HUNDREDS OF mourners attended the removal of actor Anna Manahan in her home town of Waterford yesterday evening.
Manahan, whose 60 years in acting culminated in winning a Tony Award in 1998 for her performance in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, died on Sunday aged 84 after a short illness.
A guard of honour was provided for her by women from the Sacred Heart Active Retirement to mark her involvement with the elderly in the city and especially her role in founding the Golden Years Festival in Waterford city five years ago.
She was appointed the patron of Active Retirement Ireland in November and was vocal in opposing the Government’s plans to scrap the automatic entitlement to a medical card for people over 70.
Her parish priest and friend Fr Bernard Kennedy said Waterford, where Manahan was born and lived the last years of her life, was “the centre of her life and of her heart”. He said her life’s work had drawn people from all over the world who would be attending today’s funeral.
Chief mourners at last night’s removal in Waterford Cathedral were her brothers Val and Joe whom she lived with in her final years.
Fr Kennedy remembered her late husband, theatre director Colm O’Kelly who died while the couple were touring a production in Egypt more than 50 years ago. He also remembered her two brothers and one sister who predeceased her.
He said there was one “other important connection” – her cat Girlie. “Her care for all of God’s creation was significant,” he said and he remembered how confident she was that animals would go to heaven when they died. He said Manahan’s acting skills were honed from the “grit of life” and she had worked from the bottom up.
“She knew the bedsits which preceded the Tony nomination,” Fr Kennedy recalled.
He also described her as a woman of faith who frequently read from the Passion at Easter time and sought to bring the word of God alive.
“Anna believed in the empty tomb of the Resurrection and she believed the empty tomb could be filled by hearing the word take the place of the emptiness,” he said.
Among those who turned out last night were the theatre director Garry Hynes who directed The Beauty Queen of Leenane, in which Manahan starred. Hynes also won a Tony, the first time a woman has ever such an award for directing.
Dozens of people from the world of theatre and television are expected for the funeral which will be held at Waterford Cathedral with burial afterwards at St Mary’s Cemetery in Ballygunner.