T. P. McKenna
Thomas Patrick McKenna ( born September 7, 1929 in Mullagh, County Cavan, Ireland, † 13 February, 2011 ) was an Irish actor.
Life
TP McKenna, who was an eminent theater actors in the course of his career, made his debut as a stage actor in 1954 at the Pike Theatre in Dublin in the play Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams. Since the late 1950s, McKenna worked as a film actor for the cinema and for television.
At McKenna's first film roles - his name was not mentioned in the credits though - 1960 was a small role in the gambling during the World War II film drama uprising at dawn, directed by Tay Garnett. In the aftermath McKenna was frequently occupied in literary adaptations or films with literary theme. He played in 1962 in The Quare Fellow, a screen adaptation of the play by Brendan Behan, 1965 in Cassidy, the rebel, a film adaptation of the autobiography Mirror in My House by Irish writer Sean O'Casey, and 1967, the role of Buck Mulligan in Joseph knits novel adaptation Ulysses. Smaller roles he had in 1968 under the direction of Tony Richardson in the adventure film The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1969 when Sir Henry Norris in the historical drama Queen of the Thousand Days.
In 1971, he played together with Dustin Hoffman in Sam Peckinpah thriller Straw Dogs. In 1977, he starred in the lead role of Stephen Dedalus at the side of John Gielgud in the film adaptation of the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Among his most enduring roles of the SS -Standartenführer Paul Blobel leader belonged in the miniseries Holocaust in 1978.
Also in the 1980s, McKenna played numerous film roles in films of different genres, so in 1988 with Ben Kingsley in the historical film The Forgotten Island or in 1989 with Dolph Lundgren in the action film Red Scorpion. In the literature, film Valmont, based on the novel Dangerous Liaisons, he took over 1989/1990, directed by Miloš Forman, the role of a vornehmens Barons.
Again and again played McKenna in movies with Irish background, so in 1980 in the drama betrayal in Belfast. In Ireland, McKenna is especially true as intense character actor for the roles and characters of James Joyce.