Tom Murphy, who died in a Dublin hospital on Saturday at the age of 39, was a remarkably versatile actor who revelled in challenging roles. There was applause in his honour at Dublin Theatre Festival productions when the news was announced.
He died after a short illness.
He won American theatre's highest honour, the Tony award, in 1998, when he was named best featured actor for his performance in the Druid production of Martin McDonagh's play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
Garry Hynes, who directed him in that play, said yesterday: "Tom Murphy was a much loved friend and colleague. He was a great member of the company, and we are all terribly saddened at his premature loss - a loss to Irish theatre and Irish film."
Druid colleague Marie Mullen led a round of applause in his honour at the end of Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Gaiety theatre on Saturday. Similar tributes were paid in other Dublin theatres as the news spread.
Murphy was born in Zimbabwe, where his parents were working.The family moved back to Ireland when Tom was very young and he grew up in Dublin, where he has been acting since childhood.
"It wasn't something that I had to decide about doing," he said in 2004. "It was just something that I always did."
He made his professional debut as the Artful Dodger in Noel Pearson's production of Oliver! When he was nine, he played the young Christy Brown in Peter Sheridan's adaptation of Down All the Days, which Jim Sheridan directed. He went on to major in drama at Trinity College. To avoid confusion with an English actor named Tom Murphy, he was sometimes credited as Tom Jordan Murphy.
After the Tony award, an American agent suggested he should move to Los Angeles, but Murphy returned to London and starred in two controversial productions, Mark Ravenhill's Handbag and Sarah Kane's Blasted.
On screen, Murphy showed his flair for comedy in Man About Dog (2004), which was a major hit in Ireland. Speaking from Los Angeles yesterday, the film's director Paddy Breathnach told The Irish Times: "Tom was just so vital. There was no one like him. He was a fantastic actor, but was very humble about it, and he really gave himself to every role." Murphy featured as Shamie Donoghue in the RTÉ series Pure Mule and was most recently seen as the grieving father of a hit-and-run victim in Small Engine Repair, released here in July.
His most memorable film role, however, was in Adam & Paul (2004), a critically acclaimed low-budget production in which he and Mark O'Halloran played a couple of hapless Dublin junkies.
"It's an awful tragedy that Tom has left us so soon," Mr O'Halloran said yesterday. "Tom achieved a great deal in a short time. He had no ego whatsoever and was an incredibly kind man. Everyone who knew him will miss him terribly."
Lenny Abrahamson, the director of Adam & Paul, said: "It was a privilege to work with Tom. He was an artist, one of the greatest actors of his generation. I've no doubt that he had many more wonderful performances in him that we now will never see."