Tony award nominee who acted for 56 years

DÓNAL DONNELLY :DÓNAL DONNELLY, who has died aged 78, was one of the most respected actors of his generation.

A worthy nominee for a Tony award for his role as Gar Private in the original production of Philadelphia, Here I Come!in 1964, he also appeared in the original Broadway version of Dancing at Lughnasa, which won a Tony in 1992.

He made a number of memorable film appearances, playing Freddy Malins in John Huston's outstanding film version of James Joyce's The Dead(1987) and Archbishop Gilday in The Godfather: Part III(1990).

He also appeared in the film adaptation of John McGahern's short story Korea(1995), having made appearances in two John Ford films earlier in his career: The Rising of the Moon(1957) and Gideon's Day(1958).

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1931, he was one of seven children of James Donnelly, a doctor from Tyrone, and his wife Nora, a teacher whose family hailed from Kerry. When he was five his parents moved the family to Dublin, and made their home in Rathgar.

He was educated at Synge Street CBS, where he took part in school plays. On leaving school he went to work for Callaghan’s saddlers in Dame Street.

His interest in the stage prompted him to join the Bernadette Players, an amateur group based in Rathmines, with which he appeared in the 1950 satirical review, Gráinne Wails.

After Lord Longford spotted him in another of the group’s productions, he was invited to join the Gate company as a part-time assistant stage manager.

He made his Gate acting debut in Doctor Faustusin 1952, later touring Ireland with the Anew McMaster company. He next joined the Globe theatre company, based in Dún Laoghaire. Paid subsistence wages of 30 shillings a week, however, he could not pass up the chance to take part in more exciting new plays as well as the classics of several countries.

Appearances included parts in Dalton Trumbo's The Biggest Thief in Town(1954), Waiting for Godot (1956) and John Van Druten's I Am a Camera(1956).

He left Dublin and the Globe for London in 1957, to join Jack McGowran in Shadow of a Gunmanat the Lyric, Hammersmith. Drama producers at the BBC were quick to recognise his talent and the Royal Court followed hard on their heels.

He returned to Ireland to appear in the first film made at Ardmore studios, the War of Independence melodrama Shake Hands with the Devil(1959). Six years later he had a leading role in The Knack . . . and How to Get It, a comedy of "swinging London", with Rita Tushingham.

Tired of being confined to Irish parts on stage, he jumped at the chance to play a British schoolteacher in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. He enjoyed great success as the public-school educated son of Italian-Jewish parents in Sleuth, which brought him from London to Broadway and Dublin and kept him in work for two years.

Interviewed in 1972, he singled out two directors for praise. He described Lindsay Anderson who directed him in Sergeant Musgrave's Danceas "incredibly creative and artistically single-minded".

He praised Michael Elliot, who directed him in his first Playboy of the Western World,for his "painstaking" patience in "delving and shaping" a production.

Confident that he had absorbed the key elements of directing, in New York he directed his first play, Brian Friel's The Mundy Scheme. His second outing as a director was in Dublin with Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves in 1972.

Later in the 1970s he toured with his one-man show My Astonishing Selfbased on the writings of George Bernard Shaw, playing venues in Dublin, Boston and Hong Kong.

American television credits include Spenser for Hireand Law & Orderand he made regular appearances on British television.

A brother of Michael Donnelly, who was for many years a Fianna Fáil member of Dublin City Council, he regarded politics and public involvement as part of a total personality, but he did not become involved in electoral politics. “I think the frustration of not being able to make things noticeably better at once would have got to me.”

Stardom did not appeal to him. His attitude, he said, was summed up in the conductor Toscanini’s remark to the prima donna who considered herself a star and therefore not to be corrected in front of the orchestra. “Madam,” the maestro said, “The stars are in the sky. You and I are mere artists. And you, at the moment, are an inaccurate one.”

Dónal Donnelly last appeared on stage in Shaw's Don Juan in Hellon Broadway in 2006.

Predeceased by his daughter Maryanne, he is survived by his wife Patsy and sons Damian and Jonathan.

Dónal Donnelly: born July 6th, 1931; died January 4th, 2010.