She appeared on the cover of Picturegoer, the leading British film magazine of the period (March 1951), and was a presenter at the 1952 Academy awards ceremony. Her image was that of a spirited, innately rebellious individualist, unafraid to defy studio manipulation – qualities attributed by the entertainment press to her Irish ethnicity. One industry colleague remembered her as ‘the intelligent man’s Elizabeth Taylor’ (Barton, 117). Her credits included Red skies of Montana(1952), as the wife of the chief of a crew of forest‐fire‐fighters, played by Richard Widmark; Lure of the wilderness (1952), with Jeffrey Hunter; Treasure of the golden condor (1953), opposite Cornel Wilde; and Taxi (1953), as a newly landed Irishwoman assisted by a New York cabdriver in searching for the American husband who abandoned her. She gave a lively and rounded performance in Man in the attic (1953), another take on the Ripper legend, as the showgirl niece of the murderer’s landlord and his wife, a role that highlighted her singing and dancing talents. Her co‐star, Jack Palance, suggested that she be billed ‘the Dublin Dietrich’, and some reviewers detected her potential as a live nightclub performer.
By 1954 she had left Fox; it is possible that the mental instability and problems with alcohol that would later become obvious were already afflicting her career. She appeared with Richard Conte in an intriguing noir, The big tip off (1955), and made two films in London: Tiger by the tail (1955), as the reliable English secretary of an American journalist pursued by gangsters, and Impulse(1955), as a seductive femme fatale. Her star waning, in the latter 1950s she made five films in Italy, where she was promoted as a brunette Grace Kelly. Giovanni dalle bande nere (The violent patriot) (1956), a costume swashbuckler, played the USA drive‐in circuit. Her last film was La congiura dei Borgia (1959).
Smith married firstly, after a whirlwind romance in London (1951), Bryan Forbes , an aspiring British actor, and later a successful screenwriter, director, novelist, and memoirist. Though he followed her to Hollywood, the marriage had broken by the end of the year, but not before Smith had succumbed to studio pressure and terminated a pregnancy by abortion. The couple divorced in 1955. She married secondly, in Italy (1956), Araldo Crollolanza , the photographer son of a former fascist senator (who opposed the match and disinherited him); the marriage failed by 1959. In the latter year Smith began a relationship with Paul Rotha (1907–84), a leading British documentary filmmaker, film historian, and critic, whose portfolio included two films of Irish interest: No resting place (1951), a fiction film about Irish travellers, and Cradle of genius (1958), a short documentary on the history of the Abbey theatre, which received an Oscar nomination. Smith accompanied Rotha to Germany and Holland during research and filming of a documentary on the life of Adolf Hitler (1961) and a fiction film based on the Dutch wartime resistance (1962). The couple shared leftist, anti‐imperialist political convictions, and a passion for jazz music; Smith painted, and cultivated her interest in the fine arts, while Rotha contemplated writing a book about her life and casting her in films. Ominously, they also shared an addiction to heavy drinking; ferocious rows, often physically violent, became a commonplace. In December 1961 Smith knifed Rotha in the groin and slashed her own wrists in their London flat; pleading guilty to unlawful and malicious wounding, she served three‐months’ imprisonment in Holloway. Defence counsel at her trial referred to two previous suicide attempts, and described her as ‘a poor but beautiful girl who was squeezed into a situation of sophistication and fame when emotionally quite unable to cope with it’ (Times, 12 Jan. 1962).
For the next two decades Smith and Rotha continued their turbulent, on‐again, off‐again relationship, marked by mutual alcoholism, unemployment, increasing financial hardship, episodes of domestic violence, and Smith’s repeated suicide attempts, and admissions to psychiatric hospitals and halfway hostels. During intermittent periods of recovery, she worked as a cleaner and (incredibly) in childcare. After stabbing Rotha in the back in 1968 she received three‐years’ probation; another stabbing in 1975 resulted in a second term of imprisonment. The couple, who married in 1974, did not break up permanently till 1979. In the early 1980s Smith was living destitute and homeless in London; former colleagues would see her, virtually unrecognisable, drinking in Soho Square. The few friends who attempted to retain contact lost track of her in the mid 1980s. She is reported to have died of natural causes 30 June 2003 in Islington, London
Aidan Gillen is quietly building up a very impressive resume of roles on film, television and stage. On TV he has created such memorable characters as ‘Stuart Alan Jones’ in “Queer As Folk” in 1999, as ‘Tommy Carcetti’ in “The Wire”, ‘John Boy’ in”Love/Hate” and as ‘Petyr Baelish in “Game of Thrones”. He was born in Dublin in 1968. Among his films are “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” in 1987 with Maggie Smith, “The Courier” with Gabriel Byrne, “Shadow Dancer” and “Dark Knight Rises”.
TCM overview:
A human chameleon with a deft touch at playing charismatic heels, Aidan Gillen became an intrinsic player to some of the most groundbreaking television shows of the 1990s and 2000s, including such prestige fare as the U.K.’s “Queer as Folk” (Channel 4, 1999-2000) and HBO’s “The Wire” (2002-08) and “Game of Thrones” (2011- ). In the early 1990s, the Irish-born Gillen established a footprint in the U.K. theater scene and a run of well-regarded independent films like “Circle of Friends” (1995), “Some Mother’s Son” (1996), “Mojo” (1997) and “Buddy Boy” (1999). In 1999, he landed one of the leads on the daring British series “Queer as Folk,” one of the first humanizing looks at gay culture in television history. In 2003, Gillen’s Broadway debut in Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker” earned him a Tony nomination, setting him up for a memorable splash on U.S. television as Mayor Tommy Carcetti on HBO’s magnum opus urban drama “The Wire.” Gillen carved a niche playing textured, scene-stealing villains in projects such as “Lorna Doone” (BBC, 2000), “The Final Curtain” (2002), “Shanghai Knights” (2003), “Blackout” (2008), “Freefall” (BBC, 2009) and “Blitz” (2011), capped deftly by his return home to play a mob boss in the Irish drama “Love/Hate” (RTE, 2010-11) and the Machiavellian counselor Littlefinger on “Game of Thrones.” Boasting a CV “teeming with reptiles, chancers and scumbags,” as the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper summarized, Gillen continues to build an élan as one of Ireland’s best thespian imports.
Gillen was born as Aidan Murphy on April 24, 1968, in Dublin, Ireland, the youngest of six children of a nurse and an architect. He grew up in artistic ranks, with his sister Fionnuala becoming an actress and his brother John Paul a television writer and playwright. Aidan came of age fascinated by film, the home video revolution affording him a chance to devour movie classics. He began acting at age 13, studying the craft at the Dublin Youth Theatre. At age 15, he started dating a neighborhood girl, Olivia O’Flanagan, and it would become a long-term relationship. He took a featured role in the DYT’s production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” when he was 16 and secured his Equity card the next year, picking up some minor film roles, most notably the Irish-shot feature “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne,” which starred Bob Hoskins and Maggie Smith. Upon graduating from St. Vincent’s C.B.S. secondary school in Glasnevin, he was already working regularly in the theater. He adopted his mother’s maiden name, Gillen, as his stage name when he discovered there was another actor already working as Aidan Murphy.
At age 19, Aidan moved to London, U.K., where he soon found himself working in top-tier productions on the West End, such as revivals of dramas by playwright Billy Roche, “A Handful of Stars” and “Belfry” – both shot for broadcast on the BBC – Mamet’s “The Water Engine,” the groundbreaking AIDS-coping drama “Marvin’s Room” and a revival of the Irish classic “Playboy of the Western World.” Gillen won his first major screen role in the 1993 BBC telefilm “Safe,” playing a young grifter amid a stark cross-section of homeless people. He garnered a broader international audience as the love interest of one of the two Dublin University co-eds (one of them played by Minnie Driver in her breakthrough role) central to the critically adored indie “Circle of Friends” (1995). Gillen continued to play countrymen the next year in “Some Mother’s Son,” which saw him as an imprisoned IRA member who puts his mother (Helen Mirren) in the thick of an awful moral dilemma when he undertakes a hunger strike to secure political prisoner status. In 1997, he reprised a previous stage credit in the film adaptation of Jez Butterworth’s “Mojo,” a tale of the London gang culture’s interspliced relationship with the early days of rock-n-roll, with Gillen playing the manic, murderous son of a club-owner.
He again excelled at creepy in the Mark Hanlon-helmed indie thriller “Buddy Boy,” rendering a man largely sequestered from the world to take care of his aging mother but developing an unhealthy fascination with a comely neighbor. In 1999, Gillen landed a television series, Channel 4’s “Queer as Folk,” Russell T. Davies’ trailblazing, unflinching look at the gay subculture of Manchester’s Canal Street district. With charismatic abandon, Gillen donned the character of Stuart Alan Jones, an unabashedly out, devil-may-care, randy PR executive. The show drew both condemnation from conservative cloisters and critical praise, much of it directed at Gillen. Channel 4 brought the series back for a two-episode sequel in 2000. The role scored him a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor. In 2001, Gillen married O’Flanagan. His demand rising, Gillen took another TV gig, starring as an amateur sleuth helping to track a serial killer in the miniseries “Dice” (CBC, 2001). Hoping to avoid being pigeonholed by TV stardom, he returned to one-off projects. He continue to hone his heel bona fides with variously menacing performances, playing the scheming villain of the BBC’s high-profile retelling of the Scottish period adventure “Lorna Doone” (2000); a corrupt cop in the King Lear contemporary version of “My Kingdom;” and an unscrupulous, deranged game show host in a vicious feud with rival Peter O’Toole in “The Final Curtain” (2002).
In 2003, he took it to Hollywood, tapped to play the smarmy cad in the de rigueur Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson action comedy “Shanghai Knights.” That year, he returned to the stage in high style, starring alongside Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan in a Broadway revival of Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker.” He played Mick, a slick, borderline violent Londoner whose big-hearted brother (MacLachlan) helps out a homeless man (Stewart), which soon turns out to be a more menacing prospect than expected. Though the production opened to mixed notices, The New York Times, like many others, singled out Gillen’s intense performance, calling it a “smashing Broadway debut.” The performance drew him a Tony Award nomination, as well as the attention of producers of the HBO drama “The Wire.” The intricate, exhaustively textured series of stories about weary cops and the drug trade denizens on the decaying streets of Baltimore, MD, was moving into its third season, heralded nearly universally as the new bar for narrative fiction in the U.S., and producer David Simon planned to expand the storyline beyond the street and into big-city politics. Gillen joined the cast in 2004 as the centerpiece of that arc, Tommy Carcetti, outwardly no-nonsense and liberal, but privately a manipulative city councilman, given to pulling strings in his oversight of the city’s public safety functions.
Gillen continued with the show through 2008, seeing Carcetti make an unlikely ascent to mayor and eventually governor. With the show’s importation to Ireland television, Gillen took the Best Actor laurel from the Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTAs) in 2009. He revisited Mamet’s works in 2007, starring in revivals of “American Buffalo” in Dublin and “Glengarry Glen Ross” in London. He donned the heavy again in multivariate sequence of films: an unbalanced doctor in the indie thriller “Blackout;” a gleefully avaricious investment banker in BBC’s telefilm of the credit meltdown, “Freefall” (2009); a standard con in another attempt to make pro wrestler Jon Cena an action star, “12 Rounds” (2009); and a self-styled rock star serial killer in the Jason Statham cop procedural “Blitz” (2011). Relocating with Olivia and their two children to Kerry, Ireland, in 2009, Gillen took the lead in the homegrown ensemble crime drama “Love/Hate,” scoring the role of John Boy, an organized crime boss whose cool steadily unravels along with his criminal empire. In 2011, the show swept the IFTA awards, with Gillen again taking the Best Actor award. He kept his hand in more sympathetic roles on the ITV procedural “Identity” (2010), playing a hotshot identity crimes detective living a double life; in the sweet low-budget Brit comedy “Treacle Jr.” (2010); and the Irish-set horror flick “Wake Wood” (2011).
In an internationally star-making role, Gillen would stride the rapier edge between heel and hero as the morally ambiguous Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish, high-class pimp and counselor to the king on the ambitious HBO series “Game of Thrones.” Premiering in 2011, the epic fantasy adventure, based on George R.R. Martin’s series of novels under the rubric A Song of Ice and Fire, followed a vast cross-section of a fictional island confederation of fiefdoms thrown into political intrigue and eventually war over control of their unifying throne, pitting the draconian southern aristocrats, the Lannisters, against the brothers of the fallen king, the Baratheons, the Iron Islands-dwelling Greyjoys, and the honorable, largely sympathetic northern house, The Starks, led by Ned Stark (Sean Bean) and his strong-willed wife Catelyn (Michelle Fairley). Baelish’s seemingly pragmatic parlays between Baratheons, Lanisters and Starks made him an enigma in the first season, clouded by his revealed previous suitorship of Catelyn Stark, then clarified by his ultimate betrayal of Ned with the smirk-delivered line, “I did warn you not to trust me.” “Thrones” debuted to rave reviews, developing tsunami of pop cultural buzz and seeing ratings climbing throughout the season to reach an impressive-for-cable three million-plus viewers on initial airing and an average of nine million per episode with rebroadcasts. The show earned 13 Emmy nominations in 2011 and made Gillen and his many fellow cast members much-in-demand for interviews in fanatical sci-fi/fantasy circles.
By Matthew Grimm
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Interview with Aidan Gillen on “Game of Thrones” for “Rolling Stone” magazine can be obtained online here.
Anne-Marie Duff was born in London in 1970 to Irish parents. She first became known to the general UK public with her role as Fiona Gallagher in the TV series “Shameless”. She starred as Queen Elizabeth the first in the lavish teleision adaption of “The Virgin Queen”. She played on stage Pegeen Mike to Cillian Murphy’s Christy Mahon in Garry Hyne’s aclaimed production of “The Playboy of the Western World”. Anne-Marie Duff is married to the actor James McAvoy.
TCM overview:
Born in London to Irish immigrant parents, Anne-Marie Duff didn’t consider acting until her mid-teens. She attended London’s Drama Centre, which helped her cultivate a career on the stage, appearing in “King Lear” and “War and Peace” while still a student. Duff’s first big break came when she was cast as eldest child Fiona McBride on somewhat controversial British sitcom “Shameless” (Channel 4 2004-13). She landed an even bigger role portraying Queen Elizabeth I in the lavish television drama “The Virgin Queen” (BBC 2006). Duff made her way to the big screen in the suburban drama “Notes on a Scandal” (2006), the 1980s period piece “Is Anybody There?” opposite Michael Caine (2008), and the John Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy” (2009), in which she played the teenage Lennon’s estranged mother Julia. In 2013, Duff made her Broadway debut starring in “Macbeth” as Lady MacBeth opposite Ethan Hawke.
