Patrick Joseph Magee (Irish: Pádraig Seosamh Mac Aoidh;blank">http://www.hoganstand.com/general/identity/names.htm born 1951 ) is a former member (volunteer) of the _Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), best known for planting a bomb in the Brighton's Grand Hotel, targeting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet, which killed 2 men and 3 women. He is sometimes referred to as the Brighton bomber.
Patrick Magee (31 March 1922 – 14 August 1982) was a Tony Award winning Northern Irish actor best known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as his appearances in horror films.
He was born Patrick McGee in Armagh Northern Ireland (later changing his name to Magee for the stage), and attended St. Patrick's Roman Catholic College. His first stage experience in Ireland was with Anew McMaster's touring company, performing the works of Shakespeare. It was here that he first worked with Pinter.
He was then brought to London by Tyrone Guthrie for a series of Irish plays. In 1957 he met Beckett and recorded some of his prose for BBC radio. Beckett was so excited with his voice that he wrote Krapp's Last Tape especially for him (it was filmed by the BBC in 1972). Beckett's biographer Anthony Cronin wrote that "there was a sense in which, as an actor, he had been waiting Beckett as Beckett had been waiting for him."
In 1964 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Pinter, directing his own play The Birthday Party, specifically requested him for the role of McCann, and stated he was the strongest in the cast. In 1965 he appeared in Marat/Sade, and when the play transferred to Broadway it won him a Tony Award. He also appeared in the 1966 RSC production of Staircase opposite Paul Scofield.
Early film roles included Joseph Losey's The Criminal (1960) and The Servant (1963), the latter written by Pinter. He also appeared in Zulu (1964), Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), and the film versions of Marat/Sade (1967) and The Birthday Party (1968). But he is perhaps best known for his role as the victimised writer Mr. Alexander in Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange.
He went onto appear in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), but was most often seen in horror films. These included Roger Corman's The Masque of Red Death (1964), and Monster of Terror (1965) for AIP; The Skull (1965), Tales from the Crypt (1972) and Asylum (1972) for Amicus; and Demons of the Mind for Hammer.
He was married to Belle, a girl from his home town Armagh, and they had twins Mark and Caroline, who were born in London in February 1961. Always known as a heavy drinker, Magee died of a heart attack in 1982 at age 60.
Born in Armagh, Northern Ireland, Patrick Magee is a classic example of how certain actors rate the stage far more highly than the screen. Magee was well aware that the vast majority of the films that he appeared in were dreadful (he mostly played sinister villains in horror films), but the money came in very handy in financing his distinguished stage work (he was a favourite actor of Samuel Beckett one of whose greatest plays, 'Krapp's Last Tape', was written specifically for him). However, he did do some outstanding work on film, most notably in Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, A (1971) as the crippled writer Mr.Alexander, and also in Joseph Losey's Servant, The (1963), Peter Brook (I)'s Marat/Sade (1967) and William Friedkin (I)'s Birthday Party, The (1968). He also appeared in films by such cult directors as Roger Corman, Lucio Fulci and Walerian Borowczyk.
