Pomona Rewind

  It doesn't seem fair that Glen Hansard's life should end at the age of 56. Fans of the Oscar winning Irish singer-songwriter, activist and occasional actor will feel cheated by his shock death in a motorbike accident because, even with his stellar career, it seemed he had much so more to give. Born in Dublin in 1970, music was in Glen's veins. Originally from the working class neighbourhood of Ballymun, his love affair with the artform began when an uncle left a guitar in the house. Getting into the music of Bob Dylan, he spent many hours in his home perfecting playing the legendary singer-songwriter's classics. At the age of 13, he started busking around Dublin and playing in bands -while immersing himself in the music of Dylan, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. One of his contemporaries as a teenager was the future movie director John Carney who played bass guitar and who he would later recruit as a member of his band, The Frames. Leaving...

  There was something wonderfully no nonsense about Brenda Fricker. The first Irish actress to bag an Oscar, she never let her head be turned by success in Hollywood. She called things as she saw them and was quite happy to turn her back on luxury homes in London, LA or her native Dublin, opting instead for a modest dwelling in her home city's inner city neighbourhood the Liberties. Born in Dublin in 1945, her mother Bina was a schoolteacher from Gneeveguilla in Co Kerry who specialised in languages and father Desmond was a journalist with The Irish Times and later the national broadcaster, RTE Brenda had an older sister and grew up in the Dublin neighbourhood of Dundrum. While publicising her very frank autobiography 'She Died Young: A Life in Fragments' in 2025, Fricker spoke honestly about being on the receiving end of her mother's volcanic temper which would result in beatings. Doctors later believed a brain tumour may have been the reason for Bina's irascibilit...

Some actors exude a sense of decency, even when they are playing deeply flawed people. Sam Neill was that kind of actor. Born into a British military family in Omagh in the west of Northern Ireland in 1947, he was very much seen as an Antipodean acting great - having moved to New Zealand with his family moved when he was seven. With roots on his father's side in Northern Ireland and an English mother, there was a definite Anglo Irish sensibility to him that audiences really responded to. Neill was wonderfully self-deprecating, modest, generous and supportive of other actors and performers. He was also, as many people have observed following his passing, a versatile and daring screen actor who was as comfortable in indie movies as he was in big budget TV dramas or major Hollywood blockbusters. Originally christened Nigel John Dermot Neill, his father Dermot was a New Zealander who served in the Royal Irish Fusiliers - a career which brought the family to Omagh. His mother Priscilla ...