Interview with Anne Marie Duff in “Time Out” can be found online here.
David Kelly had a long theatrical career before he starred in some early RTE television series. In 1980 he scored a personal triumph with his moving portryal of Rashers Tierney in the series “Strumpet City” based on the novel by James Plunkett. He starred as the one-armed dish washer in “Robin’s Nest” and of course was O’Reilly the Irish builde in the wonderful “Fawlty Towers”. His prominence on film came late in his career with “Waking Ned Devine” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. David Kelly died in Feb 2012 at the age of 82.
“Guardian” obituary:
The distinctive and beguiling Irish actor David Kelly, who has died aged 82, was as familiar a face in British television sitcoms as he was on the stage in Dublin, where he was particularly associated with the Gate theatre. But he was perhaps best known in recent years for playing Grandpa Joe in Tim Burton’s movie adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), an engaging performance that was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Film and Television Academy; Johnny Depp, who played Willy Wonka, paid a touching tribute on a video link from Hollywood to Dublin.
Kelly was a tall and flamboyant figure who was often cast as a comic, eccentric Irishman, notably as Albert Riddle, an incompetent, one-armed dish-washer in the late 1970s British sitcom Robin’s Nest; he could always play up to stereotype, and beyond, in his extravagant facial and physical gestures. Despite playing old codgers, he was one of life’s great dandies. His actor friend Niall Buggy said: “He was the best-dressed actor I’ve ever known – even when I look at myself.” Happily married to the actor Laurie Morton, whom he met at the Gate theatre in the days of Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir (they founded the theatre in 1928), Kelly was always attired off stage in hand-stitched shirts, Jermyn Street suits and a trademark bow tie.
His career spanned over 50 years, and he never considered retirement. Equally, he would never accept a role unless he felt he could add something unique and personal to it. “He was the gentleman of our profession,” said Michael Colgan, the Gate theatre director. But there were also wilderness years dedicated to drink. He told Colgan that he had no idea that President John F Kennedy had been assassinated until about 1974.
A Dubliner, he was educated at the Synge Street Catholic boys’ school and acted from the age of eight at the Gaiety theatre. His stage work included plays by Chekhov and Brian Friel; he made a rare excursion to the Abbey theatre in Friel’s Give Me Your Answer, Do! (1997), a wonderful play about the evaluation of writers and the personal crisis of a creative artist. But he was most celebrated at the Gate, where he returned in the 1990s to play Orgon in Molière’s Tartuffe, Peter in Thomas Kilroy’s version of Chekhov’s The Seagull and, most famously, Al Lewis opposite his close friend Milo O’Shea in Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys in 1996. That last production is still spoken of with awe in Dublin theatre circles, but he dug even deeper in a great performance of Beckett’s solo memory play, Krapp’s Last Tape – which he had first played at its Irish premiere in 1959 – and made this revival a cornerstone of the Gate’s Beckett festival in 1991; it was later seen in New York, Chicago and Melbourne.
Although he was always strangely noticeable in mediocre 1970s sitcoms such as Oh, Father! (with Derek Nimmo) – and played a hapless builder, O’Reilly, in the second episode of Fawlty Towers – he distinguished himself, and first endeared himself to a television audience, in RTÉ’s 1980 series Strumpet City, based on James Plunkett’s novel about the Dublin lock-out, also starring Peter O’Toole, Cyril Cusack and Peter Ustinov. He played “Rashers” Tierney, the colourful basement dweller, and counted the role his favourite (alongside Krapp). He maintained his popularity in two long-running television soaps both set in fictional villages in County Wicklow: Glenroe, the first RTÉ series to be shown (from 1991) with Irish subtitles, and the BBC’s Ballykissangel, screened from 1996 to 2001. Kelly worked consistently in films from 1969, when he played the vicar in a funeral scene in The Italian Job, starring Michael Caine. He appeared again with Caine in Terence Young’s spy movie The Jigsaw Man (1984).
His most notable film appearances in the 1990s were in two delightful Irish movies: Mike Newell’s Into the West (1992), scripted by Jim Sheridan, with Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin, in which he played an old storyteller in a community of travellers; and Kirk Jones’s Waking Ned (1998) in which, with his best friend, played by Ian Bannen, he engineered a small village’s response to an unexpected lottery windfall and set about fooling the claims inspector. He also boasted of becoming an overnight sex symbol as he went naked on a motorbike.
He appeared with Kevin Spacey in the Irish crime caper Ordinary Decent Criminal (1999), and with Helen Mirren and Clive Owen in Greenfingers (2000). Kelly’s last major movie appearance was in Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust (2007).
He is survived by Laurie and their children, David and Miriam.
• David Kelly, actor, born 11 July 1929; died 12 February 2012
His obituary in “The Guardian” by Michael Coveney can also be found online here.
Brendan Gleeson has the unique distinction of playing both the great Irish hero Michael Collins and his often times adversary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He is a greatly gifted Dublin actor whose career has gone from strength to strength. His sons are now acting on both stage and in film.
TCM Overview:
A latecomer to films, Irish actor Brendan Gleeson spent much of his formative years training for and performing in theater before breaking into films and television at the relatively older age of 34. Supporting turns in homegrown productions like “The Field” (1990) and “Into the West” (1992) led to small parts in American features like “Far and Away” (1992) and his big break as right hand man to Mel Gibson’s William Wallace in the blockbuster “Braveheart” (1995). Three years later, his turn as Irish criminal Martin Cahill in John Boorman’s “The General” (1998) boosted his profile on the international scene, so he was soon dividing his time between major Hollywood projects like “Mission: Impossible II” (1999) and independent efforts like “28 Days Later” (2001). Dependable in just about every field, from children’s fantasy â¿¿ he was Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody in three of the Harry Potter films â¿¿ to epics like “Gangs of New York” (2002), to even more intimate projects like “Breakfast on Pluto” (2005) and “In Bruges” (2008), Gleeson’s versatility elevated him to the pantheon of the character actor’s character actor.
Born March 29, 1955 in Dublin, Ireland, Gleeson took to drama at an early age, and participated regularly in school productions. The works of Irish playwrights held particular interest to him, so as a high schooler, he tackled one of the most challenging roles in that country’s canon: “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. Upon graduation, he performed with the Dublin Shakespeare Festival while earning his keep as an office worker at a health board. On the advice of a director at the Dublin Festival, he auditioned for and was accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which he graduated with honors. Gleeson then returned to Dublin, where he supported himself as a teacher while continuing to perform in local theater. After an opportunity to audition for the Royal Shakespeare Company presented itself, he returned to England to spend a few seasons with the acclaimed troupe.
The exposure and acclaim gave Gleeson the impetus to begin auditioning for films and television, and by 1989, he was landing small roles in UK television and features like Neil Jordan’s “The Field,” which marked his motion picture debut. He earned positive reviews for his performance as Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins in “The Treaty” (ITV, 1991), and by the following year, was making his first appearance in an American feature, the Ron Howard epic “Far and Away” (1992). But it was Mel Gibson’s bloody epic “Braveheart” that gave Gleeson his widest exposure to international audiences; as Hamish Campbell, loyal if brutish lieutenant to Gibson’s William Wallace, Gleeson became a go-to for rough-hewn characters that let their fists do the talking in films like “I Went Down” (1997) and “The Butcher Boy” (1998).
Gleeson’s true range got a stellar showcase in John Boorman’s drama “The General” (1998), which recounted the life and celebrity of Irish master criminal Martin Cahill. His larger than life performance as the roguish thief, whose daring robberies and open flaunting of the law made him something of a folk hero in Dublin during the 1970s and 1980s, earned him numerous international awards, including Best Actor from the London and Irish Film Critics associations. The exposure also allowed him to make the jump to more significant roles in Hollywood projects, which began with John Woo’s mega-hit “Mission: Impossible II” (2000), starring as the nefarious head of a biochemical company which plans to develop a deadly virus.
By the launch of the new millennium, Gleeson was dividing his time between major studio efforts like Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” (2001) and Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” (2002) with UK films like Boorman’s “The Tailor of Panama” (2001) and Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” (2001), as well as smaller independent features like “Wild About Harry” (2000) and “Harrison’s Flowers” (2000). In all cases, Gleeson’s trademark attributes â¿¿ intense focus and emotional drive, as well as an essential everyman quality, no matter what the social standing of the role â¿¿ were on full display. In “Gangs,” his former street fighter abandons his knife for the role of sheriff in 19th century New York, while his working class father in “28 Days” offers a glimpse of structure and humanity to a post-apocalyptic London until a mutant virus turns him into a ravenous killer. Gleeson’s talent allowed him to tackle such intensely physical roles as well as quieter turns, like an out-of-control TV chef who undergoes a personality change after losing his memory in “Wild about Harry.”
The year 2003 saw Gleeson working extensively in large-scale productions like “Cold Mountain” (2003) and Wolfgang Petersen’s “Troy” (2004), for which he played the prideful King Menelaus, who launches the Trojan War after his wife, Helen, is stolen by Orlando Bloom’s Paris. Supporting turns in M. Night Shyamalan’s disappointing “The Village” (2004) and the expensive flop “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005) preceded Gleeson’s scaling back to more independent projects like “Breakfast on Pluto” (2005), which found him taking transgender orphan Cillian Murphy under his wing. He also reunited with John Boorman for “The Tiger’s Tail” (2006), a dark fantasy drama about a wealthy developer (Gleeson) whose underhanded deals have not only left him on the brink of financial disaster, but plagued by an identical and homicidal twin.
Gleeson did not stray from big-budget projects for long. In 2005, he was cast as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody â¿¿ so named for his glaring false eye â¿¿ in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” which earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the London Film Critics Circle. He returned to the role in two sequels: 2007’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1” (2010). He also lent his voice and form to Wiglaf, trusted friend to “Beowulf” (2007) in Robert Zemeckis’ CGI-animated adventure.
In 2008, Gleeson was cast as a kind-hearted hit man in the black comedy “In Bruges.” As veteran killer Ken, Gleeson showed his comic skills as well as enormous warmth to his partner, the hapless Ray (Colin Farrell), whom Ken is ordered to but declines to murder after the younger man is devastated by the accidental murder of a child. The little-seen comedy found itself on the receiving end of numerous awards from the Golden Globes at the end of 2008, with a Best Supporting Actor nod going to Gleeson himself. The actor was further honored with nominations from the British Independent Film Awards and the Satellite Awards for his stellar work. Meanwhile, he delivered a sterling performance as Winston Churchill in the historical drama, “Into the Storm” (HBO, 2009), which earned the actor an Emmy win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie. He was poised for more award glory when he was nominated for a Golden Globe later that year. After voicing Abbot Cellach in the animated “The Secret of Kells” (2009), Gleeson was a local loan shark who seeks revenge on three fugitives after the accidental death one of his gang members in “Perrierâ¿¿s Bounty” (2009). He barely registered when reprising “Mad Eye” Moody for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 1” (2010), but co-starred opposite Matt Damon and Amy Ryan in Paul Greengrassâ¿¿ Iraq War thriller “Green Zone” (2010). Gleeson found himself back in awards contention when he played an unorthodox cop opposite Don Cheadleâ¿¿s straight-laced FBI agent in the Irish-made black comedy “The Guard” (2011), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Comedy or Musical.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
“Time Out” interview with Brendan Gleeson can be accessed online here.
Brenda Fricker won an Oscar for her performance as Mrs Brown in “My Left Foot”. She started her career on RTE’s “Tolka Row” and had a long stint on BBC’s “Casualty” returning to the series in August 2010 for a special. My favourite performmance of Brenda Fricker is of the luckless Bridie in “The Ballroom of Romance”. Her sad lonely life would break your heart. This absolutely wonderful film deserves a DVD release.
TCM Overview:
This Irish character actress gained experience in Irish theatre and with the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Court Theatre Company in Great Britain. Brenda Fricker received great acclaim for her Oscar-winning supporting performance as the determined mother of a son afflicted with cerebral palsy in “My Left Foot” (1989).
Venturing to Hollywood in the 1990s, she played a homeless woman befriended by kid-on-the-loose Macaulay Culkin in the sequel “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” (1992) and followed up with a more zany mother role in the little-seen “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (1993).
Having acted on English TV on the BBC series “Casualty”, Fricker began conquering US TV with roles in the “American Playhouse” presentation “Lethal Innocence” (1991) and the miniseries “The Sound and the Silence” (1993). Fricker offered memorable support as Albert Finney’s exasperated sister in “A Man of No Importance” (1994) and appeared in support of Robin Wright in Pen Densham’s “Moll Flanders” and as Matthew McConaughey’s secretary in Joel Schumacher’s “A Time to Kill” (both 1996)
Recent article on Ms Fricker can be accessed here.
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 and is a British-American-Irish actress who has appeared in theatre, television, and film. Her career has spanned eight decades, much of it in the United States, and her work has attracted international acclaim.
Lansbury was born to Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury, an upper-middle-class family in Regent’s Park, central London. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States with her mother and two brothers, and studied acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award. She appeared in eleven further films for MGM, mostly in supporting roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is cited as being one of her finest performances. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which earned her a range of awards.
Amid difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, and continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade. These included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, originating the role of Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the hit Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Moving into television, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunitseries Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons from 1984 until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, thereby contributing to animated films such as Disney‘s Beauty and the Beast (1991). Since then, she has toured in a variety of international theatrical productions and continued to make occasional film appearances.
Lansbury was born to an upper middle class family on October 16, 1925. Although her birthplace has often been given as Poplar, East London, she has rejected this, asserting that while she had ancestral connections to Poplar, she was born in Regent’s Park, Central London. Her mother was Belfast-born actress Moyna Macgill (born Charlotte Lillian McIldowie), who regularly appeared on stage in the West End and who had also starred in several films. Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar. Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader and anti-war activist George Lansbury, a man whom she felt “awed” by and considered “a giant in my youth.” Angela had an older half sister, Isolde, who was the daughter of Moyna’s previous marriage to writer and director Reginald Denham. In January 1930, when Angela was four, her mother gave birth to twin boys, Bruce and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house in Mill Hill, North London; on weekends they would vacate to a rural farm in Berrick Salome, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire.[9]“I’m eternally grateful for the Irish side of me. That’s where I got my sense of comedy and whimsy. As for the English half–that’s my reserved side … But put me onstage, and the Irish comes out. The combination makes a good mix for acting.”
