Dan O'Herlihy

Character actor and idiosyncratic leading man who performed with the Gate Theatre and the Abbey Players in Dublin before immigrating to the USA, O'Herlihy filled up the screen with a long resume of grand performances in Hollywood films from the 40s to the 90s. An architecture student who turned to acting to earn money for college--He appeared in more than 70 plays on the Dublin stage and played the lead in the original production of Sean O'Casey's "Red Roses for Me"--O'Herlihy wound up working with notables including Orson Welles, Gregory Peck and John Huston after being discovered by British director Carol Reed and cast opposite James Mason in the 1947 thriller "Odd Man Out." O'Herlihy joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre and played MacDuff opposite Welles' "Macbeth" in both the stage and (1948) screen version of the play. On the U.S. stage he also appeared in John Houseman's "Measure for Measure" in Los Angeles, "King Lear" at the Houston Shakespeare Festival and "Mass Appeal" at the Drury Lane Theatre, while on-screen he appeared with his 'Macbeth' co-star Roddy McDowall in a low-budget adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped."