Donal McCann always dismissed the idea of having a career. "Life is a much better word," he once told The Irish Times, "because that's what it is in the end. You can't separate the actor from the person."
On that basis, McCann's life was a glittering success.
Over the past four decades, he achieved all an actor could have hoped for, on stage and screen, earning plaudits which he never sought nor dwelt upon.
Thirty-five years before being hailed "a world-class star" by Newsweek magazine, McCann was singled out for his acting ability in Terenure College, Dublin.
He inherited a love of theatre from his father, John McCann, a TD and former Lord Mayor of Dublin, whose plays delighted audiences at the Abbey in the 1950s.
In 1962, Donal himself starred in his father's Give Me a Bed of Roses in a production with the Terenure College Past Pupils' Dramatic Society.
After school, McCann studied architecture at Bolton Street but only for three months. He then turned to the Evening Press, where he worked for 18 months, mainly as a copy boy.
The flexible working hours enabled him to gain further experience on the boards as he spent his time shuttling between the newspaper offices and the Queen's Theatre. Formal training followed at the Abbey School of Acting under the late Frank Dermody and the Academy in George's Street.
His early successes on the Dublin stage came with appearances as Cuchulainn in Yeats's On Baile Strand in 1966, Waiting for Godot with Peter O'Toole, and in Hugh Leonard's The Au Pair Man.
Soon he was receiving offers for TV and stage work in London. In 1971, he starred in Prayer for My Daughter with Anthony Sher, with whom he shared many accolades. The two were hailed as bright prospects for the future.
His role as the dashing Phineas Finn in the TV drama The Pallisers projected him further into the limelight.
Likewise, he became instantly recognisable on the streets of Dublin after being cast as Mulhall in Strumpet City, one of the most successful drama series screened on RTE.
In 1980, McCann was lured back to the stage with Brian Friel's Faith Healer, one of the Ulsterman's most challenging plays.
McCann's mimicking skills made him well suited to O'Casey roles such as Fluther in Plough and the Stars and Captain Boyle in Juno and the Paycock, which he played with legendary ease in six highly successful productions, including a Broadway run.
His manic work-rate dropped a few notches in the mid-1980s as he became disenchanted for a period with his chosen life. His battle with drink - a battle which he eventually won - also began to take its toll. He bounced back with memorable performances as the rejected Gabriel in John Huston's film version of the Joyce story The Dead (1987), and in Joe Dowling's Gaiety Theatre production of Friel's Translations (1988).
Other film credits include roles in Cal, Out of Africa and Neil Jordan's High Spirits.
Colleagues of McCann talk of his loyalty, modesty and disdain for theatre's "luvvies", characteristics born from experience of the business' fickle side. This was demonstrated rudely to him in 1993 when Friel's Broadway performance of Wonderful Tennessee was withdrawn by nervous producers after only eight performances with McCann in the lead role.
The setback made McCann's return to Broadway all the more sweet when he mesmerised audiences with his performance as Thomas Dunne in Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom.
"A performance of unarguable greatness," commented the New York Observer, the New York Times hailing McCann as ". . . the astonishing Irish actor . . . widely regarded as the finest of them all".
As well as his talent, the theatregoing public warmed to his self-effacing nature and mild-mannered charm.
One tribute which remains vivid came from Newsweek. Of the reluctant celebrity, it remarked he had "an ego about one-twentieth the size of a Hollywood bit player".
