Bairbre Dowling

Bairbre Dowling was an Irish actress of stage, screen and radio. Born in Dublin to the actors Vincent Dowling and Brenda Doyle, she started as a child actor in Dementia 13 (1963), the first film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Irish viewers knew her as Josie Tracy in the RTÉ serial The Riordans, a part she played from 1965 to 1979, and she played Margaret Flaherty for PBS in Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. Later films included John Boorman's Zardoz (1974), John Huston's last film, The Dead (1987), and War of the Buttons (1994). She also guested on ER, Murder, She Wrote and Star Trek: Voyager. On stage she joined the Abbey Theatre company in 1970, and in 1979 she made her Broadway debut in Da, Hugh Leonard's Tony Award winning play. She appeared in more than 70 professional stage and radio plays, including radio recordings with the California Artists Radio Theatre. She died in 2016.