DUBLIN (AP) — Irish character actor David Kelly, who played Grandpa Joe in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and motorcycled naked in “ Waking Ned Devine,” has died. He was 82.
His family and friends said Kelly died Sunday in Dublin after an acting career on stage, film, TV and radio that spanned a half-century. His cause of death was not announced.
Kelly was best known in Ireland for his 1980 depiction of doomed tenement dweller Rashers Tierney in the historical miniseries “Strumpet City” and for his large body of work as a Dublin stage actor in the 1950s and 1960s.
British and Irish TV viewers also could recognize his face and bony frame from short, usually comedic turns on myriad soaps and sitcoms, most memorably as a workdodging Irish builder opposite John Cleese in a 1975 episode of “Fawlty Towers.” He also played a dim-witted, one-armed dishwasher in the late 1970s British sitcom “Robin’s Nest.”
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