When Lansbury was nine, her father died from stomach cancer; she retreated into playing characters as a coping mechanism. In 2014, Lansbury described this event as “the defining moment of my life. Nothing before or since has affected me so deeply.” Facing financial difficulty, her mother became engaged to a Scottish colonel, Leckie Forbes, and moved into his house in Hampstead, with Lansbury receiving an education at South Hampstead High School from 1934 until 1939. She nevertheless considered herself largely self-educated, learning from books, theatre and cinema. She became a self-professed “complete movie maniac”, visiting the cinema regularly and imagining herself as certain characters. Keen on playing the piano, she briefly studied music at the Ritman School of Dancing, and in 1940 began studying acting at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, West London, first appearing onstage as a lady-in-waiting in the school’s production of Maxwell Anderson‘s Mary of Scotland.
That year, Angela’s grandfather died, and with the onset of the Blitz, Macgill decided to take Angela, Bruce and Edgar to the United States; Isolde remained in Britain with her new husband, the actor Peter Ustinov. Macgill secured a job supervising sixty British children who were being evacuated to North America aboard the Duchess of Athol, arriving with them in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in mid-August. From there, she proceeded by train to New York City, where she was financially sponsored by a Wall Street businessman, Charles T. Smith, moving in with his family at their home at Mahopac, New York. Lansbury gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing allowing her to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio, where she appeared in performances of William Congreve‘s The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde‘s Lady Windermere’s Fan. She graduated in March 1942, by which time the family had moved to a flat in Morton Street, Greenwich Village.
Macgill secured work in a Canadian touring production of Tonight at 8.30, and was joined in Canada by her daughter, who gained her first theatrical job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club, Montreal. Having gained the job by claiming to be 19 when she was 16, her act consisted of her singing songs by Noël Coward, and earned her $60 a week. She returned to New York City in August 1942, but her mother had moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, in order to resurrect her cinematic career; Lansbury and her brothers followed. Moving into a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, both Lansbury and her mother obtained Christmas jobs at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles; Moyna was sacked for incompetence, leaving the family to subsist on Lansbury’s wages of $28 a week. Befriending a group of gay men, Lansbury became privy to the city’s underground gay scene, and with her mother, attended lectures by the spiritual guru Jiddu Krishnamurti; at one of these, she met Aldous Huxley.
At a party hosted by her mother, Lansbury met John van Druten, who had recently co-authored a script for Gaslight (1944), a mystery-thriller based on Patrick Hamilton‘s 1938 play, Gaslight. Set in VictorianLondon, the film was being directed by George Cukor, and starred Ingrid Bergman in the lead role of Paula Alquist, a woman being psychologically tormented by her husband. Van Druten suggested that Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, a conniving cockney maid; she was accepted for the part, although, since she was only 17, a social worker had to accompany her on the set. Obtaining an agent, Earl Kramer, she was signed to a seven-year contract with MGM, earning $500 a week and using her real name as her professional name. Upon release, Gaslight received mixed critical reviews, although Lansbury’s role was widely praised; the film earned six Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Supporting Actress for Lansbury.
Her next film appearance was as Edwina Brown, the older sister of Velvet Brown in National Velvet (1944); the film proved to be a major commercial hit, with Lansbury developing a lifelong friendship with co-star Elizabeth Taylor. Lansbury next starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), a cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde‘s 1890 novel of the same name, which was again set in Victorian London. Directed by Albert Lewin, Lansbury was cast as Sibyl Vane, a working class music hall singer who falls in love with the protagonist, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield). Although the film was not a financial success, Lansbury’s performance once more drew praise, earning her a Golden Globe Award, and she was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, losing to Anne Revere, her co-star in National Velvet.
On September 27, 1945, Lansbury married Richard Cromwell, an artist and decorator whose acting career had come to a standstill. The marriage ended in less than a year when she filed for divorce on September 11, 1946, but they remained friends until his death. In December 1946, she was introduced to fellow English expatriate Peter Pullen Shaw at a party held by former co-star Hurd Hatfield in Ojai Valley. Shaw was an aspiring actor, also signed to MGM.
Following the success of Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, MGM cast Lansbury in eleven further films until her contract with the company ended in 1952. Keeping her among their B-list stars, MGM used her less than their similar-aged actresses; biographers Edelman and Kupferberg believed that the majority of these films were “mediocre”, doing little to further her career. This view was echoed by Cukor, who believed Lansbury had been “consistently miscast” by MGM. She was repeatedly made to portray older women, often villainous, and as a result became increasingly dissatisfied with working for MGM, commenting that “I kept wanting to play the Jean Arthur roles, and Mr Mayer kept casting me as a series of venal bitches.” The company themselves were suffering from the post-1948 slump in cinema sales, as a result slashing film budgets and cutting their number of staff.
In April 1953, her daughter Deirdre Angela Shaw was born. Shaw had a son by a previous marriage, David, and after gaining legal custody of the boy in 1953 he brought him to California to live with the family; with three children to raise, the Shaws moved to a larger house on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica. However, Lansbury did not feel entirely comfortable in the Hollywood social scene, later asserting that as a result of her British roots, “in Hollywood, I always felt like a stranger in a strange land.” In 1959 the family moved to Malibu, settling into a house on the Pacific Coast Highway that had been designed by Aaron Green; there, she and Peter escaped the Hollywood scene, and were able to send their children to a local public school.
Unhappy with the roles she was being given by MGM, Lansbury instructed her manager, Harry Friedman of MCA Inc., to terminate her contract in 1952, in the same year that her son Anthony was born. Soon after the birth she joined the East Coast touring productions of two former-Broadway plays: Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse‘s Remains to be Seen and Louis Verneuil‘s Affairs of State. Biographer Margaret Bonanno later stated that at this point, Lansbury’s career had “hit an all-time low,”
Returning to cinema as a freelance actress, Lansbury found herself typecast as women older (sometimes far older) than herself in many films in which she appeared during this period. As she later stated, “Hollywood made me old before my time,” noting that in her twenties she was receiving fan mail from people who believed her to be in her forties. She obtained roles in the films A Life at Stake (1954), A Lawless Street (1955) and The Purple Mask (1955), later describing the last as “the worst movie I ever made.” She played Princess Gwendolyn in the comedy film The Court Jester (1956), before taking on the role of a wife who kills her husband in Please Murder Me (1956). From there she appeared as Minnie Littlejohn in The Long Hot Summer (1958), and as Mabel Claremont in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), which she filmed in Paris. Biographer Martin Gottfried said that it was these latter two cinematic appearances which restored Lansbury’s status as an “A-picture actress”. Throughout this period, she continued making appearances on television, starring in episodes of Revlon Mirror Theatre, Ford Theatre and The George Gobel Show, and became a regular on game show Pantomime Quiz.
In April 1957 she debuted on Broadway at the Henry Miller Theatre in Hotel Paradiso, a French burlesque set in Paris, directed by Peter Glenville. The play only ran for 15 weeks, although she earned good reviews for her role as “Marcel Cat”. She later stated that had she not appeared in the play, her “whole career would have fizzled out.” She followed this with an appearance in 1960s Broadway performance of A Taste of Honey at the Lyceum Theatre, directed by Tony Richardson and George Devine. Lansbury played Helen, the boorish, verbally abusive, otherwise absentee mother of Josephine (played by Joan Plowright, only four years Lansbury’s junior), remarking that she gained “a great deal of satisfaction” from the role. During the show’s run, Lansbury developed a friendship with Plowright, as well as with Plowright’s future husband, Laurence Olivier.
Lansbury first appeared in musical theatre in 1964 at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway.
Her rare sympathetic role as Mavis in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) drew critical acclaim, as did her performances as sinister characters in All Fall Down (1962), as a manipulative, destructive mother, and the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) as the scheming ideologue Mrs. Iselin. In the latter, she was cast for the role by John Frankenheimer based on her performance in All Fall Down. Lansbury was only three years older than actor Laurence Harvey who played her son in the film. She had agreed to appear in the film after reading the original novel, describing it as “one of the most exciting political books I ever read.” Biographers Edelman and Kupferberg considered this role “her enduring cinematic triumph,” while Gottfried stated that it was “the strongest, the most memorable and the best picture she ever made … she gives her finest film performance in it.” Lansbury received her third Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for the film, and was bothered by the fact that she lost.
She followed this with a performance as Sybil Logan in In the Cool of the Day (1963) before appearing as wealthy Isabel Boyd in The World of Henry Orient (1964) and the widow Phyllis in Dear Heart (1964). Her first appearance in a theatrical musical was the short-lived Anyone Can Whistle, written by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim. An experimental work, it opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway in April 1964, but was critically panned and closed after nine performances. Lansbury had played the role of crooked mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, and although she loved Sondheim’s score she faced personal differences with Laurents and was glad when the show closed. She appeared in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a cinematic biopic of Jesus, but was cut almost entirely from the final edit. She followed this with an appearance as Mama Jean Bello in Harlow (1965), as Lady Blystone in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), and as Gloria in Mister Buddwing (1966). Despite her well-received performances in a number of films, “celluloid superstardom” evaded her, and she became increasingly dissatisfied with these minor roles, feeling that none allowed her to explore her potential as an actress.
In 1966, Lansbury took on the title role of Mame Dennis in the musical Mame, Jerry Herman‘s musical adaptation of the novel Auntie Mame. The director’s first choice for the role had been Rosalind Russell, who played Mame in the non-musical film adaptation Auntie Mame, but she had declined. Lansbury actively sought the role in the hope that it would mark a change in her career. When she was chosen, it came as a surprise to theatre critics, who believed that it would go to a better-known actress; Lansbury was forty-one years old, and it was her first starring role. Mame Dennis was a glamorous character, with over twenty costume changes throughout the play, and Lansbury’s role involved ten songs and dance routines which she trained extensively for. First appearing in Philadelphia and then Boston, Mame opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in May 1966. Auntie Mame was already popular among the gay community, and Mame gained Lansbury a cult gay following, something that she later attributed to the fact that Mame Dennis was “every gay person’s idea of glamour … Everything about Mame coincided with every young man’s idea of beauty and glory and it was lovely.”I was a wife and a mother, and I was completely fulfilled. But my husband recognised the signals in me which said ‘I’ve been doing enough gardening, I’ve cooked enough good dinners, I’ve sat around the house and mooned about what more interior decoration I can get my fingers into.’ It’s a curious thing with actors and actresses, but suddenly the alarm goes off. My husband is a very sensitive person to my moods and he recognised the fact that I had to get on with something. Mame came along out of the blue just at this time. Now isn’t that a miracle?”
Reviews of Lansbury’s performance were overwhelmingly positive. In The New York Times, Stanley Kauffmann wrote: “Miss Lansbury is a singing-dancing actress, not a singer or dancer who also acts … In this marathon role she has wit, poise, warmth and a very taking coolth.” The role resulted in Lansbury receiving her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury’s later biographer Margaret Bonanno claimed that Mame made Lansbury a “superstar”, with the actress herself commenting on her success by stating that “Everyone loves you, everyone loves the success, and enjoys it as much as you do. And it lasts as long as you are on that stage and as long as you keep coming out of that stage door.”
The stardom achieved through Mame allowed Lansbury to make further appearances on television, such as on Perry Como‘s Thanksgiving Special in November 1966. Her fame also allowed her to engage in a variety of high-profile charitable endeavors, for instance appearing as the guest of honor at the 1967 March of Dimes annual benefit luncheon. She was invited to star in a musical performance for the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted that year’s Tony Awards with former brother-in-law Peter Ustinov.[82] That year, Harvard University‘s Hasty Pudding Club elected her “Woman of the Year”. When the film adaptation of Mame was put into production, Lansbury hoped to be offered the part, but it instead went to Lucille Ball, an established box-office success. Lansbury considered this to be “one of my bitterest disappointments”.
Lansbury followed the success of Mame with a performance as Countess Aurelia, the 75-year-old Parisian eccentric in Dear World, a musical adaptation of Jean Giraudoux‘s The Madwoman of Chaillot. The show opened at Broadway’s Mark Hellinger Theatre in February 1969, but Lansbury found it a “pretty depressing” experience. Reviews of her performance were positive, and she was awarded her second Tony Award on the basis of it. Reviews of the show more generally were critical, however, and it ended after 132 performances. She followed this with an appearance in the title role of the musical Prettybelle, which was based upon Jean Arnold’s The Rape of Prettybelle. Set in the Deep South, it dealt with issues of racism, with Lansbury as a town mayor. A controversial play, it opened in Boston but received poor reviews, being cancelled before it reached Broadway.
In the 1970s, Lansbury declined several cinematic roles, including the lead in The Killing of Sister George and the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Instead, she accepted the role of the Countess von Ornstein, an aging German aristocrat who falls in love with a younger man, in Something for Everyone (1970), for which she filmed on location in Hohenschwangen, Bavaria. That same year she appeared as the middle-aged English witch Eglantine Price in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks; this was her first lead in a screen musical, and led to her publicising the film on television programmes like the David Frost Show. She later noted that as a big commercial hit, this film “secured an enormous audience for me”. 1970 was a traumatic year for the Lansbury family, as Peter underwent a hip and in September the family’s Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. They then purchased Knockmourne Glebe, a farmhouse constructed in the 1820s which was located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork, and Anthony subsequently enrolled in the Webber-Douglas School, his mother’s alma mater, and became a professional actor, before moving into television directing. Lansbury and her husband did not return to California, instead dividing their time between County Cork and New York City. “[In Ireland, our gardener] had no idea who I was. Nobody there did. I was just Mrs. Shaw, which suited me down to the ground. I had absolute anonymity in those days, which was wonderful.”
In 1972, Lansbury returned to London’s West End to perform in the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s theatrical production of Edward Albee‘s All Over at the Aldwych Theatre. She portrayed the mistress of a dying New England millionaire, and although the play’s reviews were mixed, Lansbury’s acting was widely praised. This was followed by her reluctant involvement in a revival of Mame, which was then touring the United States, after which she returned to the West End to play the character of Rose in the musical Gypsy. She had initially turned down the role, not wishing to be in the shadow of Ethel Merman, who had portrayed the character in the original Broadway production, but eventually accepted it; when the show started in May 1973, she earned a standing ovation and rave reviews.[101] Settling into a Belgravia flat, she was soon in demand among London society, having dinners held in her honour. Following the culmination of the London run, in 1974 Gypsy went on a tour of the U.S., and in Chicago Lansbury was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance. The show eventually reached Broadway, where it ran until January 1975; a critical success, it earned Lansbury her third Tony Award. After several months’ break, Gypsy then toured throughout the country again in the summer of 1975.
Desiring to move on from musicals, Lansbury decided that she wanted to appear in a production of one of William Shakespeare‘s plays. She obtained the role of Gertrude in the National Theatre Company‘s production of Hamlet, staged at the Old Vic. Angela received the news that in November 1975 her mother had died in California; Lansbury had her mother’s body cremated and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home. Her next theatrical appearance was in two one-act plays by Edward Albee, Counting the Ways and Listening, performed side by side at the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut. Reviews of the production were mixed, although Lansbury was again singled out for praise. This was followed by another revival tour of Gypsy.
