Gary Lydon’s death at 61 feels like a light going out in the middle of a scene, just as the story was getting good. From London to Wexford, from Billy Roche’s plays to Spielberg’s War Horse, Brooklyn and The Banshees of Inisherin, he built a career on quiet intensity and emotional truth. Colleagues called him “one of the finest actors in Ireland” because he never seemed to be acting; he simply inhabited people we instantly believed.

Wexford Film Society’s tribute cut deepest: they reminded us he had just completed new work, including The Sandy Banks and One Sweet Hour, where he played an ageing Elvis impersonator. Those films will now arrive as posthumous echoes, proof of what he still had left to give. In the outpouring of messages – “so sad, so young,” “so reliable,” “God rest him” – there’s a shared realisation: we weren’t finished watching Gary Lydon, and we never will be.