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Father Ted actor Frank Kelly dies

Irish actor Frank Kelly, who played foul-mouthed alcoholic priest Father Jack on much-loved comedy series Father Ted, has died.
The 77-year-old actor passed away on Sunday (28Feb16), less than four months after revealing he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was also thought to have been treated for skin cancer last year (15).
The details of his death have not yet been revealed, and the news comes exactly 18 years to the day that his Father Ted co-star Dermot Morgan, who played the title role on the 1990s sitcom, died from a heart attack at the age of 45.
Frank enjoyed a career spanning six decades with stints in television, radio, theatre and film. He played a prison officer in the 1969 movie The Italian Job, where he escorted Michael Caine’s character out of prison in the film’s opening sequence.
Frank was most recently cast in the long-running British TV series Emmerdale, on which he played the eccentric father of a local businessman. However, he quit the programme in 2010 after just five months as he missed his family in Ireland.
Discussing being diagnosed with the degenerative Parkinson’s disease in November (15), he told Irish TV channel RTE, “I’ve been working as an actor for over 50 years, and a shaky hand certainly won’t stop me.”

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