Tom Hickey

Tom Hickey (1944 – 1 May 2021) was an Irish actor who appeared on stage and screen in a career that began in the early 1960s. He was best known for playing Benjy Riordan in the long-running television series, The Riordans. Early life Born in Kildare, Hickey began his career in 1963 at Deirdre O'Connell's Stanislavski Studio in Dublin where he trained in Stanislavski's system of acting. He said that he saw his choice of profession as a "vocation", having decided to become an actor when he was five or six years old. Television In 1965, Hickey joined the cast of RTÉ television's new rural drama series, The Riordans. He went on to play the part of Benjy Riordan in the successful serial for the next sixteen years. In 2001, he made a rare venture into television advertising with his appearances in a series of commercials for Club Orange, a soft drink. The first of these was directed by Declan Lowney, the director of Father Ted. Lowney also directed Moone Boy, a Sky television series in which Hickey played Granddad Joe.