Background
Ray McAnally was born in Buncrana, a seaside town located on the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland and brought up in the nearby town of Moville from the age of three. The son of a bank manager, he was educated at Saint Eunan"s College in Letterkenny where he wrote, produced and staged a musical called "Madame Screwball" at the age of 16.
Career
He entered a seminary at the age of 18 but left after a short time having decided that the priesthood was not his vocation. The couple would later form Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s and 1970s. He made his theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gave a well-received performance as George in Who"s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre.
On television he was a familiar face, often in glossy thriller series like Television series The Avengers, Manitoba in a Suitcase and Strange Report.
In 1968 he took the title role in Spindoe, a series charting the return to power of an English gangster, Alec Spindoe, after a five-year prison term. This was a spin-off from another series, The Fellows (1967) in which McAnally had appeared in several episodes as the Spindoe character.
He could render English accents very convincingly. His impressive performance as Cardinal Altamirano in the film The Mission (1986) earned him Evening Standard and British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.
He earned a second British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for his role in the British Broadcasting Corporation"s A Perfect Spy (1987).
McAnally died suddenly of a heart attack on 15 June 1989, aged 63 at his home which he shared with Irish actress Britta Smith. At the time of his death, he was due to play "Bulletin McCabe" in Jim Sheridan"s film The Field, the part eventually going to Richard Harris (who would receive an Oscar nomination for his performance). McAnally had also been cast in the lead role of First and Last, a drama about a man who walked from Land"s End to John o" Groats.
Filming was almost a third of the way done when he died, but the whole play had to be re-filmed, with Joss Ackland taking the role instead.
McAnally had four children: Conor, Aonghus, Máire and Niamh. Conor is a producer, based in Texas, and Aonghus is a television and radio presenter/producer in Ireland.