Ray McAnally (30 March 1926 â€" 15 June 1989) was an Irish actor. He
was the winner of four BAFTA awards in the late 1980s: twice for Best
Supporting Actor (for The Mission in 1986 and My Left Foot in 1989),
and twice for Best Actor in the television category (for A Perfect Spy
in 1988 and A Very British Coup in 1989). In 2020, he was listed at
number 34 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film
actors.Ray McAnally was born in Buncrana, a seaside town located on
the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland and brought up in
the nearby town of Moville from the age of three. The son of a bank
manager, he was educated at St Eunan's College in Letterkenny where he
wrote, produced and staged a musical called Madame Screwball at the
age of 16. He entered Maynooth Seminary at the age of 18 but left
after a short time having decided that the priesthood was not his
vocation. He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he met and married
actress Ronnie Masterson.McAnally and Masterson later formed Old Quay
Productions and presented an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s
and 1970s. He made his West End theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice
Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gave a well-received performance as George
in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at
the Piccadilly Theatre.On television he was a familiar face, often in
glossy thriller series like The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase and
Strange Report. In 1968 he took the title role in Spindoe, a series
charting the return to power of an English gangster, Alec Spindoe,
after a five-year prison term. This was a spin-off from another
series, The Fellows (1967) in which several episodes McAnally had
appeared as the Spindoe character. He could render English accents
very convincingly.
was the winner of four BAFTA awards in the late 1980s: twice for Best
Supporting Actor (for The Mission in 1986 and My Left Foot in 1989),
and twice for Best Actor in the television category (for A Perfect Spy
in 1988 and A Very British Coup in 1989). In 2020, he was listed at
number 34 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film
actors.Ray McAnally was born in Buncrana, a seaside town located on
the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland and brought up in
the nearby town of Moville from the age of three. The son of a bank
manager, he was educated at St Eunan's College in Letterkenny where he
wrote, produced and staged a musical called Madame Screwball at the
age of 16. He entered Maynooth Seminary at the age of 18 but left
after a short time having decided that the priesthood was not his
vocation. He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he met and married
actress Ronnie Masterson.McAnally and Masterson later formed Old Quay
Productions and presented an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s
and 1970s. He made his West End theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice
Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gave a well-received performance as George
in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at
the Piccadilly Theatre.On television he was a familiar face, often in
glossy thriller series like The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase and
Strange Report. In 1968 he took the title role in Spindoe, a series
charting the return to power of an English gangster, Alec Spindoe,
after a five-year prison term. This was a spin-off from another
series, The Fellows (1967) in which several episodes McAnally had
appeared as the Spindoe character. He could render English accents
very convincingly.
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