Milo O’Shea, the Irish character actor, who has died aged 86, made his breakthrough from stage into films playing Leopold Bloom in the controversial 1967 adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
With what one admirer described as his “God-given gift of a pair of bushy black eyebrows that seem to have a life of their own”, O’Shea also starred in the 1960s BBC Television sitcom Me Mammy. In America, where he lived for nearly 40 years, he appeared in the hit comedy Cheers and the political drama The West Wing.
O’Shea memorably played a mad scientist in Roger Vadim’s fantasy Barbarella, and a paedophile priest in Neil Jordan’s 1997 film The Butcher Boy. He also deployed his considerable comic talents in character parts on the stage.
His most notable film role was as the cuckolded Leopold Bloom in Joseph Strick’s adaptation of Ulysses. Described as “unfilmable”, the novel had fomented controversy since its publication in 1922 .
Though the novel was never banned in Ireland, the film was prohibited for more than 30 years, being awarded a certificate only in 2000.
Co-starring Barbara Jefford as Bloom’s adulterous wife, Molly, the movie tracked Bloom’s circuitous odyssey around Dublin’s pubs and brothels. While critics complained that it failed to offer the flavour or power of Joyce’s novel, O’Shea himself turned in a compelling performance.
When the British Board of Film Censors demanded 29 cuts to remove strong language and sexual references, Strick replaced the offending scenes with blank footage and a soundtrack of shrieks. It was eventually passed uncut and given an X-certificate, one of the first films to feature the “f-word”.
Although a contender for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1967, Ulysses was dramatically withdrawn halfway through the screening when Strick realised that the French subtitles had been erased. He stormed up to the projection room and tried to switch off the film, and was thrown down the stairs, breaking an ankle.
Milo O’Shea was born on June 2 1926 in Dublin and educated at the Synge Street Christian Brothers School. Early acting successes at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, were repeated in London, where he made an impact in 1961 with Glory Be! at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East.
His success as Bloom in Ulysses led to a starring role on Broadway in the drama Staircase, an early attempt to depict homosexual men in a serious way, and he co-starred alongside Yootha Joyce in the BBC sitcom Me Mammy, which ran between 1968 and 1971.
Created by his friend Hugh Leonard, this series featured O’Shea as a lecherous company executive, Bunjy Kennefick, whose jet-setting bachelor lifestyle is hobbled by his moralising Irish Catholic mother, played by Anna Manahan (who was actually only two years older than O’Shea).
Meanwhile, his film career continued to thrive, with roles as the well-intentioned Friar Laurence in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and as the evil dictator Dr Durand Durand trying to kill Jane Fonda’s character by making her die of pleasure in Roger Vadim’s counterculture classic Barbarella (also 1968). In the 1980s O’Shea’s character inspired the name of the pop band Duran Duran, and in 1984 he reprised the role for the group’s concert film Arena.
In 1976 O’Shea moved to the United States, took American citizenship and became a familiar face in films and on television.
He took a memorable supporting role as the trial judge in the legal drama The Verdict (1982), starring Paul Newman , and on television was cast as the Chief Justice of the United States, Roy Ashland, in The West Wing. In 1992 he was a guest star in the final series of the sitcom Cheers .
Milo O’Shea’s first wife, the actress Maureen Toal, died last year. The couple divorced in 1974, and he is survived by his second wife, the actress Kitty Sullivan, with whom he appeared in a Broadway revival of My Fair Lady in 1981, and his two sons.
Milo O’Shea, born June 2 1926, died April 2 2013
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