AFP/Dublin


Maureen O’Hara, the flame-haired star of How Green Was My Valley and Miracle on 34th Street who was one of Ireland’s most successful acting exports, has died aged 95, her family and the Irish president said yesterday.
O’Hara, an iconic figure in Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1940s and 1950s who was once considered one of the world’s most beautiful women, also played a string of feisty women opposite John Wayne, including in The Quiet Man.
“I’ve always been a tough Irish lass,” she told the Daily Telegraph newspaper in a 2004 interview.
“I proved there was a bloody good actress in me. It wasn’t just my face. I gave bloody good performances.”
Her family said that the star, who had dual US-Irish citizenship and starred in over 60 films, died
at home in Boise, Idaho.
“It is with a sad heart that we share the news that Maureen O’Hara passed away today in her sleep of natural causes,” they said in a statement cited by The Irish Times newspaper.
“Maureen was our loving mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend. She passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated her life listening to music from her favourite movie, The Quiet Man.”
Known as “the queen of Technicolor” due to her red hair and green eyes, O’Hara was born in Ranelagh, south Dublin, in 1920.