Character actor Thomas Patrick McKenna was born in Mullagh, County Cavan, Ireland in 1929. A prolific theatre actor throughout his career, he made his stage debut in 'Summer and Smoke' by Tennessee Williams at the Pike Theatre in Dublin, 1954.
He made his film debut in 1960s IRA-Nazi drama The Night Fighters, and from this uncredited beginning he moved up to tenth billed in The Siege of Sidney ...
show all Character actor Thomas Patrick McKenna was born in Mullagh, County Cavan, Ireland in 1929. A prolific theatre actor throughout his career, he made his stage debut in 'Summer and Smoke' by Tennessee Williams at the Pike Theatre in Dublin, 1954.
He made his film debut in 1960s IRA-Nazi drama The Night Fighters, and from this uncredited beginning he moved up to tenth billed in The Siege of Sidney Street in the same year. His next major movie was in 1964's The Girl With the Green Eyes, by which time he had started a successful television career.
He made his TV debut in Espionage in 1963 and over the new few years appeared in several more TV shows. His versatility enabled him to play three characters in The Avengers. He also featured in classics of their time such as Adam Adamant Lives!, Dixon of Dock Green and The Saint.
Meanwhile his film career was devloping along literary lines, having featured in Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow (1962), Sean O'Casey biopic Young Cassidy (1965) and Joyce's Ulysses (1967). He took smaller parts in epics The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969).
British movies Perfect Friday (1970) and Villain (1971) allowed him to showcase his suave, urbane persona before trying something different in the controversial Straw Dogs (1971). He appeared alongside a young Anthony Hopkins in 1974's All Creatures Great and Small before featuring with John Gielgud for the second time in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977). Over the next few years his co-stars were as diverse as Leonard Rossitter, Britannia Hospital (1982), Timothy Dalton, The Doctor and the Devils (1985), Ben Kingsley, Pascali's Island (1988) and Dolph Lundgren, Red Scorpion (1989). Not all of these films were successes but McKenna was always good value for money and developed themes of his, such as an interest in Irish issues, in The Outsider (1979). His last film to receive a cinema release was 1989's Valmont, unfortunately completely overshadowed by Dangerous Liasons of the year before, which was based on the same novel.
Over the years there have been copious guest appearances in TV series such as Minder, Casualty, Lovejoy, Inspector Morse, Heartbeat and Ballykissangel. McKenna has also been prominent in TV movies and series, featuring in Dickens's Bleak House, Stendahl's The Scarlet and Black and most recently 2001's Henry James adaptation The American.
McKenna is up there with the greats of character acting from Lionel Jeffries to Dennis Price, Richard Wattis, Wilfred Hyde-White and John Le Mesurier.
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