Celine Cawley, who was murdered in her Howth home last Monday, was ambitious and tenacious. But what her friends remember most is her loyalty and generosity
CELINE CAWLEY WOULD probably have had a sharp word or two to say about the spate of headlines this week reducing her life's achievements to "former Bond girl". The woman who founded Toytown Productions 16 years ago and made it one of the largest Irish commercial production companies in a ruthlessly competitive, male-dominated industry, might also have had a word to say about the pieces portraying her as a woman of leisure living in a luxurious home overlooking Dublin Bay, cruising around Howth peninsula in her blacked-out 4x4, pottering around art galleries, sailing, horse-riding and playing tennis. The comments followed her murder in her Howth home in Dublin on Monday.
One who knew her well laughs wryly at the idea of Cawley playing tennis or having the time to pootle around galleries. "I can't imagine her playing tennis. And I neversaw her in an art gallery. She was a big, hard-working, very ambitious woman who set up that company herself, bought that house herself, made her own contacts, and wanted the very best for Georgia [her daughter] . . . The yacht club and the rest would have been a way of expanding her daughter's social circuit."
Her "Bond girl" moment back in 1985 was literally that - a few seconds as a champagne-drinking, pretty brunette with the era's quintessential big hair, in A View to a Killwith Roger Moore. Meanwhile, she was working as a successful model, moving confidently between the fashion centres of the world, modelling for the likes of US Vogue, Christian Dior, Chanel and Cardin.
It may all have been rather passive for the energetic, straight-shooting young woman. Soon after the Bond moment, she moved behind the cameras and into the London production world, working on TV dramas such as London's Burningand Pulaski. Then she returned to Dublin, ready to start at the bottom. She got her first break in the commercials industry while working as a Windmill Lane receptionist when she was "quickly poached by a production-company client who spotted her true potential", according to Peter Brady of Windmill Lane Studios.
When she set up her own company, Toytown Films, she chose to base it in Windmill Lane, in a tiny office and with the same small team that included her husband, Eamon Lillis, Emma O'Beirne and a young Andy Bradford, fresh out of college in England. With them, she drove Toytown into the blue-chip league, with such clients as Carlsberg, Guinness, Volkswagen, Volvo, Renault, Esat, Eircom, Cadbury and McDonald's, producing high-quality TV commercials for the Irish, English, US and European markets. One of its memorable campaigns was for Walker Crisps, starring Roy Keane.
Despite the Bond girl/child of privilege tag, there was nothing high maintenance about the woman herself, says an old acquaintance. "She wore the same black shirt and baggy trousers, and always had the same hair-do. Celine's idea of getting dressed up was putting on a black velvet jacket. She would go into meetings exactly as she was; dogged, not giving a damn what people thought of her, wanting to do the best for her clients."
She was a child of James and Brenda Cawley, with three siblings: Barbara, who died after a long-term illness more than 10 years ago; Susanna, a lawyer married to Naas solicitor Andrew Coonan; and Chris, the executive chairman of advertising agency Cawley Nea/TBWA. Her father is solicitor James Cawley, whose name briefly appeared in planning-tribunal hearings three years ago, when he was described as a legal associate of Anthony O'Reilly and a member of the Fianna Fáil general election fund-raising committee through whom O'Reilly usually channelled his donations to the party at election times. Her mother died last year. "Celine was really, really close to her family. Her sisters were her best friends," says Helen Cody, the designer and stylist who worked with Celine for 14 years and became a close friend.
WHAT MIGHT BE described as "ambitious", "driven" and "single-minded" in a man can translate to "strident", "hard-nosed" and "ball-breaker" in a woman, a point amply demonstrated this week in the case of Celine Cawley. Her standards were high, she deemed nothing impossible and there is no doubt she could be difficult, says one who worked closely with her. "She really knew her business and she didn't suffer fools gladly . . . If she didn't like somebody or thought they weren't up to scratch, she wouldn't have them hanging around. She wasn't afraid to get rid of people. But she was no drama queen going around firing people either."
In the words of Helen Cody, she was a formidably strong, powerful, intelligent woman in a man's world, "where you're only as good as your last campaign. Advertising is a tough world and making television commercials is hard, hard work. The production company would be under incredible pressure to interpret a brief, to deliver a creative idea, to help develop a brand, maintain diplomatic relationships with a client, deliver on time and under budget if possible. It's a small pool in this country; you're constantly being watched and monitored to see that you're ahead of the curve. And Celine succeeded above everything else."
"It's a business where you have to be hard-nosed," says another former business associate. "You could have 60 to 80 people working on a production; it's a very unionised world, clocks are ticking and you have to make sure that no one is pulling a fast one. You can't be a softie, but you have to make sure that everyone stays with you too.
"There are times when you would have to ask crew like grips or truck drivers to give an extra hour or so at the end of the day and you would see Celine signing cheques at one o'clock in the morning so that the crews would go home happy . . . Celine Cawley would never have thought of herself as loved by everyone on the planet. There were personality clashes and in circumstances like that, if a client didn't work well with her, she would put Andy [Bradford] in as the face of Toytown. She knew where she was liked or not."
If she was hard-nosed, strident and driven, she also had an extraordinary gift for friendship, for loyalty, for recognising raw talent and nurturing it. "She was never patronising or demeaning, unlike many in the industry. She was a good businesswoman who recognised and respected creativity, gave responsibility beyond their years to people she had faith in, and she paid everyone properly," says a work associate.
John Hayes, one of the talents nurtured by Cawley (she produced Hayes's Two Fat Ladies, which won the Cork Film Festival award for best directorial debut in 2003), describes her as a "truly amazing woman". "She was such a big part of the lives of all the people who worked with her in Toytown . . . She was a great colleague, mentor and friend. She was generous, supportive, fiercely loyal and always at hand with good advice when it was needed. I'll miss her more than I can really put into words right now."
"She was an incredible, extraordinarily good and close friend, a proper, good friend in the true sense. I have so much to thank her for," says a distressed Helen Cody. "She could have invented the word loyal. Her whole life was nurturing talent. We christened her 'Mummy' in the office because she was such a good and caring person. There is no way she was a ball-breaker - she had people who stayed with her from the start of their careers. She was also an incredible mother, she absolutely adored Georgia, and she was a loyal wife."
In a tribute on the Irish Film and Television Network website, John McDonnell of Fantastic Films, a close friend and colleague of Cawley's, also recalled her "huge influence" on his career and how they called her "Mum". "She was a unique person with a heart of gold. I will miss her."
