David Kelly
Birthday: Born in 1929-07-11 in Dublin, Ireland
Deathday: 2012-02-12
David Kelly (July 11, 1929 – February 12, 2012) was an Irish actor who had regular roles in several film and television works from the 1950s onwards. One of the most recognisable voices and faces of Irish stage and screen, Kelly was known for his roles as Rashers Tierney in Strumpet City, Cousin Enda in Me Mammy, the builder Mr O'Reilly in Fawlty Towers, Albert Riddle in Robin's Nest, and Grandpa Joe in the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Another notable role was as Michael O'Sullivan in Waking Ned Devine.
TV Credits
Fawlty Towers
Character: O'Reilly
Owner Basil Fawlty, his wife Sybil, a chambermaid Polly, and Spanish waiter Manuel attempt to run their hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding guests....
Whoops Apocalypse
Character:
Whoops Apocalypse is a six-part 1982 British sitcom by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, made by London Weekend Television for ITV. Marshall and Renwick later reworked the concept as a 1986 film of the same name from ITC Entertainment, with almost completely different characters and plot, although one or two of the original actors returned in different roles. The series has a big cult audience, and copies of videos are heavily sought after. The British budget label Channel 5 Video released a c...
Heartbeat
Character: Pa Deighton
Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines....
Citizen Smith
Character: Paddy
Classic BBC comedy starring Robert Lindsay as revolutionary leader Wolfie Smith of the Tooting Popular Front. Hoping to emulate his icons, Wolfie forms the Tooting Popular Front with a small group of his friends. However, he soon finds himself struggling to get his ambitious plans off the ground due to his laid back attitude and lack of organisation....
The Irish R.M.
Character:
The Irish R.M. refers to a series of books by the Anglo-Irish novelists Somerville and Ross, and the television comedy-drama series based on them. They are set in turn of the 20th century west of Ireland....
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Character: Tavernkeeper
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The longest-running primetime series in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning during 1951 and continuing into 2013. From 1954 onward, all of its productions have been shown in color, although color television video productions were extremely rare in 1954. Many television movies have been shown on the program since its debut, ...
Yellowthread Street
Character:
Yellowthread Street is a 1990 ITV police drama about detectives of the Royal Hong Kong Police based on the novels by William Leonard Marshall. In the Yellowthread Street series, the detectives of the Yellowthread Street police station in fictitious Hong Bay, Hong Kong -- DCI Harry Feiffer, a European born and raised in Hong Kong; Senior Inspector Christopher O'Yee, half-Chinese, half-Caucasian American, and all neurotic; and the ever-bickering team of Inspectors Auden and Spencer -- attempt to ...
Public Eye
Character:
Public Eye is a British television series that ran from 1965 to 1975. It was produced by ABC Television for three series, and Thames Television for a further four series. The series depicted the investigations and cases handled by the unglamorous enquiry agent Frank Marker, an unmarried loner who is in his early forties when the series begins. In the words of an ABC trailer for the third series: "Marker isn't a glamorous detective and he doesn't get glamorous cases—he doesn't even get glamorous ...
Robin's Nest
Character: Albert
Robin's Nest is a British sitcom starring Richard O'Sullivan as Robin Tripp, one of the lead characters in the sitcom, Man About The House, which had ended on 7 April 1976. It aired for six series from 11 January 1977 to 31 March 1981, and co-starred Tessa Wyatt as Robin's girlfriend - and later wife - Vicky, and Tony Britton as her father. It was made by Thames Television and aired on ITV....
The BBC Television Shakespeare
Character:
The BBC Television Shakespeare is a series of British television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, created by Cedric Messina and produced by BBC Television. It was transmitted in the UK from 3 December 1978 to 27 April 1985 and spanned seven series. Development of the series began in 1975 when Messina saw that Glamis Castle would make a perfect location for an adaptation of Shakespeare's play As You Like It. On returning to London, he envisioned an entire series devoted exclusivel...
Scarlett
Character: Hall Porter
Scarlett O’Hara’s flight from the scrutiny of Atlanta society takes her on a journey to Savannah and Charleston, to England, and to Ireland, where she discovers her family's roots....
BBC Play of the Month
Character: Mr. Casey, Director of College
Play of the Month is a BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays which were usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983; the producer most associated with the Play of the Month was Cedric Messina. Some of the 121 episodes are missing from the archives, having been junked in the 1960s and 1970...
