Tributes have been paid to Joan O'Hara, known for her roll as Eunice Phelan in RTÉ soap Fair City, who died in Dublin earlier this week following a long illness.
The Sligo-born actor's career spanned seven decades on stage and screen and included film roles in She Didn't Say NO!(1958), Da(1988) and Far And Away(1992).
She first appeared on stage aged 14 as the lead in The Demon Piper, staged for the Sligo feis. She then became an Abbey player, starring in War, the Monsterin the National Theatre in 1949.
One of her other early appearance was in a walk-on role with Irish actors Anna Manahan, Maureen Toal and Angela Newman, in the early 1950s in a production of The House of Barnarda Alba, to which she returned to star at the Abbey Theatre in 2003 when it was adapted by her son, playwright and author Sebastian Barry.
She had a long association with RTÉ, beginning with her portrayal of Countess Markievicz in the 1966 production of Insurrectionand in the television series Teems of Timesin 1977. In 1978, she was in the Maeve Binchy drama Deeply Regretted By. The broadcast took awards at the Prague Television Festival, as well as two Jacob's awards.
In 1994, she starred in A Mother's Love is a Blessing, a play for television by novelist Pat McCabe, which won a special recommendation at the Prix Futura in Berlin. In more recent times she performed in Footfalls as part of the Beckett on Film series, commissioned by RTÉ.
She will perhaps be best remembered for her Fair Cityrole as the Phelan matriarch, which she played from 1994 until late last year. Niall Mathews, executive producer of Fair City, said the cast and crew were deeply saddened at her death.
"Her portrayal of the eccentric Eunice Phelan has endeared her to hundreds of thousands of viewers. She will be deeply missed by all who worked with her in RTÉ and by her host of fans."
O'Hara is survived by her children Siuban, Sebastian and Guy, brother Dermot and sister, harpist and singer Mary O'Hara.
