| Donal Donnelly obituary A talented Irish actor on stage and in films for Ford and HustonFor an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by Brian Friel, Ireland's leading contemporary dramatist, Donal Donnelly, who has died after a long illness, aged 78, was curiously unrecognised. Like so many prominent Irish actors in the diasporas of Hollywood, British television, the West End and Broadway – all areas he conquered – Donnelly was a great talent and a private citizen, happily married for many years, and always seemed youthful.There was something mischievous, something larkish, about him, too. He twinkled. And he had a big nose. He had long lived in New York, although he died in Chicago, and had started out in Dublin, although born in England.In John Huston's swansong movie The Dead (1987), the best screen transcription of a James Joyce fiction, he played the drunken party guest Freddy Malins with such wholesome charm, sly wit and nasal authority, that one would never have thought the character himself was a terrible bore. It is a treat of comic timing when Donnelly, having sat patiently through a high-flown debate about the merits of a big-deal production of La Bohème, innocently enquires if anyone's been to the pantomime at the Gaiety.Set in Dublin in 1904, Huston's film, possibly the greatest last movie ever made by a director, magically melds today and yesterday in the performances of his daughter Anjelica, Donal McCann and many others.Early in his career, Donnelly brushed with John Ford, another legendary Hollywood director visiting Irish ancestral roots, in The Rising of the Moon (1957), an anthology of three stories by Frank O'Connor, Martin McHugh and Lady Gregory, founder of the Abbey Theatre. Ford was irascible and drunk on the shoot, forcing Donnelly to display his gap teeth to the British crew as evidence and consequence of imperial oppression and the potato famine. Donnelly always said he was considered for a time by Ford to play the lead, Sean O'Casey, in Young Cassidy (1965), but the role went, weirdly, to the Australian Rod Taylor, and Donal made do with a supporting role – literally, since he played a pallbearer. He played a private with a penchant for pigs in Sergei Bondarchuk's disastrous movie Waterloo (1970), with Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte. But after that, his film career never really developed, with the possible exceptions of his appearance as a strange archbishop in The Godfather: Part III (1990) and a bemused foster parent entangled in a routine love story in This Is My Father (1999) with James Caan. Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, Donnelly was the son of a doctor. The family soon moved to Dublin. He was educated at the Synge Street Christian Brothers school, where he acted in plays with contemporaries such as Milo O'Shea, Eamonn Andrews, Jack MacGowran (with whom he later shared a London flat) and Jimmy FitzSimons, the brother of Maureen O'Hara.He toured with the actor-manager Anew McMaster – an Irish equivalent of Donald Wolfit – so Donnelly was no novice when he made his London debut at the Royal Court in 1959 in Lindsay Anderson's production of John Arden's brilliantly provocative anti-military drama, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance.But his career really took off when he played Christy Mahon, the title role in The Playboy of the Western World, opposite Siobhan McKenna as Pegeen Mike, in the West End in 1960, followed by a lead role in O'Casey's Red Roses for Me, opposite Leonard Rossiter at the Mermaid Theatre.He returned to Dublin for the biggest break in his life – Friel's first play, Philadelphia, Here I Come! at the Gaiety in 1964, presented by the Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir partnership of the Gate Theatre, the major artistic rival of the Abbey Theatre, with Edwards directing. Donnelly played the private voice of Gareth O'Donnell (Patrick Bedford was the "public" Gar), a man with a split personality leaving his homeland for America. He and the cast were a huge hit in Dublin and New York.Donnelly later played the sharp-witted cockney agent opposite James Mason's titanic mystic in the world premiere of Friel's masterpiece Faith Healer (1979) in New York, and the old missionary priest Jack in the Broadway premiere of Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa.He was perhaps best known in Britain as the struggling songwriter Matthew Browne in the television sitcom Yes, Honestly (1976-77), co-starring Liza Goddard, but he will be remembered, too, as a splendid impersonator of George Bernard Shaw in his one-man show My Astonishing Self, which he introduced at the Dublin festival in 1976, and also in Jerome Kilty's correspondence "drama" with Ellen Terry, Dear Liar, with which he bowed out on Broadway in 1999.Donnelly, much loved by his peers and contemporaries in the Dublin theatre – although he was never associated with the Abbey – is survived by his wife, Patsy, and their two sons.• Donal Donnelly, actor, born 6 July 1931; died 4 January 2010Michael Coveneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Suri in cruise control with new car TOM Cruise has bought his daughter Suri a miniature replica of an Indy race car worth $30,000. news.com.au |
