Donal "Donald" O'Brien (15 September 1930 – 23 April 2018) was an Irish film and television actor. In his near 40-year career, O'Brien appeared in dozens of stage performances and in more than 60 film and television productions.
O'Brien made his feature film debut in 1953 with Anatole Litvak's war drama Act of Love. He studied acting in Dublin and initially joined the Gate Theatre at age 19 before making the transition to film several years later. O'Brien's performance in The Train (1964), in which he played a Wehrmacht Feldwebel, led to his first break-out role in Grand Prix (1966) starring alongside James Garner and Eva Marie Saint.
He was particularly known for his performances in the Spaghetti Western genre of the late-1960s and '70s, with memorable roles in Run, Man, Run (1968), Four of the Apocalypse (1975), Keoma (1976), Mannaja (1977) and Silver Saddle (1978), as well as later appearances in Italian horror, post-apocalyptic, and zombie films. In 1980, O'Brien suffered a head injury which left him in a coma for three days and partially paralysed. Though eventually recovering from his injuries, his mobility was significantly limited for the rest of his life. In spite of this, O'Brien continued to work for another decade in the Italian film industry, almost exclusively for directors Lucio Fulci and Joe D'Amato. His last active years also included supporting roles in The Name of the Rose (1986) and The Devil's Daughter (1991).
Early life
O'Brien was born in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques in France on 15 September 1930. His Irish-born father had been a US Army cavalry officer and left the service after being wounded in the Spanish–American War. His father then returned to Ireland with the pension he received for his military service, sold the family farm and retired to the South of France where he eventually met and married an English governess. O'Brien's family moved around during the next few years before settling in the country's northern coast. During the Second World War, and the Nazi occupation of France, his family fled the country to Dublin, Ireland. It was during this period that one of O'Brien's brothers, among the dozen Irish volunteers serving in the Royal Air Force, was killed in action.
Growing up, he was a great admirer of fellow Irishmen William Butler Yeats and Michael Collins, the French adventurer André Malraux, composer Maurice Ravel, the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, German boxer Max Schmeling, English actor Sir Laurence Olivier and especially handicapped Second World War ace Douglas Bader.
Acting career
Early stage and film career
In the autumn of 1948, O'Brien attended grammar school in Dublin where he was studying for final exam. He sat for his matriculation, for "a first-class ticket" to university, but failed in mathematics. Instead of taking classes for another year, he decided instead to join a drama school. He received leading roles for several local stage performances and, after joining the Dublin Gate Theatre, was involved with productions headed by Irish dramatist Micheál Mac Liammóir. O'Brien's profile was significantly raised while with the Gate Theatre, however, he grew dissatisfied with continuously being cast in walk-on roles. He decided to move to France where found employment with the US Army in Paris as an office worker. O'Brien was part of a boxing club while in Dublin and later involved in a fight with a German all-in-wrestler at a café at Place Pigalle.
In 1953, the 23-year-old O'Brien made his first appearance in a feature film, Anatole Litvak's war drama Act of Love, in which he had a brief speaking role. He spent the next few years in France and had minor roles in several other films including The Wretches (1960), Saint Tropez Blues (1961), Dynamite Jack (1961), Tales of Paris (1962) and, in an uncredited role, as an English priest in The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962); he also made his French television debut guest starring on L'inspecteur Leclerc enquête. The following year, he had another brief role as a Wehrmacht Feldwebel in The Train (1964), which so impressed director John Frankenheimer that he cast O'Brien as a supporting character in Grand Prix (1966), his first break-out role, co-starring James Garner and Eva Marie Saint. O'Brien credited Burt Lancaster with helping himself and other younger actors on the set of The Train.
His later Grand Prix co-star James Garner, however, struck him as,