Skibbereen-born movie star Moore dies

A SKIBBEREEN-BORN actor who once scaled the heights in Hollywood, starring alongside such immortals as Vivien Leigh and Burt Lancaster has died.

Kieran Moore, whose real name was Ciarán Ó Annracháin, was born in Skibbereen on October 5, 1924.

The son of a nationalist writer, Moore was educated in Dublin and first trod the stage boards at the Little Peacock and Abbey Theatre.

A producer persuaded him to abandon his medical studies at University College (Dublin) and to join the Abbey full-time.

After a stint there Moore went to England where he appeared in theatre as Heathcliff and then as an IRA gunman in his first film role The Voice Within in 1945.

His big breakthrough came when he played Count Vronsky, opposite Vivien Leigh, in the 1948 remake of Anna Karenina.

Hollywood moguls then cast him alongside Burt Lancaster in Ten Tall Men and as Uriah the Hittite in David and Bathsheba.

He returned to England where in 1953 he played a deaf, dumb and blind murder suspect in the 1953 film The Green Scarf and two years later in The Blue Peter.

Further roles followed including parts in the sci-fi killer plants film The Day of the Triffids (1962), alongside Janette Scott; The League of Gentlemen (1961) and Custer of the West (1966).

He then branched out into television with appearances in the series The Saint — alongside Roger Moore and Tony Curtis — and in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

In later life he joined the Catholic charity CAFOD, touring the Middle East and making documentaries about Senegal and Peru.

He made documentaries for RTÉ about the Blasket and Aran Islands, providing voice-overs in Irish and English.

Moore retired to Charante Maritime in France where he died last Sunday, aged 82. He married the actress Barbara White and had four children.