memory lane

Description

Roisin Duffy meets the inspirational Gladys Sheehan. I have posted this documentary as a tribute to this wonderful woman who inspired and nurtured me as a young filmmaker with two kids and mounting debts. Gladys passed away last Saturday 30th March 2013. She was ninety-two years old and still teaching drama. Farewell Glad, may you rest in peace. Eighty-seven years old Gladys Sheehan may be an unlikely calendar girl but when the calendar is a fundraiser for cancer support and when you still look as glamorous as you did forty years ago why not flaunt it! Gladys' philosophy is simple -'people grow old way before their time. ‘I've no great secret, I just get out and enjoy life, and take everyday as it comes'. Gladys has juggled family and career for over seven decades and is still going strong. She runs a drama school for children from a small studio at the back of her house and believes that it is this hands-on contact with younger generations that keeps her going because despite her energetic bubbly character Gladys has had many tragedies in her life. Three of her children were born with disabilities as a result of blood transfusions. Two are dead now but her youngest son, Dara, who is profoundly deaf, still lives with her. Gladys was one of the first campaigners for the National Association for the Deaf. She fought a hard campaign to get 'car fanatic' Dara a haulage license. Gladys' eldest son, Fintan, a cameraman with the BBC, died tragically at a young age only months after the death of her husband, Paddy. Gladys picked herself up after this double blow, 'I had three children with special needs dependant on me! What else could I do?' Apart from raising her family and running a drama school, Gladys also had a life as a glamorous actress, starring in one hundred and twenty films. In this documentary she brings us down memory lane to the Studios at Ardmore where she recounts her meetings with Sean Connery, Robert Mitchum and Gabriel Byrne. Her indomitable spirit is an inspirational to anyone of us striving to cope with family, career and personal difficulties. To meet Gladys Sheehan is to sip the tonic of one genuine Leading Lady.