In April 1978, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances of a revival of The King and I musical staged at Broadway’s Uris Theatre; Lansbury played the role of Mrs Anna, replacing Constance Towers, who was on a short break. Her first cinematic role in seven years was as novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978), an adaptation of Agatha Christie‘s 1937 novel of the same name that was filmed in both London and Egypt. In the film Lansbury starred alongside Ustinov and Bette Davis, who became a close friend. The role earned Lansbury the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress of 1978.
In 1982, she took on the role of an upper middle class housewife who champions workers’ rights in A Little Family Business, a farce set in Baltimore in which her son Anthony also starred. It debuted at Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre before heading on to Broadway’s Martin Beck Theatre. That year, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, and the following year appeared in a Mame revival at Broadway’s Gershwin Theatre. Although Lansbury was praised, the show was a commercial flop, with Lansbury noting that “I realised that it’s not a show of today. It’s a period piece.”A small number of people have seen me on the stage. [Television] is a chance for me to play to a vast U.S. public, and I think that’s a chance you don’t pass up … I’m interested in reaching everybody. I don’t want to reach just the people who can pay forty-five or fifty dollars for a [theatre] seat.”
In March 1979, Lansbury first appeared as Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a Stephen Sondheimmusical directed by Harold Prince. Opening at the Uris Theatre, she starred alongside Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber in 19th century London. After being offered the role, she jumped on the opportunity due to the involvement of Sondheim in the project; she commented that she loved “the extraordinary wit and intelligence of his lyrics.” She remained in the role for fourteen months before being replaced by Dorothy Loudon; the musical received mixed critical reviews, although it earned Lansbury her fourth Tony Award and After Dark magazine’s Ruby Award for Broadway Performer of the Year. She returned to the role in October 1980 for a ten-month tour of six U.S. cities, with George Hearn playing the title character; the production was also filmed and broadcast on the Entertainment Channel.
Working prolifically in cinema, in 1979 Lansbury appeared as Miss Froy in The Lady Vanishes, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock‘s famous 1938 film. The following year she appeared in The Mirror Crack’d, another film based on an Agatha Christie novel, this time as Miss Marple, a sleuth in 1950s Kent. Lansbury hoped to get away from the depiction of the role made famous by Margaret Rutherford, instead returning to Christie’s description of the character; in this she created a precursor to her later role of Jessica Fletcher. She was signed to appear in two sequels as Miss Marple, but these were never made. Lansbury’s next film was the animated The Last Unicorn(1982), for which she provided the voice of the witch Mommy Fortuna.
Returning to musical cinema, she starred as Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance (1983), a film based on Gilbert and Sullivan‘s comic opera of the same name, and while filming it in London sang on a recording of The Beggar’s Opera. This was followed by an appearance as the grandmother in Gothic fantasy film The Company of Wolves (1984). Lansbury had also begun work for television, appearing in a 1982 television film with Bette Davis titled Little Gloria… Happy at Last. She followed this with an appearance in CBS‘s The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (1983), later describing it as “the most unsophisticated thing you can imagine”. A BBC television film followed, A Talent for Murder (1984), in which she played a wheelchair-bound mystery writer; although describing it as “a rush job”, she agreed to do it in order to work with co-star Laurence Olivier. Two further miniseries featuring Lansbury appeared in 1984: Lace and The First Olympics: Athens 1896.
In 1983, Lansbury was offered 2 main television roles, one in a sitcom and the other in a detective series. Unable to do both, she chose to do the detective series despite the fact her agents had advised her to accept the sitcom. The series, Murder, She Wrote, centered on the character of Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher from the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, who became a successful detective novelist after her husband’s death, also solving murders encountered during her travels. Lansbury described the character as “an American Miss Marple“. The series was created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson, and William Link, who had earlier had success with Columbo, and the role of Jessica Fletcher had been first offered to Jean Stapleton, who declined the role, as did Doris Day. The pilot episode, “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes,” premiered on CBS on September 30, 1984, with the rest of the first season airing on Sundays from 8 to 9 p.m. Although critical reviews were mixed, it proved highly popular, with the pilot having a Nielsen rating of 18.9 and the first season being rated top in its time slot. Designed as inoffensive family viewing, despite its topic the show eschewed depicting violence or gore, following the “whodunit” format rather than those of most contemporary U.S. crime shows; Lansbury herself commented that “best of all, there’s no violence. I hate violence.”
Lansbury was defensive about Jessica Fletcher, having creative input over the character’s costumes, makeup and hair, and rejecting pressure from network executives to put her in a relationship, believing that the character should remain a strong single female. When she believed that a scriptwriter had made Jessica do or say things that did not fit with the character’s personality, Lansbury ensured that the script was changed. She saw Jessica as a role model for older female viewers, praising her “enormous, universal appeal – that was an accomplishment I never expected in my entire life.” Lansbury biographers Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg described the series as “a television landmark” in the U.S. for having an older female character as the protagonist, thereby paving the way for later series like The Golden Girls. Lansbury herself noted that “I think it’s the first time a show has really been aimed at the middle aged audience,” and although it was most popular among senior citizens, it gradually gained a younger audience. By 1991, one third of viewers were under age 50. It gained continually high ratings throughout most of its run, outdoing rivals in its time slot such as Steven Spielberg‘s Amazing Stories on NBC. In February 1987, a spin-off was produced, The Law & Harry McGraw, although it was short-lived. ‘I know why [Murder, She Wrote was a success]. There was never any blood, never any violence. And there was always a satisfying conclusion to a whodunit. The jigsaw was complete. And I loved Jessica’s everywoman character. I think that’s what made her so acceptable to an across-the-board audience.”
As the show went on, Lansbury assumed a larger role behind the scenes. In 1989, her own company, Corymore Productions, began co-producing the show with Universal. Nevertheless, she began to tire of the series, and in particular the long working hours, stating that the 1990–91 season would be the show’s last. She changed her mind after being appointed executive producer for the 1992–93 season, something that she felt “made it far more interesting to me.”For the 8th season, the show’s setting moved to New York City, where Jessica had taken a job teaching criminology at Manhattan University. The move was an attempt to attract younger viewers and was encouraged by Lansbury. Having become a “Sunday-night institution” in the U.S., the show’s ratings improved during the early 1990s, becoming a Top Five programme. However, CBS executives, hoping to gain a larger audience, moved it to Thursdays at 8pm, opposite NBC’s new sitcom, Friends. Lansbury was angry at the move, believing that it ignored the show’s core audience. The final episode of the series aired in May 1996, and ended with Lansbury voicing a “Goodbye from Jessica” message at the end.[148] Tom Shales wrote in The Washington Post, “The title of the show’s last episode, “Death by Demographics,” is in itself something of a protest. ‘Murder, She Wrote’ is partly a victim of commercial television’s mad youth mania.” At the time it tied the original Hawaii Five-O as the longest-running detective drama series in television history, and the role would prove to be the most successful and prominent of Lansbury’s career. Lansbury initially had plans for a Murder She Wrote television film that would be a musical with a score composed by Jerry Herman. While this project didn’t materialise, it was transformed into Mrs Santa Claus – in which Lansbury played Santa Claus‘ wife – which proved to be a ratings hit.
Throughout the run of Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury had continued making appearances in other television films, miniseries and cinema. In 1986, she co-hosted the New York Philharmonic‘s televised tribute to the centenary of the Statue of Liberty with Kirk Douglas. In 1986 she appeared as the protagonist’s mother in Rage of Angels: The Story Continues, and in 1988 portrayed Nan Moore – the mother of a victim of the real-life Korean Air Lines Flight 007 plane crash – in Shootdown; being a mother herself, she had been “enormously touched by the incident.” 1989 saw her featured in The Shell Seekers as an Englishwoman recuperating from a heart attack, and in 1990 she starred in The Love She Sought as an American school teacher who falls in love with a Catholic priest while visiting Ireland; Lansbury thought it “a marvelous woman’s story.”nShe next starred as the Cockney Mrs Harris in a film adaptation of the novel Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris, which was directed by her son and executive produced by her stepson. Her highest profile cinematic role since The Manchurian Candidate was as the voice of the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the 1991 Disney animation Beauty and the Beast, an appearance that she considered to be a gift to her 3 grandchildren. Lansbury performed the title song to the film, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
Lansbury’s Murder, She Wrote fame resulted in her being employed to appear in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company. In 1988, she released a video titled Angela Lansbury’s Positive Moves: My Personal Plan for Fitness and Well-Being, in which she outlined her personal exercise routine, and in 1990 published a book with the same title co-written with Mimi Avins, which she dedicated to her mother. As a result of her work she was appointed a CBE by the British government, given to her in a ceremony by the Prince of Wales at the British consulate in Los Angeles. While living most of the year in California, Lansbury spent Christmases and summers at Corymore House, her farmhouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean at Ballywilliam, near Churchtown South, County Cork, which she had had specially built as a family home in 1991.
Actress Angela Lansbury clad in costume for role in the movie “The Court Jester,” eating a hamburger w. actor Basil Rathbone while sitting at lunch in large Paramount Studio commissary during a day of filming.
Following the end of Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury returned to the theatre. Although cast in the lead role in the 2001 Kander and Ebbmusical The Visit, she withdrew before it opened due to her husband’s deteriorating health. Peter died in January 2003 of congestive heart failure at the couple’s Brentwood, California home. Lansbury felt that after this event she would not take on any more major acting roles, and that instead might make a few cameo appearances but nothing more. Wanting to spend more time in New York City, in 2006 she purchased a $2 million condominium in Manhattan, and in a 2014 interview noted that she also had homes in Ireland and Los Angeles.
She made an appearance in a Season 6 episode of the television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005. She starred in the 2005 film Nanny McPheeas Aunt Adelaide, commenting that it was “such fun to play a baddie!” and later informing an interviewer that working on Nanny McPhee “pulled me out of the abyss” after the loss of her husband. She then appeared in the 2011 film Mr. Popper’s Penguins, opposite Jim Carrey. Lansbury returned to Broadway after a 23-year absence in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally that opened at the Music Box Theatre in May 2007 for a limited run of eighteen weeks. Lansbury received a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her role.
Actress Angela Lansbury sitting on a chair, United States, 1946.
In March 2009 she returned to Broadway for a revival of Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theatre, where she took on the role of Madame Arcati. Discussing the character, she stated: “I love her. She’s completely off-the-wall but utterly secure in her own convictions.” This appearance earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play; this was her fifth Tony Award, tying her with the previous record holder for the number of Tony Awards, Julie Harris, albeit all of Harris’ Tonys were for Best Leading Actress. From December 2009 to June 2010, Lansbury then starred as Madame Armfeldt alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones in the first Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, held at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The role earned her a seventh Tony Award nomination, while in May 2010, she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music.
From April to July 2012, Lansbury starred as women’s rights advocate Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal‘s The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. From February to June 2013, Lansbury starred alongside James Earl Jones in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy. In November 2013, she received an Academy Honorary Award for her lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards. From March to June 2014, Lansbury reprised her performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End, her first London stage appearance in nearly 40 years. While in London, she made an appearance at the Angela Lansbury Film Festival in Poplar, a screening of some of her most popular films organised by Poplar Film. From December 2014 to March 2015 she joined the tour of Blithe Spirit across North America.
In April 2015, aged 89, she received her first Olivier Award as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Arcati, and in November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
On June 2, 2016, it was officially announced that Lansbury would return to Broadway in the 2017–18 season in a revival of Enid Bagnold‘s 1955 play The Chalk Garden. The play was produced by Scott Rudin at a theatre to-be-announced. However, in an interview published on September 20, 2016, Lansbury stated that she will not be performing in The Chalk Garden, stating, in part: “At my time of life, I’ve decided that I want to be with family more and being alone in New York doing a play requires an extraordinary amount of time left alone.”
Lansbury describes herself as “an amalgam of British, Irish and American” although throughout her life she has spoken with an English accent. She holds Irish citizenship. Biographer Martin Gottfried characterized her as “Meticulous. Cautious. Self-editing. Deliberate. It is what the British call reserved,”adding that she was “as concerned, as sensitive, and as sympathetic as anyone might want in a friend.”Also noting that she had “a profound sense of privacy,”he added that she disliked attempts at flattery.
As a young actress, Lansbury was a self-professed homebody, commenting that “I love the world of housekeeping.” She preferred spending quiet evenings inside with friends to the Hollywood night life. Her hobbies at the time included reading, horse riding, playing tennis, cooking and playing the piano, also having a keen interest in gardening. In 2014, it was reported that she continued to enjoy gardening, and also enjoyed doing crosswords. She has cited F. Scott Fitzgerald as her favorite author, and cited Roseanne and Seinfeld as being among her favorite television shows. Lansbury was an avid letter writer, doing so by hand and making copies of all her correspondences. At Howard Gotlieb’s request, Lansbury’s papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.
Actress Angela Lansbury in the film The Harvey Girls
She is a supporter of the United States Democratic Party, describing herself as “Democrat from the ground up,” and the British Labour Party.Throughout her career, Lansbury supported a variety of charities, particularly those such as Abused Wives in Crisis that combated domestic abuse and those who worked toward rehabilitating drug users. In the 1980s, she began to support a number of charities engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS. During the 1990s, she began to suffer from arthritis,in May 1994 had hip replacement surgery, and in 2005 had knee replacement surgery.
A 2007 interviewer for The New York Times described her as “one of the few actors it makes sense to call beloved,” noting that a 1994 article in People magazine awarded her a perfect score on its “lovability index.” The New Statesman noted that she “has the kind of pulling power many younger and more ubiquitous actors can only dream of, while an article in The Independent has suggested that she could be considered Britain’s most successful actress. She is a gay icon, and has asserted that she is “very proud of the fact,” attributing her popularity among the LGBT community to her performance in Mame.
Actress Angela Lansbury in the film The Harvey Girls
Three-time Oscar-nominated actress best known for playing Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote
Tuesday October 11 2022, 9.15pm BST, The Times
That Angela Lansbury’s most celebrated role came so late in her long career, playing the neat and elderly Jessica Fletcher, was perhaps no surprise.
“For those women who were known for their beauty, it is darn difficult,” she said of the ageist casting from which many of her fellow female actors suffered. “But I was playing older parts when I was terribly young because I wasn’t a big-screen beauty.”
In her twenties Lansbury was regularly cast to play women in their forties. In her forties she played the 75-year-old Countess Aurelia in the Broadway musical Dear World.
Directors seemed to regard her as an archetypal maternal figure. She was Elvis Presley’s mother in Blue Hawaii, even though she was only nine years older than the singer. In The Manchurian Candidate (1962), rated by many as her finest film role and one that led to her third Oscar nomination, she played Laurence Harvey’s mother, although they were almost the same age. On Broadway she played a blowsy mother to her contemporary Joan Plowright in A Taste of Honey.