Oh, Father!
Character:
Dominic has left the monastery and become a Roman Catholic priest. Sequel to the sitcom Oh, Brother....
Strumpet City
Character: Rashers
Strumpet City was a 1980 television miniseries produced by Irish broadcaster RTÉ, based on James Plunkett's 1969 novel Strumpet City. It was RTÉ's most ambitious and expensive production to date. The script was written by Hugh Leonard, and Peter O'Toole played James Larkin, the union leader....
The Adventurer
Character: Carlson
The Adventurer is an ITC Entertainment TV adventure series created by Dennis Spooner that ran for one season from 1972 to 1973. It premiered in the UK on 29 September 1972. The show starred Gene Barry as Gene Bradley, a government agent of independent means who poses as a glamorous American movie star....
2point4 Children
Character: Paddy
They're just your average family. Stressed mum Bill, daft dad Ben, and two troublesome teens. Plus just a few crazy ideas, escapades and mishaps. The classic 90s sitcom....
Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks
Character: Captain Cumara (voice)
The adventures of Piggley, a spunky eight-year-old pig, and his friends Dannan the Duck and Ferny the Bull on Raloo Farm in Ireland....
The Gentle Touch
Character: Dooley
The Gentle Touch is a British police drama television series made by London Weekend Television for ITV which ran from 1980-1984. Commencing transmission on 11 April 1980, the series is notable for being the first British series to feature a female police detective as its leading character, ahead of the similarly themed BBC series Juliet Bravo by four months....
Cowboys
Character: Wobbly Ron
Cowboys is a British sitcom that aired on the ITV network during the early 1980s. The show was created by Peter Learmouth whom would go on to create Granada television sitcom Surgical Spirit and starred Lancastrian Character-actor Roy Kinnear as Joe Jones "whose small building firm hardly seems to do anything right at all" with co-stars David Kelly as 'Wobbly' Ron, "Oscar-Winning Writer" Colin Welland as Geyser and James Wardroper with Debbie Linden and Janine Duvitski. The show is based on th...
The Glums
Character: Tattooist
The Glums began as part of the 1950s radio show 'Take It from Here'. The characters were revived in 1978 as part of the 'Bruce Forsyth's Big Night' variety show, and a complete independant series was transmitted in the following year....
The Last of Summer
Character: Corney Kernahan
A French actress returns to her Irish roots during the last summer before World War II. While there, she must come to grips with her family and the love of two men. Television adaptation of Kate O'Brien's 1943 novel of the same name....
The Wednesday Play
Character: Finbar
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen....
Play for Today
Character: The Judge
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration....
Armchair Theatre
Character: Cloggy Moore
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968....
Armchair Theatre
Character: Joe
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968....
Play for Today
Character: Mark
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration....
The Wednesday Play
Character: Miko
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen....
Armchair Theatre
Character: 'Dead Man' Sweeney
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968....
Armchair Theatre
Character: Totterdel
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968....
General Electric Theater
Character: (uncredited)
General Electric Theater is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations....
Movie Credits
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Character: Grandpa Joe
A young boy wins a tour through the most magnificent chocolate factory in the world, led by the world's most unusual candy maker....
Waking Ned
Character: Michael O'Sullivan
When a lottery winner dies of shock, his fellow townsfolk attempt to claim the money....
Billy Budd
Character:
A version of Benjamin Britten's opera based on the Melville story. Will the virtuous young sailor Billy Budd be hanged for murder?...
Joyriders
Character: Daniel
The growing relationship of two people who travel through Ireland in a series of stolen cars....
The Matchmaker
Character: O'Connor
Marcy, a worker in the reelection campaign of bumbling Senator John McGlory, is sent to Ireland on a quest to find the Irish ancestry of Sen. McGlory, to help him win the Irish vote. But when Marcy arrives in the small village of Ballinagra, she finds herself in the middle of a matchmaking festival, and the local matchmaker is determined to pair her off with one of the local bachelors....
Into the West
Character: Grandfather
Accused of a crime they didn't commit, two city kids and a magical horse are about to become the coolest outlaws ever to ride Into The West....
Greenfingers
Character: Fergus Wilks
Clive Owen stars as a prison inmate who goes into an experimental "open" prison where the inmates walk around freely and get job training for their impending releases. While there, he discovers he has a talent for growing flowers. His talent is recognized by a gardening guru who encourages him and four other inmates to enter a national gardening competition...
Mean Machine
Character: Doc
Disgraced ex-England football captain, Danny 'Mean Machine' Meehan, is thrown in jail for assaulting two police officers. He keeps his head down and has the opportunity to forget everything and change the lives of the prisoners. When these prisoners have the chance to put one over the evil guards during a prison football match, Danny takes the lead....
The Kovak Box
Character: Frank Kovak
David Norton is used to being in control. As a best-selling author, he decides the fate of his characters, their lives and their deaths. But what happens when his fictional world becomes all too real?...
Girl with Green Eyes
Character: Ticket collector
A naive young country girl moves to Dublin and finds herself drawn to a sophisticated author twice her age....
Moondance
Character:
The close relationship between two fun-loving brothers comes under threat when a beautiful, sensitive girl arrives on the scene. As the younger brother comes of age, the inevitable jealousy, confusion, rivalry and lust place their brotherly love in jeopardy....
The Wrong Man
Character: Policeman (uncredited)
In 1953, an innocent man named Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero is arrested after being mistaken for an armed robber....
The Purple Taxi
Character: Little Person
With his mauve taxi, the old philosopher Dr. Seamus Scully runs around the small green roads of the south of Ireland, becoming confident of his patients, while trying to help them find their way....
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Character: Dean of Studies
Bosco Hogan plays Joyce's alter-ego, Stephen Daedelus, growing up in Ireland in the early part of the 20th century, and at odds with the strictures of his Catholic home and family. The film charts his search for knowledge and understanding, during a decline in his family's circumstances, that leads him to revelations on the nature of art, beauty and politics. However his personal renaissance makes him feel unwelcome in his own country, and forces him to make a choice between exile as artist or s...
Mystics
Character: Dave
A black comedy about two old-time conmen who pretend to be able to communicate with the dead....
Rough for Theatre I
Character: A
An old blind beggar and an old cripple in a wheelchair meet on a desolate street corner. The latter proposes that the two form an alliance, but the men are not destined to get along together....
The Run of the Country
Character: Father Gaynor
An Irish lad who fled from his oppressive, widowed father falls for a girl from an affluent family....
Stardust
Character: Guard
In a countryside town bordering on a magical land, a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm. His journey takes him into a world beyond his wildest dreams and reveals his true identity....
A Man of No Importance
Character: Christy Ward
Alfie Byrne is a middle-aged bus conductor in Dublin in 1963. He would appear to live a life of quiet desperation: he's gay, but firmly closeted, and his sister is always trying to find him "the right girl". His passion is Oscar Wilde, his hobby is putting on amateur theatre productions in the local church hall. We follow him as he struggles with temptation, friendship, disapproval, and the conservative yet oddly lyrical world of Ireland in the early 1960s....
Fawlty Towers: Re-Opened
Character: Self / Mr O'Reilly
30 years after Fawlty Towers (1975) ended, Stephen Fry narrates a documentary about the making of this classic sitcom....
The Calcium Kid
Character: Paddy O'Flannagan
When milkman Jimmy Connelly accidentally puts Britain's contender for the World title out of action, he is propelled from amateur boxer to the world stage and announced as the replacement contender for the championship fight....
The Jigsaw Man
Character: Cameron
Philip Kimberly, the former head of the British Secret Service who defected to Russia, is given plastic surgery and sent back to Britain by the KGB to retrieve some vital documents. With the documents in hand, he instead plays off MI6 and the KGB against each other....
Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
Character: Trival
With all-new gadgets, high-flying action, exciting chases and a wisecracking new handler, Derek (Anthony Anderson), Cody has to retrieve the device before the world's leaders fall under the evil control of a diabolical villain....
The McKenzie Break
Character: Adjutant
A German U-Boat commander plans a daring escape from a PoW camp in Scotland....
Pirates
Character: Surgeon
The adventures of pirate Captain Red and his first mate Frog....
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx
Character: Maguire
In Dublin, a working class family has been unsuccessful in convincing their son to get a real job: the son prefers his job of scooping up horse's dung and selling it for flower gardens. An American exchange student almost runs him over and gets to know him. The dung man has ignored warnings from his family and suddenly the horses have been banned from Dublin. His new love is leaving for America and he must find a way to cope with the new reality....
The Italian Job
Character: Vicar
Charlie's got a 'job' to do. Having just left prison he finds one of his friends has attempted a high-risk job in Torino, Italy, right under the nose of the mafia. Charlie's friend doesn't get very far, so Charlie takes over the 'job'. Using three Mini Coopers, a couple of Jaguars, and a bus, he hopes to bring Torino to a standstill, steal a fortune in gold and escape in the chaos....
Ordinary Decent Criminal
Character: Fr. Grogan
Michael Lynch is a notorious criminal with two wives and a flair for showmanship. He's also a huge embarrassment to the local police, who are determined to bring him down once and for all....
Ulysses
Character: Garrett Deasy
Dublin; June 16, 1904. Stephen Dedalus, who fancies himself as a poet, embarks on a day of wandering about the city during which he finds friendship and a father figure in Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged Jew. Meanwhile, Bloom's day, illuminated by a funeral and an evening of drinking and revelry that stirs paternal feelings toward Stephen, ends with a rapprochement with Molly, his earthy wife....
Red Monarch
Character: Sergo
British comedy satirising Stalin's inner circle as an absolute monarchs court. In the face of rampant abuse of power and poisonous distrust some still manage to keep faith with the Bolshevist creed until the very end. In front of the firing squad a stalwart bolshevist of the first hour exclaims: "Even in the best democracy errors are being made!"...
Puckoon
Character: O'Toole
Spike Milligan's book about the divided Irish village of Puckoon comes to the big screen....
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Character: Tavernkeeper
Quasimodo, the hunchback bellringer of Notre Dame's cathedral, meets a beautiful gypsy dancer, Esmeralda, and falls in love with her. So does Quasimodo's guardian, the archdeacon of the cathedral, and a poor street poet. But Esmeralda's in love with a handsome soldier. When a mob mistakes her for a witch, it's up to Quasimodo to rescue her and claim sanctuary for her in the cathedral....
The Light Princess
Character: Oracle (voice)
Based on a short story by George MacDonald, a princess experiences constant weightlessness....
The Quare Fellow
Character: Reception Clerk
Thomas Crimmins is a new warder, or guard, in an Irish prison. He is young, naive, and idealistic, determined to serve his country by his part in meting out justice to criminals. His superior, Regan, however, realizes that even prisoners are human beings, and Regan is sick of the eye-for-an-eye attitude that leads the state to execute condemned men, or "quare fellows." Crimmins begins to see that not all is black and white in his new world, and when he becomes involved with Kathleen, the wife of...
Anne Devlin
Character: Dr Trevor
The story of Anne Devlin, who was caught up in the revolt of the Irish under Robert Emmett in 1803, told exclusively from the woman's point of view....
The Comedy of Errors
Character: Balthazar
Aegeon of Syracuse has come to Ephesus to seek his son, who went in search of his missing twin and mother months ago. Too bad that Ephesus has just declared war on Syracuse, and will instantly put to death any Syracusean found within their borders unless a ransome's paid. Meanwhile, the son, Antipholus, and his servant, Dromio (also an identical twin), keep running into strangers who seem to know them......
The Legion Hall Bombing
Character: Judge
The story of the trial of Willie Gallagher, convicted of bombing the Strabane British Legion Hall in Northern Ireland, 1976. The transmission of this film was postponed by the BBC several times, and when it did finally air, it was shown with cuts; the writer, Caryl Churchill, and director, Roland Joffé, had their names removed from the credits in protest....
Laws of Attraction
Character: Priest / Michael
Amidst a sea of litigation, two New York City divorce lawyers find love....
Fugitive
Character: Mark
After 18 years as a friar, Peter is no longer sure of his vocation. It is a happy life, maybe too much so, and now he has met Clare. Will his doubts run away with him? Runaway friars are officially "fugitives" who must be persuaded back to their order. Author Sean Walsh fled the Franciscan order to become first a journalist, then a playwright and is now a radio drama producer in Ireland....
Philadelphia, Here I Come
Character: Conan O'Byrne
Friel contrasts Gar's cloistered emotional life with his gregarious social persona by portraying him as two distinct characters, a public self (Donal McCann) and a private self (Des Cave)....
Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width
Character: Murphy
Two London tailors horse around, wind up robbed, go to Rome and disrupt the Vatican....
Dublin Nightmare
Character: Customer
Loot goes missing in robbery double-cross. Gang members, an ex-lover and a handsome stranger are left to sort it out....