More than just a character actor

More than just a character actor


His Career
Anton McNulty

WHILE he is best remembered for playing Wicklow farmer, Miley Byrne during the long running RTÉ series, Glenroe, Mick Lally proved to be more than a one character actor and was a star of the screen and stage.
He first made his name as a stage actor in Galway while working as a secondary school teacher where he played in the Taibhdhearc theatre for some years. His acting career could have finished before it started had he decided to go to work in England in the summer of 1975 as he had originally planned. Instead along with Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen, he co-founded the Druid Theatre in Galway, the first professional theatre company in Ireland to be based outside Ireland.
Their staging of The Playboy of the Western World, where Mick played the character of Christy Mahon brought them national success and Garry Hynes described Mick as her hero and said the Druid was in shock at his passing.
“Mick Lally was a man without measure. He was my hero and I looked up to him. Druid owes everything to him. If he hadn’t agreed to join Marie and me in the summer of 1975 then Druid would not have existed. Everyone at Druid has lost a colleague and dear friend,” she said.
He went on to become one of Ireland’s most celebrated and iconic stage actors and secured a part in the premiere of Brian Friel’s play ‘Translations’ in Derry in 1980.
He rose to wider national prominence when he first played his most famous character of Miley Byrne in the television series, Bracken. In 1983, Bracken gave way to Glenroe but Lally retained his role as Miley who became a central role in the soap which ran from 18 years.
He later stared in the BBC series, Ballykissangel before landing a role in the TG4 series Ros na Rún where he played businessman Eamon de Faoite in 2008 and 2009.
Lally also starred in Oliver Stone’s blockbuster, Alexander alongside Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie and more recently he provided the voice of Brother Aidan in the Oscar-nominated animation, The Secret of Kells. In 1977, he also starred in Poitín, the first feature film to be made entirely in Irish starring Niall Tóibín and Cyril Cusack.
Earlier this year, Lally received rave reviews alongside his former Glenroe co-star, Mary McEvoy, when they performed John B Keane’s The Matchmaker in the Tivoli Theatre.