"He was very frail but immensely bright," Michael Colgan says, recalling Sir John Gielgud on April 14th last, his 96th birthday.
Gielgud was taking part in his last acting role.
It was a silent part in Catastrophe, one of 19 film versions of Beckett plays, produced by Alan Moloney (of Parallel Films) and Colgan (artistic director of the Gate Theatre in Dublin).
"Mamet was directing the film, which starred Gielgud, Harold Pinter and Rebecca Pidgeon. It was a thrill to see these three legendary men working together, especially as we knew it would be the last work Gielgud would do," says Colgan.
"I had a nice chat with him on his birthday, the second day of the shoot, and he spoke well of Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, founders the Gate Theatre, with whom he had once worked. (He also directed Molly Keane's plays - another Irish connection).
"He said how much he admired John Hurt in Elephant Man, and regretted he had never seen Michael Gambon perform live on stage. He had an extraordinary interest in acting. "He was representative of acting in the 20th century in a way that we will never see again. He started as a child actor in around 1912.
"He was in the silent movies. He did the whole Shakespearean canon, as well as Coward and Pinter. He was in many of Peter Greenaway's films, and then he had that lovely cameo in Shine."
By the time he agreed to appear in Catastrophe, Gielgud had long since ceased stage work because the rigours of eight performances a week were too demanding.
He kept accepting film roles because "he wanted to keep working until the end, which he did," says Colgan.
"His partner died a year ago, and the spirit went out of him after that. But he had a good and full life, he was revered in his profession in the country he loved.
"He was in Broadway and on the West End, he was knighted, and he even had a theatre named after him. His last role, in Catastrophe, was a silent one and only involved a two-day shoot, but he was delighted to be acting in a film with Harold Pinter."