Micheál Mac Liammóir

Micheál Mac Liammóir (born Alfred Lee Willmore; 25 October 1899 – 6 March 1978) was an actor, designer, dramatist, writer, and impresario in 20th-century Ireland. Though born in London to an English family with no Irish connections, he emigrated to Ireland in early adulthood, changed his name, invented an Irish ancestry, and remained based there for the rest of his life, successfully maintaining a fabricated identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.

With his partner, Hilton Edwards, and two others, Mac Liammóir founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin, and became one of the most recognisable figures in the arts in twentieth-century Ireland. As well as acting at the Gate and internationally, he designed numerous productions, wrote eleven plays, and published stories, verse and travel books in Irish and English. He wrote and appeared in three one-man shows, of which The Importance of Being Oscar (1960) was the most celebrated, achieving more than 1,300 performances.

Mac Liammóir was born Alfred Lee Willmore, in Willesden, in north-west London, into a family with no Irish connections. He was the youngest child and only son of Alfred George Willmore (1863–1934), a forage buyer for the firm of Whitney's of Bayswater, and his wife, Mary, née Lee (1867–1918).

He attended primary school in Willesden and then attended a children's theatre academy run by Lila Field. He became a professional actor at the age of twelve; his sister Marjorie took charge of his general education and was his chaperone on tours that included visits to venues in Ireland as well as Britain. He made his debut in 1911, as King Goldfish in Field's play The Goldfish, alongside another child actor, Noël Coward. He later said, "I learned from Lila Field the absolute ABC of getting on and off the stage without disgracing oneself; I learned what a cue meant, what a stick of greasepaint was, the elements of timing, and that ghastly thing, the exploitation of childish charm". In September of that year he first worked for Sir Herbert Tree, playing Macduff's son in Macbeth. From Tree he quickly learned "a rude lesson" that charm was not enough: "I think it was Tree who first awoke the actor's imagination in me and made me feel the terror of the Witches' Coven and the horror of the ghost-haunted banquet".

In the Christmas season of 1911, he played Michael Darling in Peter Pan, and in June 1912, he played Oliver Twist in Tree's revival of the stage version of the novel. After two further child roles, and appearances in four silent films (now lost) he temporarily abandoned acting. After a summer in Spain, visiting his grandparents and becoming fluent in Spanish, he studied painting at Willesden Polytechnic and then the Slade School of Art in 1915–16.

With a fellow student, Mary O'Keefe, he attended Irish language classes at the Ludgate Circus branch of the Gaelic League; the biographer Christopher Fitz-Simon thinks it probable that they saw plays by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge during the visits of the Abbey Theatre company in this period. Both students developed a keen interest in the Irish Literary Revival.

Mac Liammóir, now calling himself "Michael Willmore", made a brief return to the stage in February 1917, in Felix Gets a Month, a "whimsical comedy" at the Haymarket Theatre. The following month he went with O'Keefe and her mother to Ireland, the former having contracted tuberculosis and been prescribed "fresh air", the latter anxious to escape Zeppelin raids. Fitz-Simon suggests that Mac Liammóir's motive was to escape conscription into the army in the latter stages of the First World War.

In Ireland Mac Liammóir earned a modest living as a freelance illustrator for newspapers and books, acted from time to time, and designed for the Irish Theatre and Dublin Drama League. He assimilated himself into Irish culture and politics. He campaigned for Sinn Féin in the 1918 General Election, published his first book, a collection of stories in Irish, in 1922, and continued to write verse and prose in Irish and English. He experimented with various gaelicised versions of his name, including "Mac Uaimmhóir" and "Mac Liaimmhóir". He built up a fictitious identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.