Pauline Delany: Pauline Delany, who has died aged 81, was an accomplished stage, film and television actor. Having made her name with the Globe Theatre Company in Dublin in the 1950s, she later pursued a successful career in London.
Lelia Doolan, a former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre, described her as "a great Juno. Marvellously scatty at times, until it came to the acting. Then, completely composed, richly layered, passionate and powerful".
The theatre producer Phyllis Ryan, in her memoir, recalled "the lovely Pauline Delany, dark-eyed and enigmatic in her portrayals".
Born in Dublin on June 8th, 1925, she was one of the two children of Frank Delany, a fitter at Guinness's brewery, and his wife Kathleen (née Loughrey). She grew up in Drumcondra and was educated locally.
Her mother was a keen theatre-goer and Pauline regularly accompanied her to see the plays of Brinsley McNamara, George Shiels and Lennox Robinson at the Abbey and those of Pirandello, Denis Johnston and Shaw at the Gate.
On leaving school she was relieved to bid farewell to the "rather censorious and uncultured" nuns in charge of her education. She went to work as a trainee fashion buyer at Newells of Grafton Street, and also attended evening classes at the Brendan Smith Academy of Acting.
Invited to tour with a production of Charlie's Aunt, starring Leslie Phillips, she gave up her job and went on the road.
By the early 1950s she was working with Barry Cassin and Nora Lever's 37 Theatre Club. There she met the actor Norman Rodway; they married in 1954.
She and Rodway were early members of the Globe company. It mainly comprised actors who had studied under Brendan Smith and rented the small Gas Company theatre in Dún Laoghaire, presenting new plays from all over the world.
The players, who included Anna Manahan, Maureen Toal and Milo O'Shea, devised their own settings, borrowed furniture from local firms, made their own costumes and generated their own publicity - all for £6 a week.
The legendary Jim Fitzgerald was the resident director and productions ranged from Madigan's Lockby Hugh Leonard to I Am a Cameraby John Van Druten. The company became the talk of the town.
At the end of the 1950s, however, the Globe ran into financial difficulties and went out of business. Rodway joined forces with Phyllis Ryan to form Gemini Productions and Pauline Delany starred in the company's 1963 Dublin Theatre Festival success, The Poker Session, by Hugh Leonard. In February 1964 the play transferred to London, where she now lived.
Her marriage to Rodway was over. She subsequently formed a relationship with Gerry Simpson, a Limerick-born playwright, which continued until his death only weeks before she herself died.
Pauline Delany became a familiar figure on the British stage, appearing in The Hostage(Royal Court), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg(King's Head), The Saxon Shore(Almeida), Richard III(Ludlow Festival), The Beaux' Stratagem(Glasgow Citizens' Theatre), Cross Purpose (Hampstead Theatre) and Philadelphia, Here I Come(King's Head).
She continued to act in Dublin, and among the plays she appeared in were Eugene McCabe's controversial King of the Castleat the Gaiety in 1964 and The Last Hero, a two-hander with Dan O'Herlihy, at the Peacock in 1987.
Plays for television included The Dead(with Ray McAnally), The Playboy of the Western World, Shadow of a Gunman, Stephen Dand The Seagull.
She was in the cast of the television drama series Public Eyeand also appeared in The Bill, Casualtyand Rumpole of the Bailey.
Her film credits include Rooney(1958), The Quare Fellow(1962), Nothing but the Best(1964) and Brannigan(1975).
Her daughter Sarah remembers her as being "tremendously proud of being Irish and most especially of being a Dubliner".
Her favourite playwrights were Anton Chekhov and Hugh Leonard.
Predeceased on January 3rd by her partner Gerry, she is survived by her daughter Sarah Simpson and grandchildren.
Pauline Delany: born June 8th, 1925; died January 15th, 2007.