Cyril Cusack

Cyril James Cusack (26 November 1910 – 7 October 1993) was an Irish stage and screen actor whose career extended across more than seven decades. Born in Durban, Natal, South Africa, to an Irish father — a mounted policeman in the Natal Colony — and an English Cockney actress mother, Cusack was taken to England and then Ireland after his parents separated. He was raised in County Tipperary and educated at Newbridge College in County Kildare before enrolling to study law at University College Dublin, which he left without completing a degree.

Cusack made his first stage appearance at age seven and his film debut at age eight, appearing in Knocknagow in 1918. He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1932, the same year he also became associated with the Gate Theatre company, and remained with the Abbey for thirteen years, performing in over sixty productions. He excelled particularly in the plays of Seán O'Casey, and his favored roles included The Covey in The Plough and the Stars and Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World, the latter of which he returned to numerous times throughout his career. He also appeared in works by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, including Katie Roche and The King of Spain's Daughter.

In 1947, Cusack established his own company, Cyril Cusack Productions, staging work in Dublin, Paris, and New York. That same year, his film career gained significant momentum when he played a wiry IRA getaway driver opposite James Mason in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out. Over the course of his screen career, Cusack worked with directors including Powell and Pressburger, Franco Zeffirelli, François Truffaut, Peter Brook, Peter Hall, Fred Zinnemann, and Anthony Harvey. He co-starred opposite Richard Burton on multiple occasions. In 1968, he took the title role in Galileo, the directorial debut of Liliana Cavani. Fluent in both English and Irish, Cusack had a leading part in Poitín, an Irish-language feature film released in 1977 or 1978. One of his final screen appearances came in 1989, when he played the elderly Dr. Spencer in Danny, the Champion of the World, alongside his son-in-law Jeremy Irons and his grandson Samuel.

Cusack joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in London in 1963, appearing with the company across several seasons, and also performed with the Royal National Theatre. His Broadway career included an appearance in 1957 in the drama A Moon for the Misbegotten. In 1963, he received a Jacob's Award for his performance in the Telefís Éireann production of Triptych. His final stage performance came in a 1990 production of Chekhov's Three Sisters, in which three of his daughters played the title roles.

Cusack was first married to actress Mary Margaret Kiely on 5 April 1945. Together they had five children: Paul, Sinéad, Sorcha, Niamh, and Pádraig. Following Maureen's death in 1977, he married Mary Rose Cunningham in 1979, with whom he had previously had a daughter, Catherine, born in 1968. Sinéad, Sorcha, Niamh, and Catherine all became actresses, making Cusack the patriarch of a prominent Irish acting family. He is also the maternal grandfather of actor Max Irons and Irish politician Richard Boyd Barrett. Cusack received honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland in 1977 and from the University of Dublin in 1980. He died at his home in Chiswick, Greater London, in October 1993, from motor neurone disease.