{"id":510799,"date":"2026-06-21T08:09:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T08:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510799\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T08:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T08:09:21","slug":"actress-mary-mcevoy-looks-back-on-her-glenroe-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510799\/","title":{"rendered":"Actress Mary McEvoy looks back on her Glenroe days"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actress Mary McEvoy has said that there was “a chasm of understanding” between her and her late father as her career took off on long-running RT\u00c9 television drama Glenroe.<\/p>\n

Appearing on tonight’s episode of Museum of Me on RT\u00c9 One, McEvoy (70), who is best known for playing Biddy Byrne on Glenroe from 1983 to 2000, said that she and her father, Larry, who was a sheep farmer, didn\u2019t speak about her work.<\/p>\n

“He did watch Glenroe. But it was such a strange world to him, like he never asked me about it, and my mother wouldn’t ask me about it,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t fight with my father or anything like that, but there was definitely a chasm of understanding, you know, and there was a lot of things that he didn’t understand and wasn’t going to understand, and sometimes quite rightly about modern life.”<\/p>\n

\"Mary
\nMary’s parents, Larry and Catherine<\/p>\n

She added, “He was literally Victorian, born in 1899, and I was born on the cusp of modernity here in Ireland.”<\/p>\n

McEvoy is the latest guest on Museum of Me, which is hosted by Dermot Whelan and sees well-known faces revisit their past and choose significant family heirlooms to tell their story.<\/p>\n

The Westmeath-born actress\u2019s extensive stage work incudes roles in Big Maggie, Sive, Shirley Valentine, The Matchmaker, The Year of the Hiker, and Dancing at Lughnasa.<\/p>\n

However, it was her portrayal as Biddy that made her a household name in Ireland in the eighties and nineties.<\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/p>\n

Speaking about her parents, she said, “I didn’t volunteer any information really, but they liked the fact that Glenroe was a farm. They liked that, they liked that it was portraying farming life.<\/p>\n

“Any time I ever left, you know, for a period of time in terms of going to Dublin for the first time and then I came home for a while, and then I went back up again, and that’s when I started the acting, I do know that my father would have preferred me to be here than there.<\/p>\n

“It broke his heart, it broke his heart. I have got lots of regrets, but I think that’s the nature of the beast. That is grief, and there comes with regrets, do you know what I mean? But now I kind of can let it go. I feel that whatever they are now, or whoever they are now… They’re okay with me, I think.”<\/p>\n

\"Miley
\nMick Lally and Mary McEvoy on Glenroe<\/p>\n

Asked what her relationship with her mother Catherine, who was the local district nurse, was like, she said, “We were two fiery women, you know, so there was plenty of sparks between us.<\/p>\n

“She didn’t regret getting married, I don’t think, and I don’t think she regretted having me, but I do think she was frustrated because her calling was nursing, and she loved it. She really loved it.”<\/p>\n

On tonight\u2019s episode, the actress also reveals that she “always had a battle with getting real Mary seen rather than the fictitious character that I played.”<\/p>\n

Museum of Me airs on Sundays at 8:30pm on RT\u00c9 One and RT\u00c9 Player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actress Mary McEvoy has said that there was “a chasm of understanding” between her and her late father…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-510799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}