EILEEN POLLOCK
Born May 18th, 1947
Died December 19th, 2020
Eileen Pollock helped redefine the Northern Ireland theatre scene of the 1980s and starred in movies such as Angela’s Ashes and Far and Away, but it was her portrayal of Lilo Lil in Bread that she will be best remembered for.
Born in north Belfast to businesswoman Maura Keaney and police officer William Pollock, she had her first experience of theatre when her parents took her to a pantomime as a young child. Reflecting on the experience years later, she remembered thinking no ordinary person like her could ever be on the stage.
She attended Dominican College in Fortwilliam Park and decided to become a translator. While she was studying languages in Queen’s University Belfast, she discovered the drama society. However, it didn’t divert her from her chosen career, and she moved to London to work as a translator, achieving a translator diploma from Holborn College. She once joked that she could have become a Eurocrat with a Porsche in every European city had she continued with that work.
Eileen Pollock’s love of theatre drew her back to the stage and she got a job as an assistant stage manager at the Bush theatre. Her break came when she was asked to fill in for an actor who couldn’t go on stage. If she had any lingering thoughts of returning to translation work, they were now firmly dispensed with. She toured for several years with the Belts and Braces theatre company before becoming frustrated with the lack of women’s roles. To remedy this, she co-founded two feminist companies, Bloomers and Camouflage, and started writing her own material.
Collaboration
She returned to Northern Ireland when she could, and, in her first collaboration with the Field Day theatre company, she played Masha in Brian Friel’s reworking of Three Sisters, at Derry’s Guildhall in 1981. She would go on to work with Field Day again in 1987, in Stewart Parker’s Pentecost, and in 1989 when she played Lady Wilde opposite Stephen Rea in Saint Oscar.
Other work in Northern Ireland included a UTV drama The Hidden Curriculum in 1984, the role of Lady Macbeth at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, the world premiere of Frank McGuinness’s interpretation of The House of Bernarda Alba, and several plays with the Charabanc and DubbelJoint companies.
Her career took a major leap forward in 1987 when she took the part of Lilo Lil in Bread, the BBC hit comedy that centred around the Liverpudlian Boswell family. Lilo Lil was having an affair with Freddie Boswell but was never seen on camera until writer Carla Lane decided to include her in one episode.
Writing in the Guardian after her death, actor and friend Peter Barnes said Lilo Lil was originally written as a native Liverpudlian. Eileen tried out her Scouse accent on a taxi driver but when he asked what part of Australia she came from, she decided to stick to an Irish accent.
Eileen's poignant performance as Sally Hannigan suggested a whole life in just a few minutes of screen time. What seemed effortless was of course due to her preparation, intelligence and imagination
Bread attracted up to 21 million viewers at the peak of its popularity and she played the role until the series ended in 1991. While Lilo Lil was famous for her liaisons in Freddie’s allotment shed, the actor liked to defend Lil’s honour. “While Freddie Boswell had two women, and his wife – who I call Fluffy Knickers – had a man friend, Lillian O’Leary remained a one-man woman. So, who among the three of them was the tart?” she asked the Northern Echo in 2004. She also said it was wonderful to still be recognised as Lilo Lil, years after the show ended.
Solo show
During breaks while filming Bread, she took on the role of Mother Jones, the miners’ champion, in a one-woman play in 1989. She would return to a solo show almost two decades later when she brought her solo show Now I’m Sixty to Liverpool.
On the big screen, she had small roles in the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman vehicle Far and Away, Angela’s Ashes, Wild About Harry and A Love Divided, but her sister Natalie said stage work was her “absolute passion both as a performer and member of the audience”.
Television had provided her big break and she would return to the small screen on many occasions, playing roles in series such as Taggart and The Bill. Irish director Charlie McCarthy said he was lucky to have worked with her when she took on a small role in Pure Mule, the award-winning drama written by Eugene O’Brien. “Eileen’s poignant performance as Sally Hannigan suggested a whole life in just a few minutes of screen time,” he said. “What seemed effortless was of course due to her preparation, intelligence and imagination.”
In the early 2000s, she threw herself into pantomime roles, moving seamlessly between good fairies and wicked witches. Among her final pieces of work were a short film Make Aliens Dance in 2017, and Love Type D, which premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2019.
She had suffered ill-health in recent years and died peacefully at home on December 19th, after a day spent reciting poetry with a friend.
Eileen Pollock is survived by her sister Natalie Briggs, nieces Sarah and Deborah, and extended family.