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Bairbre Dowling (27 March 195320 January 2016; age 62) was an Irish actress who played Edith Mulchaey in the Star Trek: Voyager sixth season episode "Spirit Folk".

Biography[]

Born as Barbara Patricia Dowling in Dublin, she would later adopt the Irish language version of her first name.

Her father was Vincent Dowling, a notable actor in Ireland and the USA. Vincent was director of Dublin's greatest theatre, the Abbey, and is also credited with discovering Tom Hanks. Her half-brother, through her father and the actress Sineád Cusack, was the Irish politician Richard Boyd Barrett, although this information was kept private until 2013, because this was by an extra-marital affair. Vincent was director of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, Ohio and Bairbre worked with him on this project from time to time.

Bairbe Dowling worked in the Abbey Theatre herself in the early seventies, appearing in The Becauseway (1970) and Rites (1973). She would continue to do stage roles - including on Broadway - for decades after that.

Dowling's first film appearance was in Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13 (1963) as a child. She later appeared in John Boorman's 1974 cult science fiction film Zardoz, starring Sean Connery, and a number of other notable Irish and British actors. This is commonly misquoted as being her film debut, whereas it was really her first film role as an adult.

In the 1990s, she made appearances on Murder, She Wrote (in an episode with Mark Rolston and Carolyn Seymour) and ER and had a small role in the 1997 film Changing Habits, starring Terri Garr, Bob Gunton, Anne Haney, and Christopher Lloyd. In 2003, she was seen on Crossing Jordan with Miguel Ferrer.

In Ireland, she was known for a long-running role in RTÉ's soap opera The Riordans.

Colm Meaney[]

She was married to Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actor Colm Meaney from 1977 until their divorce in 1994. While married, the couple appeared together in the 1983 television movie Playboy of the Western World as well as John Huston's 1987 film The Dead and the 1994 drama War of the Buttons. They also shared the stage in And a Nightingale Sang in 1985.

They had a daughter, Brenda, in 1985.

Dowling died after a short illness on 20 January 2016. [1]

External links[]

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