Richard Aherne

Richard Aherne, born Vincent Richard Ahern on 19 March 1911 in Dublin, Ireland, was an Irish actor who worked across stage and screen for several decades. The son of William Ahern and Mary Brophy Ahern of Ross, County Meath, he built a career that spanned Broadway, Hollywood films, and international productions. He is sometimes credited under the name Richard Nugent.

Aherne's Broadway career ran from 1938 to 1951 and included appearances in Paint Your Wagon and Bright Rebel. His stage work placed him among the performers active on Broadway during a particularly fertile period for American musical and dramatic theatre.

His film work began in the early 1940s and encompassed a wide range of roles. In 1943 he appeared in Sahara as Captain Jason Halliday and took an uncredited part in The Purple V as a British radio operator in Africa. The following year brought several further credits, including the role of Bates in The Pearl of Death, Sergeant O'Farrell in The Master Race, and an unbilled appearance in The Story of Dr. Wassell. He played Emil Miller in the 1946 production Of Human Bondage and Sean Regan in the 1948 Irish film My Hands Are Clay. In 1949 he portrayed Vicente Yáñez Pinzón in Christopher Columbus.

Aherne continued working in film through the 1950s, with appearances in D-Day the Sixth of June, Pardners, Around the World in Eighty Days, and The Buster Keaton Story, in which he played the role of Franklin. His final screen credit came decades later with Death Wish 4: The Crackdown in 1987, where he played the character Nathan White.

Aherne died on 8 June 2002 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 91.