Mick Lally

Mick Lally was an Irish actor of stage, film, and television who left a teaching career in the 1970s to act. Born in Tourmakeady, he began with Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe and was one of the founders of the Druid Theatre Company, earning an Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards nomination for The Dead School. He joined the Field Day Theatre Company and starred in its 1980 premiere of Brian Friel's Translations, and first appeared at the Abbey Theatre in 1977 in Wild Oats. On television he starred in The Ballroom of Romance in 1982, then played farmer Miley Byrne in Glenroe from 1983, a part he had played earlier in Bracken and for which he won a 1979 Jacob's Award. His films included The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), Circle of Friends (1995), and A Man of No Importance (1994), and he voiced Brother Aidan in The Secret of Kells, the Academy Award-nominated animated film. He died in 2010.