Gregory Peck, Oscar-winning film star and one of the last great actors from the "Golden Era" of Hollywood movies, died peacefully overnight at his Los Angeles home at the age of 87, his spokesman said yesterday.
The career of the tall, handsome star spanned 52 movies, including such classics as Roman Holiday, Spellbound and Moby-Dick, which was partly filmed in Youghal. He was nominated for an Oscar five times and won an Oscar for his role in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Born in California in 1916, Gregory Peck was related through a grandparent to Thomas Ashe, who took part in the 1916 Rising and died while on hunger strike in 1917.
His father, son of an Irish immigrant mother, was a pharmacist and his mother came from Missouri. His parents divorced when he was six, and at 10 he was sent to a Roman Catholic military academy in Los Angeles, where he was indoctrinated by "tough Irish nuns".
"I had that stubborn streak, the Irish in me I guess," he once said.
The star maintained a close relationship with Ireland, and in 1997 he was named Irish-American of the Year by Irish America magazine in New York. In an interview with Irish America, he said that President Lyndon Johnson told him that if he had served a second term he would have nominated the actor as ambassador to Ireland. Mr Peck said he probably would have accepted. "It would have been a great adventure."
In April 2000, at the age of 84, he was made a Doctor of Letters of the National University of Ireland. In the ceremony at Iveagh House, UCD president Dr Art Cosgrove said he was "one of the greatest names to come out of Hollywood" who would always be remembered for his "classic portrayal of a Lincolnesque lawyer" in the 1962 To Kill a Mockingbird.
As a founding patron of the UCD School of Film, he persuaded the director Martin Scorsese to become an honorary patron.
Just six weeks ago, Mr Peck attended the launch in Beverly Hills of the John Huston School of Film and Digital Media, named after the late Irish-American film-maker, of which he was a patron.
A life-long Democrat, he was once tipped as a challenger for governor of California against Ronald Reagan. He produced an anti-Vietnam war film in 1972, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.
His spokesman said: "He had just been getting older and more fragile. He wasn't really ill. He just sort of ran his course and died of old age."
Mr Peck was married twice and had five children.