TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen led tributes to the actor Mick Lally, who died yesterday at the age of 64 after a short illness.
“He was one of the most loved actors of his generation,” Mr Cowen said.
“Versatile in both the Irish and English languages, his genius at capturing and portraying the essence of the characters he played, brought him wide, popular and critical acclaim,” he added.
Born in November 1945 and reared in Tourmakeady, Co Mayo, he was the eldest of a family of seven children.
Flowers, including a single white rose outside the Druid Lane Theatre, which he had helped to found, marked the public reaction in Galway yesterday.
Druid's artistic director Garry Hynes, actress and fellow theatre company founder Marie Mullen and the cast of Seán O'Casey's The Silver Tassiespoke of his legacy after last night's performance of the Druid production of same in the Town Hall Theatre, Galway. A book of condolences for the public has also been opened there.
Former arts minister and Galway West TD Michael D Higgins; Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Gerry Breen; NUI Galway president Dr Jim Browne, and Arts Council chairman Pat Moylan expressed their shock and sadness at the actor’s passing, as did RTÉ television’s managing director Glen Killane and TG4 director general Pól Ó Gallchóir.
A great actor and “advocate” of the Irish language was how Mr Higgins described him. Garry Hynes said he was a “man without measure”, and her “hero”. If he had not agreed to join herself and Marie Mullen in founding Druid in 1975, the company would have “not existed”, she said.
John Toner owner of the Co Wicklow farm which Lally frequented as lead actor with Mary McEvoy in the long-running television series Glenroe, described him as an "absolute gentleman".
Ms McEvoy recalled how she was "blown away by him", in working with him on the set of Glenroe. The cast of the TG4 soap Ros na Rúnalso talked warmly of his contribution yesterday – he had played the role of businessman Éamon de Faoite in the series from 2008 to 2009.
Lally was educated at St Mary’s College in Galway – thanks to fees provided by his grandfather in America. He studied arts at UCG, where he developed his passion for theatre with the college’s Cumann Drámaíochta.
After graduating with a degree in Irish and history, he studied for a higher diploma in teaching. His first teaching job was in Tuam, but he continued to act in the Taibhdhearc theatre in Galway.
He spoke in an Irish Farmers' Journalinterview last year of how he was contemplating emigration in Galway's Cellar Bar when he was approached by UCG students, Hynes and Mullen, who were thinking of staging Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. After a week of rehearsals, the trio formed Druid. In 1978, he was cast as Miley Byrne, a farmer's son, alongside actors Gabriel Byrne and the late Joe Lynch, in the RTÉ series Bracken. In 1983, his Miley became central to the new weekly television series, Glenroe.
Big screen work included Oliver Stone's Alexander(2004), and Lally was the voice of Brother Aidan, owner of cat Pangur Bán in the Academy Award nominated animated film, The Secret of Kells(2009). Lally marked his 30th wedding anniversary last year with his wife Peige, a nurse from Inis Meáin. The couple reared three children, Saileog, Darach and Maghnus. He is also survived by his parents May and Tommy, brother Tomás and five sisters, Teresa, Marie, Sarah, Nuala and Rita. He is due to be cremated tomorrow at Newlands Cross Crematorium Chapel in Dublin.