Maturity became her and from childhood she had felt a precocity beyond her years. She claimed to have become “an old lady at ten” after the death of her father and was forced “to grow up instantly” as she helped her mother to bring up younger twin brothers during the Depression and then the Blitz.
She played the novelist and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote until she was in her seventies and when the show ended, she carried on working for another two decades.
Over a dozen years she appeared in 264 episodes of Murder, She Wrote and was reportedly paid more than $200,000 an episode, with 28 million people tuning in to watch it each week from 1984 until 1996. She called the character “as close to myself” as any she played. Something of a bluestocking in real life, she attributed her longevity to an unadventurous youth and carefully frugal lifestyle. “I take a lot of vitamins, get enough sleep and don’t drink apart from a glass of wine occasionally,” she said. “I am boringly good.”
She was by all accounts a lovely person. When in Cork she shopped locally, fitted right in and was part of the community where she spent a lot of summers and Christmases.
Kathleen Ryan was born in Dublin in 1922. Her parents owned the famous Monument Dairies in the city. Regarded as one of the beauties of her day, she was captured on portrait by Louis le Brocquy in 1941. This portrait now hangs in the Ulster Museum. She was cast opposite James Mason in her first film “Odd Man Out” directed by Carol Reed in 1947. This film is now regarded as a masterpiece. She played opposite the leading actors of the time including Stewart Granger, Rock Hudson and John Gregson. In 1950 she went to Hollywood to make her only American movie “The Sound of Fury”. Her last film was in 1957 and she died in 1985.
“Quinlan’s Movie Stars”:
Tall, copper-haired Irish actress with lovely complexion and attractively soft spoken voice. She was mostly typed as flowing-haired colleens after a brilliant success in the leading female role of her first film. Consequently, she made too few films and despite a couple of invitations to Hollywood, her career petered out.
An interesting article on Kathleen Ryan can be found online here.
Kathleen Ryan (Wikipedia).
Kathleen Ryan was born in Dublin, Ireland of Tipperary parentage and appeared in British and Hollywood films between 1947 and 1957.
Kathleen Ryan was one of the eight children of Séamus Ryan, a member of Seanad Éireann and his wife Agnes Ryan née Harding who came from Kilfeacle and Solohead respectively in County Tipperary and who were Republican activists during the Irish War of Independence. They opened a shop in Parnell Street, Dublin in the 1920s which was the first of 36 outlets which were known as “The Monument Creameries”
. The family lived at Burton Hall, near Leopardstown Racecourse in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock. Her brother was John Ryan, an artist and man of letters in bohemian Dublin of the 1940s and 50’s, who was a friend and benefactor of a number of struggling writers in the post-war era, such as Patrick Kavanagh. He started and edited a short-lived literary magazine entitled Envoy. Among her other siblings were Fr. Vincent (Séamus) (1930–2005), a Benedictine priest at Glenstal Abbey, Sister Íde of the Convent of The Sacred Heart, Mount Anville, Dublin, Oonagh (who married the Irish artist Patrick Swift), Cora who married the politician, Seán Dunne, T.D. When Kathleen was an undergraduate at University College Dublin, she was introduced to the future Dr. Dermod Devane of Limerick. They were married in the society wedding of 1944 and the couple had three children, but the marriage was annulled in 1958.
As one of Ireland’s great beauties of her time, she was the subject of one of Louis le Brocquy‘s most striking portraits, Girl in White, which he painted in 1941 and entered in the RHA exhibition of that year. The portrait (oil on canvas) is in the Ulster Museum collection. She died in Dublin, from a lung ailment aged 63 and was buried with her parents beneath an imposing statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, near the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
Ryan, Kathleen (1922–85), actress, was born on 8 September 1922 above her parents’ shop on Camden Street, Dublin, the first of eight children of James (Seamus) Ryan (qv) and his wife Agnes Ryan (qv) (née Harding). Originally from Tipperary, her parents owned and managed a thriving chain of groceries called the Monument Creamery, amassing over thirty outlets throughout the city. Her father was also prominent within the Fianna Fáil party, serving as a senator up to his untimely death in 1933.
Kathleen grew up in increasingly prosperous surrounds, as the family moved first to a red-bricked residence in Rathgar in the 1920s and then into a mansion in Sandyford in 1938. At the age of six she was sent to Bruff boarding school in Co. Limerick and later attended Mount Anville college in Dublin before being sent to a finishing school in Paris. Following the German conquest of France in 1940, she returned home and studied for a B.Comm.degree in UCD. Endowed with fine, alabaster features and a cascade of reddish auburn hair, she was a great beauty and the subject in 1941 of a much-admired portrait by Louis Le Brocquy (1916–2012), ‘Girl in white’, now in the National Museums Northern Ireland.
Appearing on stage from 1940, she first performed at the Peacock theatre opposite Dan O’Herlihy (qv) in the UCD Players’ production of Thomas Dekker’s ‘The shoemaker’s holiday’. She lost interest in pursuing a degree, eventually dropping out of college, but not before meeting Dermod Devane, a medical student from Limerick. They were considered the most attractive couple in UCD, if not Ireland, and their marriage in 1944 was a major society event. They had three children and lived in Ballinacurra, Co. Limerick.
She continued as a professional theatre actress, but her experience was still quite limited when in 1946 she was chosen (on O’Herlihy’s recommendation) as the female lead in the Carol Reed-directed film Odd man out. Despite never having performed in the Abbey theatre, she vaulted over a host of Abbey regulars populating the supporting cast, fuelling suspicions that her casting owed more to her looks and perhaps her family’s wealth than to acting ability. Depicting the final hours of a wounded IRA gunman, played by James Mason, the film surely resonated with her mother Agnes who had harboured and assisted IRA fugitives during the Anglo–Irish war of 1919–21. Kathleen’s role as Mason’s girlfriend conspicuously failed to convey the liveliness and wit of her true personality. Acting almost solely through her dolefully expressive eyes, she was obliged to maintain a downcast and dour countenance throughout, which, however, conferred an implacability that added to the violent denouement. Released in 1947, Odd man out was a critical and commercial success, and is considered a noir classic.
Thereafter, the Rank Organisation, the biggest British film company, built her up as one of its leading starlets. From 1947 to 1957 she appeared in a further eleven British (mainly) and American films, starring alongside Rock Hudson, Dirk Bogarde and Stewart Granger. Three of these films dealt with Irish subjects – Captain Boycott (1947), Captain Lightfoot (1955) andJacqueline (1956). While Odd man out enabled her to pursue a movie career, it had the effect of restricting her to ‘mournful Dark Rosaleen parts’ (Ní Riain, 98), which was perhaps also due to a limited acting range. Her role in Esther Waters (1948) gave her an opportunity to overcome this typecasting, which she failed to exploit, suffering from poor directing and an over-earnest production. She slipped down the billing and a seven-film contract signed with a Hollywood studio in 1952 produced only two roles.
Her career was further hindered by personal problems. In 1954, after being involved in a car accident near Ballinacurra in which a travelling salesman lost a leg, she was obliged to pay £7,000 in compensation by the civil courts. A serious accident, presumably the same one, also permanently affected her health. Her later films were of a poor standard and her movie career petered out in 1958. So too did her marriage. She returned to Dublin to live with family, continuing thereafter to be dogged by ill health, which she bore stoically while occasionally engaging in self-reproachful reminiscences. Living latterly in Killiney, Co. Dublin, she died of lung cancer in Baggot Street hospital, Dublin, on 11 December 1985, and was buried with her parents in Glasnevin cemetery.
Sources
Sunday Independent, 31 July 1949; 3 July 2011; Limerick Leader, 4 Sept. 1954; Ir. Times, 26 Oct. 1955; 12, 18 Dec. 1985; Ir. Independent, 12 Dec. 1985; Íde Ní Riain, The life and times of Mrs A. V. Ryan (née Agnes Harding) of the Monument Creameries (1986); Steve Brennan and Bernadette O’Neill, Emeralds in Tinseltown: the Irish in Hollywood (2007), 154; ‘Not quite a femme fatale’, Gareth’s Movie Diary (18 Feb. 2011), garethsmovies.blogspot.co.uk; Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com (internet material accessed Nov. 2013)
Article on Kathleen Ryan by Liam Collins in Belfast Telegraph in Jan 2020.
Geraldine Fitzgerald started her career with the Gate theatre in the 1930’s in Dublin. She was soon starring in such British films as “The Mill on the Floss”. By 1938 she was in Hollywood. Her first two films !Wuthering Heights” with Laurence Oliver and “Dark Victory” with Bette Davis both released the following year are now regarded as classics. Unfortunately she turned town the role of Brigidet O’Shaugnessy opposite Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon” and her cinema career as a leading lady never recovered.
Geraldine Fitzgerald went to Broadway and developed into a consummate theatre actress. In the 1960’s she returned to Hollywood and became a very powerful character actress. Her son by her first marriage is the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Her second marriage was to Stuart Scheftel the grandson o the founder of Macys Department Store in New York. Geraldine Fitzgerald died in 2005 after a long battle with Alzhelhimer’s disease at the age of 91. Her performances are always intriguing and worth seeking out. She is of course, heavily featured in her son director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s autobiography “Luck and Circumstance”.
The great Tennessee Williams made these comments about Geraldine Fitzgerald in an interview he gave in 1982 in New Orleans :
There was such a richness of character in those movies–all those fascinating character actors. I fell in love with Geraldine Fitzgerald in Dark Victory and Wuthering Heights. So much intelligence in every move, and so much detail. Her acting is like a knife in that it is so sharp and gleaming and capable of cutting all that is extraneous. I can’t think of a time in those films–and in all the work I’ve seen her do since–when there was even an ounce of superfluous detail: She sticks that knife–that dagger–of talent right into the heart of whatever part she’s playing. And then she’s done.
“Hollywood Players:The Forties” by James Robert Parish:
Geraldine Fitzgerald was singularly fortunate in her first two American made films. She made an auspicious Hollywood debut as Isabella Linton the desperate girl who made a fool of herself over the Heathcliffe of Laurence Oliver in William Wyler’s unforgetable “Wuthering Heights” in 1939. She was Oscar nominated for her performance but lost out to Hattie McDaniel for :Gone with the Wind”. Her two 1939 American features were very distinguished productions and no young actress could have had a more successful beginning to her film career. However Geraldine never became a goddess of the silver screen as expected. One of the reasons for this is that she fought the studio system before she was in a position to do so. While under contract to Warner Brothers she felt she was been exploited and turned down many roles which resulted in her been suspended a number of times. This type of action had worked for Bette Davis, a good friend of Geraldines, but Ms Davis was already an important money earner for the studio and Geraldine was not. As Geraldine told columnist Rex Reed “Humphrey Bogart always told me, movies were like a slot machine. If you played long enough, you would eventually hit the jackpot. which he did with the “Maltese Falcon”. But I was a fool. I stuck to my Irish logic instead. Instead of saying yes to everything, I fought Jack Warner for better parts and I finally lost.
TCM Overview:
A dark-haired classic beauty from the Dublin stage, Geraldine Fitzgerald had appeared in several British films before making her Broadway debut in the 1938 Mercury Theater production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House” and her Hollywood debut in “Dark Victory” (1939). She is perhaps best remembered for her splendid, Oscar-nominated supporting performance as Isabella, poignantly suffering the pangs of unrequited love, in William Wyler’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” (1939). Off to a fine start in Hollywood, Fitzgerald played strong-willed women throughout the 1940s. Among her notable performances was as one of the eponymous characters in the highly intriguing “Three Strangers” (1946), in which she more than held her own opposite Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. After being put on suspension for protesting too many dull studio-chosen roles, though, Fitzgerald found that by the end of the decade her screen career had virtually petered out.
Geraldine Fitzgerald career slowed down somewhat during the 1950s and 60s, but she did TV and stage work, and made intermittent film appearances. She did fine work, for example, as the wife of a straying man (Gary Cooper) in “Ten North Frederick” (1958). In the 1970s, Fitzgerald made a triumphant return to the stage as an actress (in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” 1971), director (“Mass Appeal” 1980, for which she received a Tony nomination) and street performer (with her Everyman Street Theatre). She was memorable in a brief turn as Dudley Moore’s wise grandmother in “Arthur” (1981) and also appeared in its inevitable, though inferior sequel, “Arthur 2: On the Rocks” (1988).
In 1988, she received an Emmy nomination for a guest spot as an elderly woman contemplating suicide on the long-running sitcom, “The Golden Girls”. Her son is director Michael Lindsay-Hogg.”Guardian” obituary by Ronald Bergan.When Geraldine Fitzgerald, who has died aged 91, directed her Tony-nominated production of Mass Appeal on Broadway in 1981, she explained: “I was forgotten, so I had nothing to live up to. It was the best thing in the circumstances. I could start at the bottom learning the new craft of directing.” It was a modest statement from someone remembered by film fans as a 1940s Hollywood star, and by playgoers for some classical performances in the 1970s.Born in Dublin, the daughter of a prominent lawyer – his firm, E&T Fitzgerald, was mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses – Geraldine was educated at a convent school.
Gifted in drawing, she persuaded her parents to enrol her at Dublin School of Art, whose head suggested marriage as the next step. Her shocked response was to take up acting, so she went to her aunt, Shelagh Richards, whom she had seen perform at the Abbey theatre, for coaching.Geraldine Fitzgerald began her acting career at the Gate theatre in 1932, where she met another aspiring beginner, the 17-year-old Orson Welles. He was infatuated by the fiery, auburn-haired beauty, six months his senior, and would later have a brief affair with her. She also bewitched Patrick Hamilton, who used her as the basis for the character of Neta in his 1941 novel, Hangover Square.
In 1934, Fitzgerald began acting in low-budget British films, notably Turn Of The Tide, about two feuding fishing families. In 1936, she married Edward Lindsay-Hogg, a horse breeder, and after she appeared as an effective Maggie Tulliver in The Mill On The Floss (1937), they moved to New York.
There, Welles gave Fitzgerald her American start, as Ellie Dunn in George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House, with the 22-year-old Welles playing the octogenarian Captain Shotover, and a young Vincent Price as Hector Hushabye. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson found her showing nothing more than an ability to memorise lines; the producer, John Houseman, accused Welles of directing her with more indulgence than the rest of the cast.
Despite this, Geraldine Fitzgerald was offered the role of Isabella, to be seduced and abandoned by Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939), for which she was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress. On the strength of a sensitive performance, she got a contract with Warner Bros, for whom her first film was the classic weepy, Dark Victory (1939), in which she was touching as the devoted friend of dying Bette Davis.y
But Warner Bros failed to utilise Fitzgerald’s undoubted talent, casting her instead as second female leads, notably again with Davis in Watch On The Rhine (1943), to which she brought beauty and conviction as Countess Marthe de Brancovis, the unhappy wife of Nazi agent George Coulouris.
