The Stage

Tributes paid to Irish theatre actress Manahan

Published Monday 9 March 2009 at 17:25 by Anthony Garvey

Anna Manahan, who has died at the age of 84 after a lengthy illness, has been celebrated as one of the most influential actors in Irish theatre.

Garry Hynes, artistic director of Druid, who directed her Tony Award-winning performance on Broadway in The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1998, called her “a true star”. And Martin McDonagh, who wrote the play, said she was “one of the greats of the Irish stage”.

He added: “To have met and worked with an actress as brilliant as Anna Manahan on my first play was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.”

Manahan, born in Waterford, the daughter of a local comedian, learned her craft at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin and began her career at the city’s Gate Theatre, working with the celebrated Hilton Edwards and Micheal MacLiammoir. She experienced personal tragedy early on when her husband of less than a year, stage director Colm O’Kelly, contracted polio and died while on a theatre tour of Egypt.

Manahan, then 32, never remarried. As her career blossomed, she starred in plays by Brian Friel, winning her first Tony Award nomination for her performance in Lovers, and in the work of John B Keane, who wrote the play Big Maggie especially for her. Television roles included The Irish RM and the BBC comedy series Me Mammy with Milo O’Shea, penned by another Tony Award-winner, playwright Hugh Leonard, who died just a few weeks ago.

In films, she appeared with major screen stars such as Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney, Kenneth More, Peter Cushing and Irish Oscar winning actress Brenda Fricker. One of her last roles in a career that spanned more than half a century of stage, TV and cinema was in the RTE soap Fair City.

Despite her fame, Manahan continued to live in Waterford and was awarded the freedom of the city some years ago. In a tribute, arts minister Martin Cullen, also from Waterford, said: “When people talk about great and influential Irish actresses, they talk of Anna Manahan”.