Irish character actor Milo O’Shea dies in NYC at age 87; played roles on stage, screen and TV

NEW YORK, N.Y. – The Irish actor Milo O’Shea, whose many roles on stage and screen included a friar in Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” an evil scientist in “Barbarella” and a Supreme Court justice on “The West Wing,” has died in New York City. He was 87.

Ireland’s arts minister, Jimmy Deenihan, said in a statement announcing O’Shea’s death on Tuesday that the Dublin-born actor would be remembered for “ground-breaking” roles, including a performance as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film adaptation of “Ulysses.”

O’Shea also acted on Broadway, playing a gay hairdresser in 1968’s “Staircase.” He was nominated for Tony Awards twice.

The public knew O’Shea best as a character actor. His bushy eyebrows and white hair made him a favourite of casting directors looking for priests. He played a drunken one on the TV show “Cheers,” a pedophilic one in the 1997 film “The Butcher Boy,” a charming one in the 1981 Broadway play “Mass Appeal,” as well as the tragedy-enabling Friar Laurence in “Romeo and Juliet.” He was a judge in the film “The Verdict.”

His loony turn as the pleasure-obsessed scientist Durand Durand in the 1968 science fiction romp “Barbarella” inspired a British rock group to name its band after his character. Duran Duran also put him in a concert video.

O’Shea moved to the U.S. in the mid-1970s and was a longtime resident of New York.