On loan to other studios, she was an upstanding US president’s wife in the biopic Wilson (1944), her first col-our film; the jealous spinster sister of George Sanders in Uncle Harry (1945), on trial for the murder of his fiancée; and calm and intense as Alan Ladd’s fellow spy in occupied France in OSS (1946).
Her last two films for Warner Bros, both directed by Jean Negulesco, were Three Strangers (1945), in which she shared a sweepstake ticket with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, and Nobody Lives Forever (1946), playing a rich widow swindled out of a fortune by John Garfield. Yet even these leading parts did not bring her satisfaction, and her film career faded as she lost her battle with the studio bosses for more suitable roles.
It was disappointing, but Geraldine Fitzgerald hardly needed the money, having divorced Lindsay-Hogg in 1946 and married Stuart Scheftel, the businessman and grandson of the founder of Macy’s department store.
In 1955, she returned to the theatre, taking up again with Shaw, as Jennifer Dubedat in The Doctor’s Dilemma, and Welles, who cast her as Goneril to his King Lear in his ill-received production at the New York City Center. In 1961, she appeared off-Broadway in William Saroyan’s one-woman play, The Cave Dwellers, under the direction of her 21-year-old son, Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
She worked only spasmodically in the 1960s, her few films including Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (1965) and Paul Newman’s Rachel (1968), in which she played a revivalist preacher. But, in 1971, she made a triumphant comeback off-Broadway as Mary Tyrone, the drug-addicted mother in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, winning a New York Critics’ award.
Geraldine Fitzgerald continued to be very active in the 1970s and 80s, making an impression on stage as Aline Solness in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and as Amanda Winfield in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, as well as singing Irish folk songs in a one-woman cabaret show. Her screen performances included a moving old lady in Harry And Tonto (1974); a love scene with Gérard Depardieu in Bye Bye Monkey (1978); the role of a billionaire matriarch in Arthur (1981) and Arthur 2: On The Rocks (1988); a clairvoyant in Poltergeist II (1986); and the presidential matriarch Rose Kennedy on television in 1983.
During the run of Fitzgerald’s Mass Appeal, Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s production of Agnes Of God opened, making it the first time that two directors, mother and son, had separate plays running on Broadway at the same time.
Scheftel died in 1994; their daughter Susan survives her, along with Michael.
Brian McFarlane’s entry in “Encyclopedia of British Film”:
One of the most beautiful women in British films of the 1930s, she was an archtypical Irish redhead with green eyes, perfect features and a slightly husky voice, along with an incisive acting talent, what was British cinema to do witl all of this? The answer, is sadly very little. Oly the “Mill on the Floss” in 1937 as afindvivid ‘Maggie Tullivar’ challendged her.
After that, she was whisked off to Hollywood to play ‘Isabella’ in “Wuthering Heights” in which she alone looked like she had read the book. She had interesting roles in the US like in “Wilson” but always looked too intelligent for major stardom. Filmed in England only twice more, as the tippling adulteress in “So Evil, My Love” and the suspected companion of “The Late Edwina Black” in 1951. She became a potent stage actress in the US.
Geraldine Fitzgerald, a feisty, gravel-voiced Dublin redhead who drew instant acclaim in her first Hollywood films, including a 1939 Oscar nomination for “Wuthering Heights,” before carving out a long, varied career in films, television, cabaret and theater, died on Sunday afternoon at her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was 91.
She had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade and was essentially incapacitated in recent years, leading to a respiratory infection that finally killed her, said her daughter, Susan Scheftel, a clinical psychologist in New York.
Ms. Fitzgerald appeared on the New York stage and as a highly coveted character actress in dozens of Hollywood films, including “Watch on the Rhine” in 1943, “Ten North Frederick” in 1958, “The Pawnbroker” in 1964, “Harry and Tonto” in 1974 and “Arthur” in 1981. But she may have been best known in New York for what many critics considered one of the definitive Mary Tyrones, opposite Robert Ryan, in a 1971 revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”
Witty and intelligent, she was also notoriously combative and blamed herself for sabotaging her early Hollywood success by battling with studio executives over roles. “My mother was just way too feisty to be in bondage to the Warner Brothers,” Ms. Scheftel said.
Born in 1913, the daughter of a Dublin solicitor, Geraldine Fitzgerald was drawn into the legendary Gate Theater by her aunt, Shelagh Richards, one of its stars. Ms. Fitzgerald performed there alongside James Mason and Orson Welles. She married Edward Lindsay-Hogg, an Irish aristocrat, and after a stint at art school in England she moved to New York in 1938 to further her husband’s songwriting ambitions.
Money grew tight, and she noted that her old friend Welles was directing something called the Mercury Theater. She called and he hired her for a role in “Heartbreak House.”
Norman Lloyd, a longtime friend and founding member of the Mercury Theater, described the effect she had. “She was a staggeringly beautiful girl with the most delightful speech, a slight Irish tinge, not a thick brogue, and this glorious red hair,” he said.
Hal Wallis, a major Hollywood producer, saw her in Shaw’s “Heartbreak House” and signed her to a Warner Brothers contract. She was told to play best friend to the dying Bette Davis in “Dark Victory” (1939), and her performance persuaded Samuel Goldwyn to cast her as the tragic Isabella Linton in “Wuthering Heights.”
In the 1940’s she mingled with Hollywood’s intellectual elite, counting among her friends Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin, Davis, Welles and the screenwriter Charles Lederer.
When World War II separated Ms. Fitzgerald from her husband, then back in England, she stayed in Los Angeles with their son, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, later to become an acclaimed film, television and Broadway director. Her first marriage ended in 1946.
By then, she had worked her way up to leading roles. A performance as Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Edith, in “Wilson” (1944) earned her a glamorous photo on the cover of Life magazine. It also attracted the attention of Stuart Scheftel, the grandson of Isador Straus, the co-owner of the R.H. Macy Co. who went down with the Titanic. Scheftel asked a friend to introduce them, and they were married in 1946.
They moved to New York and joined the rarefied circles in which the city’s cultural and political worlds mingled. The couple stayed together until his death in 1994.
She continued to work steadily and in the 1960’s formed the Everyman Street Theater, which ventured into the city’s poorest neighborhoods to recruit and train street performers. This led to an interest in directing, and she staged several productions, including all-black productions of O’Neill classics. In 1982, she received her only Tony nomination, as a director, for “Mass Appeal.” Among the directors she aced out of a nomination that year was her son, who staged “Agnes of God” a couple of blocks away. He survives her, along with Ms. Scheftel, two grandchildren and one step-grandchild.
In the 1970’s, after a small role in “Rachel, Rachel” required her to sing on camera, the unpleasant results caused her to take voice lessons. Thus she began yet another career, as a cabaret artist. Her show “Streetsongs” was a nightclub hit and appeared three times in Broadway theaters over the years.
When young actresses went to her for advice, she remembered her own regrets about having looked down her nose at early Hollywood offers. “Her advice to young actresses was to always say yes,” Ms. Scheftel said. “She had learned that the hard way by saying no all the time. So she would tell them, when offered work, always say yes
Milo O’Shea, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Michael O’Keefe Opening Night of ‘MASS APPEAL’ at the Booth Theatre in New York City on 11/12/1981 (Photo by Walter McBride/Corbis via Getty Images)Milo O’Shea, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Michael O’Keefe Opening Night of ‘MASS APPEAL’ at the Booth Theatre in New York City on 11/12/1981 (Photo by Walter McBride/Corbis via Getty Images)
Aidan Turner is one of our new generation of Irish actors. He first came to national prominance as Rory in the RTE series of “The Clinic”. He then went on to be among the leading actors in the British television series “Being Human” and “Desperate Romantics”. He recently made the television film “Hattie” about the Carry On comedienne Hattie Jacques and has been announced as the lead in the remake of the classic TV series “Poldark”.
Lisa Richard’s Agency page:
Aiden Turner is this year’s recipient of Best Male Newcomer at the Jameson Empire Awards.
He has been cast as Captain Poldark in the upcoming BBC adaptation of Winston Graham’s Poldark which is currently filming.
Aidan most recently appeared as Kili in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey directed by Peter Jackson with Martin Freeman, Cate Blanchett and Ian McKellen which has had huge success internationally. And later in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug He recently finished filming the finale The Hobbit: There and Back Again.
He appeared in the leading role of Mitchell in the hit series Being Humanon BBC3 (repeated on BBC1) in 2008 and went on to appear in the leading role of Rosetti in the new mini-series Desperate Romantics which was shown on BBC2 in the same year. He went on to appear in Season Two of Being Human on BBC3 (2009) and Season Three in 2010 which was nominated for a BAFTA for a second season running, and which won an RTS and Writers Guild Award in 2009. He also appeared in the role of John Schofield in Hattie a TV movie for BBC4 which received huge critical acclaim and record ratings for that channel. He appeared as Luke Garroway in the feature film The Mortal Instruments: City of Bonesdirected by Harald Zwart.
Aidan appeared on RTE 1 as the new series regular Ruairi in Season 6 ofThe Clinic for Parallel Films/RTE and returned as this character later in 2009 for Season 7.
He appeared in the leading role of Kevin in the independant feature filmPorcelain directed by Gavin Cleland for Bedoli Films. Aidan appeared in the leading role of Mal in Alarm an independent feature film written and directed by Gerard Stembridge for Venus Films.
Aidan graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting Diploma course (2004) and since then has appeared as Corp. Stoddard in the Abbey Theatre’s production of The Plough and the Stars in the Barbican Theatre, London, in the Dublin Fringe Festival show Suddenly Last Summer at the Focus Theatre, as Ardan in Vincent Woods’ new play A Cry from Heavendirected by Olivier Py at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,as Hercules in The Performance Corporation’s new play Yokohama Delegation directed by Jo Mangan for Kilkenny Arts Ferstival, as Demetrius in Titus Andronicus at the Project directed by Selina Cartmell, as Pan in Storytellers production of The Crock of Gold at the Olympia Theatre and on tour. Aidan appeared in Drive-by directed by Jo Mangan for the Cork Mid-Summer Festival, the Dublin Fringe Festival 2006 and the Cantebury Arts Festival 2007 and inLa Marea directed by Mariano Pennsotti for Bedrock Theatre Co/DTF 2007 and Cyrano, directed by Vernonica Coburn for Barabbas…the Company, at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. He appeared as Paris in Romeo and Juliet directed by Jason Byrne at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
Born and raised in the small Irish suburb of Clondalkin, curly-headed Aidan Turner is best known for portraying tortured vampire Mitchell on the smash BBC series “Being Human.” After graduating from the Gaiety School of Acting in 2004–fellow alumni include American starlet Olivia Wilde–Turner performed in many plays throughout England and Ireland, including Tennessee Williams’ one-act drama “Suddenly, Last Summer” and Shakespeare’s tragedy “Titus Andronicus.” He appeared on television for the first time in “In Cold Blood,” a 2007 episode of Showtime’s historical drama series “The Tudors,” starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Henry Cavill. After popping up in a few short films and the panned paranoia thriller “Alarm,” he portrayed receptionist and DJ Ruairà McGowan in the hit medical drama “The Clinic,” a character that lasted two seasons.
The year 2009 saw Turner appear in nearly every living room in Britain with his roles as Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 19th century drama series “Desperate Romantics” and Mitchell in “Being Human.” A mixture of witty humor and supernatural horror centering around a trio of spooky roommates–a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost–“Being Human” gained a massive audience upon its BBC America debut and inspired an American version of the show in 2011. .
This great Irish actor is from the Claddagh in Galway and started his career in the the Abbey Theatre but was in Hollywood by the late 1940’s.
He came back to Galway in 1951 to make John Ford’s “The Quiet Man” and continued his career in the U.S. in movies and television. He was seen to great effect in “The Ring of Fire” and as Mr Grace in “The Dead”.
“Los Angeles Times” obituary:
Sean McClory, 79, an Irish-born actor who appeared in dozens of films and innumerable television shows, died Wednesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, said his wife, Peggy Webber McClory.
The actor, who had a heart condition, died at home after being hospitalized for several months, she said. McClory began his acting career in Galway, Ireland, and was a member of the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He was brought to the United States by RKO studios.
Among his many roles were those of Owen Glynn in director John Ford’s “The Quiet Man” (1952), which starred Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne; and homicidal maniac Dublin O’Malley in “Ring of Fear” (1954).
In the late 1950s, he played storekeeper Jack McGivern in the television series “The Californians.”
The above “Los Angeles Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.
McClory, Sean (1924–2003), actor, was born 8 March 1924 in a nursing home at 18 Goldsmith Street, Dublin, son of Hugh Patrick McClory, farmer, of Kilmore, Ballygar, Co. Roscommon, and his wife, Mary Anne Margaret (née Ball), a former model. Reared in Galway city, where his father practised as an architect and civil engineer, he began acting while a schoolboy at An Taibhdhearc, the city’s Irish‐language theatre, and became a member of the theatre’s resident company. He studied medicine for three years at UCG, but determined upon acting as a career. Joining the Abbey theatre company in Dublin (mid 1940s), he performed mainly in Irish‐language productions (as Sean Mac Labhraidh), often with Siobhán McKenna (qv), including the Abbey’s first‐ever Irish‐language Christmas pantomime (1945), and a translation of ‘Cathleen ni Houlihan’ by W. B. Yeats (qv). In 1946 he moved to Hollywood aspiring to break into film acting. His first, uncredited movie roles were as Irish cops in two Dick Tracy films for RKO (1947). Soon he was securing small roles in feature films, including The glass menagerie (1950), Lorna Doone (1951), and The Desert Fox(1951). He also obtained stage work in Los Angeles, other California locations, and elsewhere on the Pacific coast, and appeared in the first Broadway production (February 1951) of ‘The king of Friday’s men’ by M. J. Molloy (qv).
His break came when he was cast by John Ford (qv) in The quiet man (1952), in the small but conspicuous part of Owen Glynn, a pipe‐smoking, leisurely loquacious, tweed‐bedecked country gentleman. His character appears throughout the film in tandem with Hugh Forbes (played by Charles FitzSimons (1924–2001), younger brother of the film’s co-star Maureen O’Hara (qv)). As McClory did not travel to Ireland for location shooting, he only appears in scenes, or segments of scenes, that were shot in Hollywood. Thus, his presence in any shot is a technical marker, indicating that the footage was a Hollywood studio shot; this includes the climactic fight scene between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen, which was edited from footage shot in both Ireland and Hollywood. McClory’s character is also central to a game played by devotees of the film, in which participants must take a drink whenever Glynn himself either has a drink or utters a line.
