Stage, screen actor O’Shea dies at 86
Milo O’Shea, a versatile Dublin-born stage and screen actor known for his famously bushy eyebrows and his roles in such disparate films as Ulysses, Barbarella and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, has died. He was 86.
O’Shea, who also appeared in many popular television series, including Cheers, Frasier, The West Wing and The Golden Girls, died Tuesday in New York after a short illness, according to Irish news accounts.
Familiar both in starring and supporting roles, O’Shea appeared in numerous stage productions before coming to wider attention with his first leading screen role, when he played Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
O’Shea’s other memorable depictions included playing crazed scientist Dr. Durand Durand in the 1968 cult classic Barbarella with Jane Fonda, the well-intentioned Friar Laurence in Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and the cantankerous trial judge in the 1982 film The Verdict, starring Paul Newman.
He made his Broadway debut opposite Eli Wallach in the 1968 play Staircase, said to be perhaps the American theater’s first effort to depict homosexual men in a serious way. He was nominated for a Tony Award for that performance, as well as for his role as a complacent, luxury-loving priest in the 1981 play Mass Appeal.
Born June 2, 1926, in Dublin, Milo O’Shea was a child actor whose father was a singer and his mother a harpist and ballet teacher. He was just 12 when he began appearing in plays at Dublin’s well-known Gate Theatre.
O’Shea moved to the U.S. in 1976 and became an American citizen. He is survived by his wife, actress Kitty Sullivan, sons Colm and Steven from a previous marriage and a number of grandchildren.
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