Fionnula Flanagan

Born: December 10 1941
Where: Dublin, Ireland

Although hailing from Ireland, Flanagan made a go of her acting career in the United States with appearances on TV and a less trumpeted film career.

After being educated at Dublin's celebrated Abbey Theatre School, she made her first film appearance in 1967 as Gerty McDowell in Joseph Strick's uneven version of James Joyce's Ulysses.

The following year she moved to America, where she made a name for herself on TV in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Rich Man, Poor Man and How The West Was Won.

She tended to specialise in mothers, playing parents to Keith Carradine in A Winner Never Quits and to Valerie Bertinelli in Young Love, First Love.

Her big screen career ranges from John Huston's Sinful Davy (1969) to (as a mum again) Molly Ringwald's mom in PK and the Kid and John Cusack's mother in Money For Nothing.

She had one of her best screen roles as a gruff Irish Catholic whose son is jailed in Some Mother's Son in 1996 and played Ian Bannen's wife in the genial comedy Waking Ned.

Her most recent success has been playing the creepy housemaid Bertha Mills opposite Nicole Kidman in the chillingly effective The Others.

She also stars as Teensy in the middling chick-flick Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood opposite Maggie Smith and Sandra Bullock.

Flanagan can next be seen with Bruce Willis in the action thriller Tears of the Sun about a special ops team smuggling refugees out of Nigeria.