Celebrity Biographies
Milo O’Shea
Milo O’Shea will remain in memory as the mad scientist Durand Durand, villain of “Barbarella”, the film starring Jane Fonda. The Irish actor has died at the age of 86 in New York, where he had lived since 1976, as a result of a short but serious illness, which has not been specified. He is survived by his wife, two children and his grandchildren.
Born in Dublin on June 2, 1926, Milo O’Shea received a Catholic education at the Christian Brothers school, where he began a friendship that would last over the years with fellow future actor Donal Donnelly ( Dubliners ) . When he was 12 years old, the manager of a theater company, who discovered him in a store, told him that he had great potential for the stage, so he became a child actor.
Milo O’Shea found success very soon on the Dublin scene, and managed to make an impact in London, with “Glory Be!”. After making his film debut with a brief role in Michael Powell ‘ s Spies at Sea , he became a celebrity in 1960s Britain when he starred in the television sitcom Me Mammy .
In 1967, Milo O’Shea played the legendary Leopold Bloom in Ulysses , with which the maverick Joseph Strick dared to take James Joyce ‘s emblematic novel to the cinema , considered totally unadaptable, although the film received mixed reviews. Next was Friar Lorenzo in Romeo and Juliet (1968) , by Franco Zefirelli, Barbarella ‘s Machiavellian doctor , the defense attorney for the protagonists of Sacco and Vanzetti , the judge of the excellent Final Verdict , along with Paul Newman , and a priest who is actually a character from a movie in The Purple Rose of Cairo, by Woody Allen .
Divorced from stage actress Maureen Toal –mother of his two children–, he joined another performer, Kitty Sullivan, whom he met when they were both participating in a production of My Fair Lady . The couple settled in the United States.
During the last years of his career, Milo O’Shea lavished himself as a secondary in successful television series such as The Golden Girls , Cheers , Frasier or The West Wing of the White House , where he made his last appearance on screen as a judge.