I Cover The Underworld, poster, US poster art, from top: Sean McClory, Jaclynne Greene, 1955. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
A member of Ford’s stock company, McClory appeared in three of the director’s other films: the war movie What price glory? (1952); The long grey line (1955), set at West Point; and the elegiac, revisionist western Cheyenne autumn (1964). Ford wanted him for other movies, but McClory was too busy with film and television work. He gave an impressive performance, opposite Glenn Ford, as a sinister archaeologist, sporting white‐tinted crewcut and dark glasses, in Plunder of the sun (1953), directed by John Farrow, and shot on location in Mexico. He was John Wayne’s co‐pilot in Island in the sky (1953), about a transport plane that crash lands on the remote wintry tundra of Labrador. In the Mickey Spillane thriller Ring of fear (1954) he played Dublin O’Malley, a homicidal villain escaped from a psychiatric institution and terrorising the Clyde Beatty Circus.
From the mid 1950s McClory concentrated increasingly on television, working regularly in the medium into the 1980s. He appeared in instalments of several 1950s anthology drama series, including ‘Fireside theater’, ‘Cavalcade of America’ (as President Andrew Johnson), ‘General Electric theater’, ‘Four star playhouse’, and ‘Alfred Hitchcock presents’; on ‘Matinee theater’ he played Hindley in an adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1955). He had a starring role in the first season (1957–8) of ‘The Californians’, playing a vigilante storekeeper in lawless, gold‐rush‐era San Francisco. Throughout the 1960s he was a ubiquitous presence on American television screens. With his face more familiar to viewers than his name (for he never attained star status), he appeared in episodes of numerous series, often as the featured guest actor, especially in westerns (a particularly popular genre of the decade). These included ‘The adventures of Jim Bowie’, ‘Have gun–will travel’, ‘Wanted: dead or alive’, ‘Overland trail’ (as The O’Mara), ‘Stagecoach west’ (as Finn McColl), ‘The rifleman’, ‘Bonanza’, and ‘Death Valley days’. He had smaller parts in the long‐running westerns ‘Wagon train’, ‘Rawhide’, ‘The Virginian’, and ‘Gunsmoke’. In other genres he appeared in series as diverse as ‘One step beyond’, ‘The untouchables’, ‘Lassie’, ‘Perry Mason’, ‘My favorite Martian’, and ‘Lost in space’; the 1970s saw him in ‘Mannix’ and ‘Little house on the prairie’. He played recurring characters in two short‐lived series: as a retired policeman who is father and assistant of the eponymous lawyer in ‘Kate McShane’ (1975), and as a hotelier in the Far East adventure series ‘Bring ’em back alive’ (1982–3).
In his last film McClory returned to an Irish setting as part of the ensemble cast of The dead (1987), directed by John Huston (qv) from the story by James Joyce (qv). His character, Mr Grace, a university lecturer, does not appear in Joyce’s text, but was created by screenwriter Tony Huston (the director’s son), and was given one of the film’s most poignant and memorable moments, when he recites to the hushed, rapt assemblage an English translation by Lady Gregory (qv) of the Irish lyric ‘Donal Óg’ (‘The grief of a girl’s heart’).
A reliable Hollywood supporting actor for some forty years, McClory performed in over forty feature films and nearly a hundred television series. Usually cast as an Irishman, often of boisterous or menacing mien, he was not limited to such roles. Over six feet in height, and heavy set, he had a round face and rugged good looks. His first two marriages ended in divorce. His third wife, Sue Alexander, died in 1979. He married fourthly (1983) Peggy Webber, an actress and producer, who survived him. He had two sons and one daughter. Suffering from a heart condition, he died 10 December 2003 in Hollywood Hills, California
Donal McCann obituary in “The Independent” in 1999.
Primarily a stage actor Donal McCann has made very few films since his debut in 1966 in Walt Disney’s “The Fighting Prince of Donegal”. However his magnificent performance in John Huston’s elegy “The Dead” with Anjelica Huston ensures him a place in film history. He played the central part of Gabriel Conroy the steady responsible nephew and his monologue at the end of the film is among the most moving on celluloid. He died in 1999.
“Independent” obituary:
DONAL McCANN was the finest Irish stage actor of recent years. His last great role, in Sebastian Barry’s The Steward of Christendom, prompted Newsweek to describe him as “the greatest actor in the English- speaking world”; the play was a huge success in Britain, America and Australia as well as Ireland. McCann epitomised a strong modern Irish theatre tradition of intense but unforced acting, the antithesis of the method school, in which creation of character depends more on empathy with the core personality than contrived mannerism. From the mid-1980s he became fixed in the public mind as the quintessential performer of Sean O’Casey’s Irish classics. He had a disarmingly easy fluency in O’Casey’s flinty dialogue and the musical nuances of working-class Dublin accents. But most of all he had an exemplary timing which carried scenes that could otherwise fall flat. His performances drew many back for a second and third time, prompting several return productions and lucrative foreign tours for Dublin companies. His father, John McCann, was an author and journalist who was President of the Writers, Actors, Artists and Musicians Association and wrote comedies staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and several radio plays for RTE and the BBC. An active politician in the largest Irish party, Fianna Fail, led by Eamon De Valera, he held a seat in the Dail, the Irish parliament, from 1943 to 1954.
Donal was reared in the pleasant Dublin suburb of Terenure. After schooling at Terenure College, where his early acting potential was noted, he studied architecture and then tried his hand as a journalist, working for 18 months as a copy-boy on The Irish Press (a Fianna Fail newspaper).
While there he began acting, training with Dublin’s Queen’s Theatre, the Abbey School, and the Academy. His theatre debut was as the Cardinal of Uganda in Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Successor, but his breakthrough came in the stage version of Patrick Kavanagh’s novel Tarry Flynn.
The story is a poignant memoir of the sensitive writer’s bleak, impoverished youth in rural Co Monaghan where the only certain pleasure was rejoicing in a neighbour’s misfortunes. It was well suited to what was to emerge as McCann’s hallmark, an ability to evoke the darker, harsher sides of adversity and to bring acute sensitivity to moments of tragedy. Kavanagh himself was enthralled by the performance.
From 1968 McCann was a full member of the Abbey’s repertory company, effectively Ireland’s national theatre. He appeared in Dion Boucicault’s The Shaughran, which travelled to London and won him many British offers of work.
He subsequently played in London productions such as Strindberg’s Miss Julie for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1971, alongside Helen Mirren, and with Peter O’Toole in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. At the Royal Court he was in A Prayer for My Daughter opposite Anthony Sher, and his television performance in the BBC’s Your Man from the Six Counties won a best actor award in the Prague d’Or Festival.
In the 1970s screen work brought him to a wider audience, for example in such serials as The Pallisers, in which he played “Phineas Finn, the Irish Member”, and as Mulhall in Strumpet City. He also acted in smaller Irish films, joining Cyril Cusack and Niall Toibin in Bob Quinn’s Poitin (1979), and playing the lead in Budawanny (1987), a tender but painful story of an island priest who falls in love, also directed by Quinn.
In 1980 he took the role of Frank in Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, but it was his roles in O’Casey plays that confirmed him as as a major actor for Irish audiences. His first Gate production of Juno and the Paycock, playing Captain Boyle, was in 1986. It was widely hailed in Ireland as the theatrical event of the decade, going on successful tours round Britain, Israel and New York. Similar success was also enjoyed by other O’Casey plays featuring McCann, such as Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough and the Stars.
In John Huston’s The Dead (1987), based on a James Joyce short story, McCann brought a restrained dignity to his role as the kindly Gabriel Conroy, who learns that his wife Gretta, played by Anjelica Huston, still longs for her long-dead young sweetheart, and appeared in a stranger persona in Neil Jordan’s High Spirits (1988). There was also a cameo role of a doctor in Out of Africa (1985). McCann quipped: “It was very draining having to break news like that [of VD] to Meryl Streep.” In 1996 Bernardo Bertolucci gave him the leading part of an artist with a hidden past exiled in Tuscany, in Stealing Beauty.
His greatest achievement in the last decade and, as it turned out, his swan song on Dublin and New York stages, was his mesmerising performance in Sebastian Barry’s The Steward of Christendom, as the mentally unstable pensioner recalling his traumatic memories as the first Catholic police superintendent in the Royal Irish Constabulary. During rehearsals he so moved his normally sharp-edged fellow actors that several broke into tears.
Sebastian Barry said of McCann: “He was a nuclear actor. He had so much compression in himself that when he brought that on to the stage, it broadcast in the most extraordinary and unique way.” He described how on the last night of the play in New York in February 1997 the actor gave a towering performance on the anniversary of his father’s death, which was also the day his mother died. “It was in a sense his own farewell.”
Donal McCann, actor: born Dublin 7 May 1943; died Dublin 18 July 1999.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
McCann, Donal Francis (1943–99), actor, was born 7 May 1943 in the Stella Maris private nursing home, 17 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin, one of two sons (his brother died young) and one daughter of John McCann (qv), journalist, politician, and playwright, and Margaret McCann (née Berney) (d. 1998), native of Monaseed, Gorey, Co. Wexford. His father, who was twice lord mayor of Dublin, wrote a string of highly popular, well crafted light comedies for the Abbey theatre from the mid 1950s to early 1960s. Reared in the family home at 68 Fortfield Road, Terenure, McCann was educated at Terenure college, where he acted in student dramatics, and played junior cup rugby. After studying architecture for three months at Bolton Street technical college, he worked for eighteen months as a copy boy with the Irish Press, while taking evening acting classes, firstly under Ray McAnally(qv) at the National Academy for Theatre and Applied Arts, Camden Street (1962–3), and then in the newly formed Abbey School of Acting under Frank Dermody (1963). Joining the Abbey company, he began his professional stage career in the Queen’s Theatre (home to the company since the destruction by fire in 1951 of its own premises), where his work included roles in revivals of two of his father’s plays (‘Put a beggar on horseback’ (1963) and ‘A Jew called Sammy’ (1965)), and in the company’s annual Irish-language Christmas pantomimes (1963–6). His first major success was in the title role of the poetical, libidinous countryman in ‘Tarry Flynn’, an adaptation by P. J. O’Connor of the autobiographical novel by Patrick Kavanagh (qv), one of the first plays staged in the company’s new Abbey Street building (1966).
McCann won renown for masterly performances in several of Irish theatre’s most notable productions of the late 1960s. He gave a sharply timed, expertly controlled comic performance, opposite Cyril Cusack (qv), as a hapless, lisping British officer in ‘The shaughraun’ (1967), a critically and popularly successful revival, directed by Hugh Hunt (qv), of the long-maligned nineteenth-century farcical melodrama by Dion Boucicault (qv); McCann played to sensational notices when the Abbey took the production to London for the world theatre season (1968). He scored further triumphs in both Dublin and London, opposite Joan Greenwood in Hugh Leonard‘s (qv) two-handed satire of Britain’s imperial legacy, ‘The au pair man’ (1968), and as Estragon in a legendary pairing with Peter O’Toole in the first Abbey production of ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett (qv), in the year of the author’s Nobel prize (1969). He also appeared in Dublin (at the Gaiety) with O’Toole in ‘Arms and the man’ (1969) by George Bernard Shaw (qv), and played the central role of the angry young provincial in ‘A crucial week in the life of a grocer’s assistant’ (1969), Tom Murphy’s unflinching dissection of small-town Ireland.
Irish actor Donal McCann in ‘Land’ (1967)Half-length portrait shot of Irish actor Donal McCann as Sea…
Based chiefly in London throughout the 1970s, McCann appeared as Jean, the male lead, opposite Helen Mirren in a riveting production by the Royal Shakespeare Company of Strindberg’s ‘Miss Julie’ (1971); the production was filmed (1972). Concentrating increasingly on television work (most of which he disparaged in later life), he appeared in TV dramas, and in many TV adaptations of plays, novels, and short stories by such Irish authors as Sean O’Casey (qv), James Joyce (qv), John Millington Synge (qv), Frank O’Connor (qv), and Sean O’Faolain (qv). These included worthy performances as Ned Lowry in ‘The mad Lomasneys’ (1970) (Hugh Leonard’s adaptation of O’Connor’s short story for the ITV series The sinners), as Seumas Shields in O’Casey’s ‘The shadow of a gunman’ (1973), and as Seán Keogh in Synge’s ‘The playboy of the western world’ (1974). He became known to a wide audience as the dashing Phineas Finn, the Irish parliamentarian, in the BBCserial The Pallisers (1974), based on the novels by Anthony Trollope (qv). He returned several times to the Dublin stage, most notably in Tom Kilroy’s surrealist comedy ‘Tea and sex and Shakespeare’ (1976), and, opposite Anthony Sher, in ‘A prayer for my daughter’, the harrowing drama by American playwright Thomas Babe, which transferred from London’s Royal Court (1978) to Dublin’s Project Arts Centre for the 1979 theatre festival. He became familiar throughout Ireland as Barney Mulhall in RTÉtelevision’s popular seven-part series Strumpet city (1980), Leonard’s adaptation of the novel by James Plunkett (qv) (1920–2003) set during the 1913 Dublin lockout.
As heavy drinking afflicted his personal and professional lives, McCann developed a reputation for truculence, unpredictability, and unreliability. These factors blighted his return to the Abbey (1980–81), for appearances in Tom Murphy’s underrated ‘The blue macushla’, a production for the O’Casey centennial of ‘The shadow of a gunman’ (with which he also toured in America), and Tom Stoppard’s ‘Night and day’. Nonetheless, he gave one of his greatest performances as Frank Hardy in the Abbey’s triumphant revival, directed by Joe Dowling, of Brian Friel‘s (qv) ‘Faith healer’ (1980), a role he would reprise on several occasions. Seamlessly inhabiting a character tormented by a sense of the fragility of his rare and troubling talent, and the incessant fear that his gift might desert him – a metaphor for the condition of the actor, or of any creative artist – McCann confronted and expressed many of his own fiercest inner demons.
Under the weight of his personal traumas, McCann’s career plummeted in the early 1980s, as he worked intermittently in television and cinema. He regrouped for a resounding comeback as Captain Boyle in the Gate theatre production of O’Casey’s ‘Juno and the paycock’ (1986). Directed by Dowling in a poignant, darkly revisionist interpretation, which emphasised the bleak circumstances of inner-city poverty that shape individuals and restrict the choices available to them, McCann captured the humour, pain, and impotent rage of his character’s condition, while engaging in an inspired, tragicomic duet with John Kavanagh as Joxer Daly. After an extended fourteen-week run at the Gate, the production toured in Edinburgh, Jerusalem, and to great acclaim in New York (1988). McCann (as Fluther Good) and Kavanagh (as Uncle Peter) teamed in another O’Casey classic, ‘The plough and the stars’ at the Gaiety (1987), and in Friel’s ‘Wonderful Tennessee’ (1993), which premiered at the Abbey before a brief and disappointing New York engagement. McCann appeared at the Gaiety in a revival of Friel’s ‘Translations’ (1988).