Baxter Dury: 'My dad was lovely, bubbly ... and annoying' Some people seem to think that Ian Dury was a genius and others say he was evil. He wasn't evil – he was a normal dad who made me soupI was first approached about the film, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, in quite a roundabout way. Someone who knew someone who was working with someone else got in touch and wanted to talk about a few ideas for a biopic about my dad, Ian Dury. I didn't really take it seriously until Paul Viragh, who wrote the screenplay, got in touch. My sister, Jemima, and I could have decided not to be involved, but they would have made the film anyway so at least our involvement helped guide things. It takes you a while to see whether a person's good intentions are real, especially with something as personal as this, but I'm pleased to say Paul and I became very good friends. He became more of a family therapist than anything else. The result was a film which amalgamates fantasy and fact. It had to be that way: if you tried to stick to just the facts and keep it chronological the film would last 57 years. The film represents a version of events that makes the experience of being around my dad look anarchic and chaotic, but I actually had a stable upbringing with my mum. We lived in a country house, she made apple pie – it was a nice, middle-class upbringing. Even when I went to live with my dad when I was older, I never felt as though I was in any danger. The thing is that films of this kind tend to promote the extremes, by which the perception of someone gets cemented. Some people seem to think that my dad was a genius and others say he was evil. He wasn't evil, he was annoying. But he was also a lovely, bubbly person, a normal dad who made me soup. I'm used to the mythologising of my dad, so I found other elements of the film much more powerful. For example, the portrayal of my granddad (played by Ray Winstone) was strange, because I hadn't experienced the part of his life shown in the film. In fact, what you see is a character built around stories that we heard from my dad. Bill Milner does a brilliant job of playing me, but it's definitely weird to see yourself portrayed by an actor. When we met, we both just sort of looked at our shoes and said "All right?". We talked about my childhood, but I was conscious of not overloading him with my memories. I've got nothing but praise for Andy Serkis (who plays Ian Dury). My first impression was that he was too nice a person and had too little ego to play my dad, but it really was an incredible transformation. My involvement in the film was an absolute pleasure, everyone who worked on Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was wonderful. They all worked hard for not much money. But I have to admit that I did have a few sleepless nights after I watched the film. It's just not normal to watch your family on screen, is it? I wouldn't suggest it to anyone. I worry that people think we were some kind of rock'n'roll experiment, but we were just a normal, happy family. How would I describe my dad? Someone made a brilliant analogy that I think sums him up: he was like a beautifully made hotel, one side of which looks over an idyllic beach while the other looks over the Gaza strip. Baxter Dury was talking to Rosie Swash. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is in cinemas nowIan DuryPop and rockguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Bingle car thief accused 'top 10 offender' TEEN charged with stealing Lara Bingle's Aston Martin is a criminal known by police, a court was told.  news.com.au |
The Boys Are Back | Film review Single fathers (whether widowed, divorced or surrogate) raising sons have been an obsessive subject of the cinema since Chaplin's The Kid nearly 90 years ago. Captains Courageous was such a tale and so, arguably, is Citizen Kane. Dustin Hoffman won an Oscar playing a dedicated single father in Kramer vs. Kramer and Viggo Mortensen may emulate him this year for The Road. Tom Hanks has played the part at least twice (Sleepless in Seattle, Road to Perdition), for laughs, tears and excitement.The appeal resides in two, now increasingly questioned, assumptions. The first is that mothers have duties, responsibilities and inherent skills that make loving, caring for and rearing children a natural activity that scarcely needs remarking on. The second is a traditional perception that there's something unnatural, even farcical, about fathers performing domestic tasks and giving more than a few minutes of quality time to their children when they're not out there hunting and gathering.The latest picture of this kind is Scott Hicks's The Boys Are Back, a likable family comedy-drama adapted from a memoir by British journalist Simon Carr who, following the death from cancer of his second wife in New Zealand, was left to raise two young sons. The movie is set in Australia, most of it along an idyllic coast of rolling hills (photographed by Greig Fraser, who made Keats's north London look so romantic in Bright Star), and the widowed hero, Joe Warr (handsome, macho Clive Owen), is an ace sports writer of the floridly literary kind.His beautiful wife, Katy (Laura Fraser) dies, leaving him to cope with their son, five-year-old Artie, and Dad and Artie are joined by 14-year-old Harry, who's sent down under by Joe's ex-wife when she gets pregnant. There are numerous references to the family's favourite book, Peter Pan, to suggest that Joe is a child at heart, a lost boy living with his lads in his own permissive Neverland and, as in Ghost, another film of early death and widowed grief, Katy's spirit is always around to talk things over with Joe.The film is amusing, touching and well acted, if somewhat contrived. The blundering Joe, though by no means idealised, gets a pretty easy ride. One wonders how a journalist, even one enjoying the largesse of Rupert Murdoch, can pay alimony and the fees for an expensive British public school. One marvels at a man considered so valuable that he retains his job after covering a tennis match on TV at home when he should be reporting on it from the stadium several hundred miles away. As the film ended, my youth came flooding back when over the final credits Carla Bruni of all people performs "You Belong to Me"; we sang along to Jo Stafford's version in the Naafi during my first months in the army in 1952.Clive OwenPhilip Frenchguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |