Patrick Bedford, who died on November 21st, aged 67, was a Dubliner who worked in Dunlop's as a youth, developing an enthusiasm for the theatre through amateur drama.
After he auditioned for Hilton Edwards and Micheal MacLiammoir he became a full-time professional actor, ever-present in their plays at the Gate Theatre.
His first role was as the son, Sean, in Maura Laverty's play about Dublin life in the early 1950s, Tolka Row.
Initially he tended to be cast in revivals. He played in many of the parts originated by MacLiammoir because of his physical resemblance to him, but it was felt by some that he lacked the weight and experience for them.
However, in time he grew into an accomplished actor, with a special talent for character and comic parts. He played many notable roles, including Napoleon in Shaw's The Man of Destiny, and Bluebeard in the same playwright's Saint Joan.
He was also in Orson Welles's Shakespearean production, Chimes at Midnight and was the psychiatrist in Peter Shaeffer's Equus, a role he was playing at the Gate on the night of Micheal MacLiammoir' s death.
He appeared with great success in The Voices of Shem, adapted for the stage by Mary Manning from Joyce's Finnegans Wake. In between times he appeared in revue, in Gaiety pantomimes and in scripts by Hugh Leonard on British television.
It was his creation of the part of Gar Public, one of the two heroes of Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come! in the 1960s, which propelled him onto the New York stage.
Donal Donnelly, who played the other half of the character, Gar Private, had by coincidence shared his desk when they were both in primary school at Synge Street. Brought over by the impresario David Merrick, the play became the first major Irish hit of the post-war era on Broadway, running for two years, and subsequently touring all over America.
He is remembered as intrinsically a very kind man. He could make a sharp remark, but it would also be followed by his special laugh to take the harm out of it.
For a time he was, in theatrical parlance "hot", with many parts in films, theatre and television being offered to him.
In 1967 he appeared in the film Up the Down Staircase about teachers in a New York slum school, but it was not a success and he didn't enjoy the experience.
He also toured the US for two years with the musical 1776.
He returned to Ireland briefly to do a play, Noone, by Joe O'Donnell, at the Gate Theatre, and then went back to New York, complaining of high tax rates in this country. But it was harder for him to get good parts in the US.
He was also bedevilled by an actor's nightmare, a failing memory. He found it more and more difficult to learn lines, so that for the past few years he was virtually in retirement.
On the death of Edwards and MacLiammoir, he and the architect Michael Scott were left their shares in the Gate Theatre and when the ownership of that theatre became a trust, he was named as a trustee.
He took great pride in the Gate's success in recent years, and frequently returned to Dublin, where he had bought a house.
However most of his time was spent in New York with his companion, the American journalist and critic Patricia O'Haire, and it was there that he died in hospital after a five-week illness.
He is survived by his sisters Alice and Cora and brothers John and Fred.
Patrick Bedford: born 1932; died November, 1999