McCann’s last stage role was among his greatest and most widely acclaimed. His performance as the Lear-like Thomas Dunne in ‘The steward of Christendom’ by Sebastian Barry, was a mesmerising tour-de-force, depicting the tormented dotage of a formerly imperious DMP inspector, now an abject, lonely old man, teetering on the edge of madness in the county home, haunted by memories of his three willful daughters and slain soldier son. After opening in London’s Royal Court (1995), the production toured in several countries, including a twelve-week run in New York (1997), where leading critics lauded McCann as one of the world’s great actors. He was co-winner of the London Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for best actor (1995).
Beginning with a minor part in the Disney romp The fighting prince of Donegal (1966), McCann made some twenty feature films; despite consistently skilled work with some notable directors, in none did he equal the complete range and depth of his stage acting. In his first leading film role he gave a solid performance as Gar Public (opposite another young Abbey actor, Des Cave, as his alter ego, Gar Private) in a stagebound adaptation of Friel’s play Philadelphia, here I come! (1970). His most satisfying cinematic role was in The dead (1987), the last film of John Huston (qv), adapted from the James Joyce short story, and costarring Anjelica Huston; McCann’s performance, as Gabriel Conroy, was understated and richly nuanced, and demonstrated his skill as an unselfish ensemble player. He was in three films of Neil Jordan: Angel (1982), as a corrupt monosyllabic police detective; the slight Hollywood comedy High spirits (1988); and The miracle (1991), in a key role as an alcoholic musician harbouring a secret. Bob Quinn cast him in three films: the inventive Irish-language feature Poitín (1978), and the companion films Budawanny (1987) and The bishop’s story (1994), as a catholic priest who fathers a child with his housekeeper. He played the psychologically unstable father of the eponymous IRA volunteer in Pat O’Connor’s Cal (1984), and one of two presbyterian farming brothers enmeshed in a love triangle in December bride (1990), directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan from the novel by Sam Hanna Bell (qv). He was conspicuous among an international cast in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing beauty (1996).
The most consummate Irish stage actor of the period, meriting inclusion among Ireland’s greatest ever actors, McCann brought incredible concentration to the development and realisation of a role, labouring ceaselessly in rehearsal to ‘get it right’, to perfect a line or a scene. With strong, darkly handsome features, and large, haunted eyes, he had a rich, resonant voice; though not a large man, he inhabited the stage with a commanding physicality. Numerous commentators remarked the danger and mystery that invested his performances, the sense of watching a man on the razor’s edge. Very much a writer’s actor, insistent that the actor’s job was to serve the writing, he maintained that he performed scripts, not parts. At its greatest, his acting seemed to transcend artifice, as he utilised the technique of the actor’s craft not so much to ‘playact’ a role, as to invest a stage character with all the anguish, turmoil, and confusion of his own complex and contradictory personality, thus achieving a performance both tragic and true. Fellow actor Barry McGovern observed that ‘seeing Donal on stage was a slightly voyeuristic experience. We shared his torments for a while, but we didn’t have to take them home with us’ (quoted in Laffan, 106–7). In his last few years he maintained consistent sobriety. Indifferent to wealth or celebrity, he was famously described by one critic as having an ego ‘one-twentieth the size of a Hollywood bit player’s’ (Ir. Times, 24 July 1999).
McCann was married; he and his wife Geraldine had three sons, but separated by the mid 1970s. For some twenty years he had a deep relationship with the accomplished Abbey actress Fedelma Cullen (1948–2003), who provided him with a measure of stability throughout his most troubled period, and the encouragement and support that allowed his comeback of the mid 1980s. They separated in the mid 1990s. His partner thereafter was Beau Marie St Clair. McCann was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by TCD (1997). His chief and passionate recreation was gambling on horses and hounds. He also painted and sketched, being a talented caricaturist and cartoonist. Always a man of unostentatious religious faith, in later life he found a profound spirituality and serenity. Falling gravely ill with pancreatic cancer in November 1997, he underwent a major operation and chemotherapy, facing a poor prognosis with exceptional acceptance and courage. He died 17 July 1999 at Our Lady’s Hospice, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, and was buried in St Patrick’s cemetery, Monaseed, Co. Wexford, his mother’s native place where he had holidayed regularly as a child. A television documentary by Bob Quinn, It must be done right (1999), based around a public interview given by McCann to Gerry Stembridge at the 1998 Galway film fleadh, was broadcast weeks before his death
He is one of Ireland’s most eminent actors whose work has grown in stature over the years. Gabriel Byrne first came to national attention with his role of Pat Barry in “The Riordan’s” in the late seventies. His character was given his own series “Bracken” (which ultimately became “Glenroe”). His first major film was the British political thriller “Defence of the Realm” and he currently has a highly critically regarded U.S. television series “In Treatment”. He has at least two movie classics to his credit – “Miller’s Crossing” and “The Usual Suspects” with Benicio Del Toro.
Both a strong leading presence and compelling character performer, actor Gabriel Byrne emerged from his native Ireland to become one of the more sought-after talents in the United States. Though he had been acting for over a decade across the Atlantic, Byrne did not begin making a name for himself in America until his dark, brooding performance as an Irish mobster in the Coen Brothers’ deft “Miller’s Crossing” (1990). But it was his turn as a former corrupt cop drawn into a heist-gone-bad in “The Usual Suspects” (1995) that propelled Byrne to stardom. Ever since, he fluctuated with ease between romantic dramas, crime thrillers and period pieces in a fine display of diversity that translated well behind the camera as a writer and producer. Though he managed to get entangled in several flops – namely “Stigmata” (1999) and the miserable “End of Days” (1999) – Byrne managed to transcend setbacks with a varied slate of interesting projects, including “In Treatment” (HBO, 2007- ), an experimental drama that allowed Byrne to display his considerable acting chops to a sophisticated audience.
Born on May 12, 1950 in Dublin, Ireland, Byrne was the oldest of six children raised by a Guinness factory worker father and nurse mother. When he was 12 years old, a Catholic priest came to his school to show students what life was like saving souls in the South Pacific. From that moment, Byrne was interested in becoming a member of the clergy, and eventually went to seminary in Birmingham. But Byrne failed to fit in – perhaps being more interested in football and smoking cigarettes, while constantly late for prayers, had something to do with why he was finally asked to leave. Byrne returned home to Dublin and landed a scholarship to University College, where he studied languages and archeology. After graduating, he toiled in a series of odd jobs, namely installing glass eyes in teddy bears at a toy factory, working as a plumber, and teaching English. He made his first foray into acting in 1974 with the Dublin Shakespeare Society, then joined the Focus Theatre, an experimental repertory company run by director Jim Sheridan. In 1978, Byrne began acting full-time at the Abbey Theatre, where he stayed for two years. Finally, Byrne had found his footing.
Thanks to his stage work, Byrne started to land minor parts in small films, making his debut in “On a Paving Stone Mounted” (1978), which he followed with “The Outsider” (1979), a film that led to starring roles in the Irish soap opera “The Riordens” and its spin-off “Bracken.” Byrne’s first significant film role was as King Arthur’s father in John Boorman’s “Excalibur” (1981), a role made more difficult by the oppressive iron armor costumes. He played an obnoxious Israeli attorney in Costa-Gavras’ disappointing “Hannah K” (1983), then a German soldier in Michael Mann’s dreadful war drama “The Keep” (1983). Bryne proved himself a capable lead in the taut political thriller “Defense of the Realm” (1985), playing a newspaper reporter investigating the crash of a nuclear bomber in the English countryside. But Hollywood remained unimpressed, which, on a whole, considered Byrne a supporting player. He turned to American television in a pair of miniseries, playing the title role of “Christopher Columbus” (CBS, 1985), then the father of fascism’s son in “Mussolini: The Untold Story” (NBC, 1985). Back on the big screen, he co-starred in a few unremarkable features, including “Lionheart” (1987) and “Hello, Again” (1987), before returning to England to take the lead in “Diamond Skulls” (1989).
In the 1990s, Bryne finally began to catch the attention of American audiences, starting with “Miller’s Crossing” (1990), a revisionist take on the gangster film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. As the brooding Tom Reagan, the right hand of an Irish mobster (Albert Finney) neck deep in a citywide gang war with his Italian rival (Jon Polito), Byrne’s Reagan exuded a cool confidence, despite routine ass-kickings and a falling out with his boss over the same woman (Marcia Gay Harden). Byrne next essayed the cartoonist who creates the “Cool World” (1992) of Ralph Bakshi’s mix of live action and animation, later remembering the experience as “like being sedated for three months.” In “Point of No Return” (1993), he played a secret agent who oversees the training of a hit woman (Bridget Fonda). Later that year, he romanced two women – one dark and disturbed (Debra Winger); the other lonely and insecure (Barbara Hershey) – in “A Dangerous Woman” (1993), a rather conventional, but violent psycho-drama from director Stephen Gyllenhaal.
A prominent force in Ireland’s film industry, Byrne reportedly passed up an opportunity to play the villain in “Lethal Weapon III” to star as an alcoholic single father in Jim Sheridan’s charming fable, “Into the West” (1993). Back in Hollywood, Byrne vied with Steve Martin for the love and custody of a little girl in “A Simple Twist of Fate” (1994) and played an obsessive U.S. Attorney in “Trial by Jury” (1994), though he probably turned more heads as the German philosophy professor who sweeps Jo (Winona Ryder) off her feet in “Little Women” (1994). He attained perhaps his highest screen profile since “Miller’s Crossing,” starring as a former corrupt cop-turned-expert thief in “The Usual Suspects” (1995), Bryan Singer’s excellent neo-noir thriller about a gang of thieves recruited by a mysterious underworld figure to stop a massive drug deal, only to learn there is a bigger score to be had. He next teamed with Matt Dillon and Anne Parillaud for “Frankie Starlight” (1995), a gentle and poignant period romance that saw Byrne fall in love with a French woman (Anne Parillaud) after he helps her enter post-World War II Ireland.
In 1996, the increasingly busy Byrne co-starred with Johnny Depp in Jim Jarmusch’s revisionist Western “Dead Man;” headlined the Irish love story “This Is the Sea” (1997); and finally co-wrote, co-produced and co-starred in the charming teen romance “Last of the High Kings” (released on video in the United States as “Summer Fling” in 1998). “Last of the High Kings” was merely the first screenplay to come from Byrne, who earlier proved himself as a prose writer with Pictures in My Head. In fact, Byrne sought through his production deal with Phoenix Pictures to showcase himself as a writer-director. Finding time in his acting schedule was difficult, however, as a couple of directing projects fell through. His continued admiration for European filmmaking led him to star in Wim Wenders’ “The End of Violence” (1997), Bille August’s “Smilla’s Sense of Snow” (1997) and “Polish Wedding” (1998). Meanwhile, he displayed a taste for horsemanship and swordplay as the noble D’Artagnan in John Malkovich’s star-studded, but ultimately disappointing historical adventure “The Man in the Iron Mask” (1998).
Gabriel Byrne
With his place in Hollywood firmly established, Byrne was free to choose his projects, even if it happened to be a small role in the paranoia-inspiring thriller “Enemy of the State” (1998). Perhaps in a nod to his former days as a priest-in-training, he played Father Andrew Kiernan in “Stigmata” (1999), then flipped to the other side to play Satan in “End of Days” (1999), both of which were released in the midst of the millennial apocalyptic craze. But whether he was playing a man of God or the human incarnate of evil, Byrne proved that his presence onscreen could enliven even the most insipid fare. After two decades removed from the stage, Byrne had a starring role in the Broadway revival of “A Moon for the Misbegotten” (2000), Eugene O’Neill’s transcendent drama of guilt and forgiveness. His harrowing performance as the guilt-wracked James Tyrone received overwhelming praise by critics and theatergoers alike. Byrne’s handling of the cumbersome, but heart-wrenching monologue – particularly where James confesses his sins to human angel Josie (Cherry Jones) – proved compelling, while his shift from emotional detachment to extreme candidness displayed unusually moving grace.
In another attempt to keep his acting career fresh, Byrne took on network television with a starring role in the short-lived sitcom “Madigan Men” (ABC, 2000-01), playing a recently divorced man who routinely receives romantic advice from his teenaged son Luke (John Hensley) and widowed father Seamus (Roy Dotrice). He maintained numerous producing projects on his slate, including “Mad About Mambo” (2000), a Belfast-set coming-of-age tale produced by his own Plurabelle Films. Meanwhile, Byrne continued to be in-demand as a character actor, happily toiling away with parts in such mainstream films as “Ghost Ship” (2002), a supernatural thriller in which he played a salvage ship captain whose crew encounters a mysterious ocean liner lost at sea. In the flashback sequences of “Spider” (2002), he played the father of a psychologically damaged man (Ralph Finnes) recently released from a mental institution, who may or may not be truthful about his childhood trauma. After a short role in “Shade” (2004), a little-seen indie about poker hustlers, Byrne appeared in the adaptation of Thackerey’s “Vanity Fair” (2004), playing the seductively titled and privileged Marques of Steyne, who offers Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon) all she wants – but at a price.
His next film, the remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 thriller, “Assault On Precinct 13” (2005), provided Byrne with what Roger Ebert characterized as “one of his thankless roles in which he is hard, taciturn, and one-dimensional enough to qualify for Flatland.” In “Jindabyne” (2006), Byrne was a gas station clerk in Australia who goes off on a fishing trip with his pals and discovers the naked body of a young Aboriginal woman killed by a racist old man (Chris Haywood). But instead of calling the police, the men decide to go on with their fishing trip, which causes all hell to break loose when they go home to their wives (which include Laura Linney). Back on television, Byrne starred in one of the more talked about cable shows, “In Treatment” (HBO, 2007- ), playing a seemingly successful psychotherapist and family man whose life starts falling apart because of his intimate involvement with his patients. Each 30-minute episode put on display a full therapy session, which aired five days a week and showcased a regular set of patients (Blair Underwood, Mia Wasikowska and Embeth Davidtz). But critics and audiences were split over being either fascinated or bored with witnessing an entire therapy session, causing some to question the durability of the show. Regardless, there was no conflict over Byrne’s performance. In 2008, he earned an Emmy nod for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, but lost out to Bryan Cryanston for his work on “Breaking Bad” (AMC, 2008- ). He then received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama, which he promptly won. The following year, he faced off against Cranston again for an Emmy Award in the lead actor category, thanks to Byrne’s remarkable performance on the second season of “In Treatment.”
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
