Tom Hickey Wiki – Tom Hickey Biography
Tom Hickey was an Irish actor who appeared on stage and screen in a career that started in the early 1960s. He was best known for playing Benjy Riordan in the long-running television series, The Riordans. His career started in 1963 at Deirdre O’Connell’s Stanislavski Studio in Dublin where he trained in Stanislavski’s system of acting. He said that he saw his choice of profession as a “vocation”, having decided to become an actor when he was five or six years old. In 1965, he joined the cast of RTÉ television’s new rural drama series, The Riordans. He went on to play the part of Benjy Riordan in the successful serial for the next sixteen years. In 2001, he made a rare venture into television advertising with his appearances in a series of commercials for Club Orange, a soft drink. The first of these was directed by Declan Lowney, the director of Father Ted. Lowney also directed Moone Boy, a Sky television series in which Hickey played Granddad Joe.
On stage, he favored parts in the work of modern Irish playwrights such as Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness, Bernard Farrell, and Marina Carr. In the early 1980s, the playwright Tom MacIntyre asked him to play the lead role in his adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh’s poem The Great Hunger. Following the success of that collaboration, he has become an acclaimed interpreter of MacIntyre’s work, in such plays as Rise Up Lovely Sweeney, The Gallant John Joe, and What Happened Bridgie Cleary. As a character actor, he appeared in numerous films, including My Left Foot, Fools of Fortune, Gothic, Inside I’m Dancing, Stella Days, Breakfast on Pluto, and Possession. He has also cast in two of director Lenny Abrahamson’s films: Garage and What Richard Did.
Tom Hickey Age
He was born Thomas Hickey in 1944, in Kildare, Ireland and died on May 1, 2021 in Ireland.
Tom Hickey Family
Tom Hickey had a very private lifestyle. However, according to his death announcement, he had a son named Lee, brothers named Kieran, Tim, and John B, and sisters Phyl and Anne-Marie.
Tom Hickey Death
Hickey died peacefully on Saturday, 1 May 2021 at Orwell Private Nursing Home, Rathgar, surrounded by his loving family. President Michael D Higgins led tributes to the actor whose death has been announced. The President described him as one of the greatest actors of his generation, who he said left an indelible imprint on Irish theatre.
Tom Hickey Cause of Death
The cause of his death has not been revealed. However, he had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease since 2013.