Mr. Toibin accepted his award for Best Actor at the European presentation of the CFT Excellence Awards which were held at the Unitarian Church of Dublin on the 29th of October 2002.
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Toibin noted, “This evening is full of odd coincidences. When the decision was made to use the Unitarian Church as the venue for this presentation, nobody knew that the basement of this building once housed a theatre, the Damer Hall which produced plays in the Irish language under the auspices of Gael-Linn, including the first production of Brendan Behan’s play “An Giall” which became an international success in an English version “The Hostage” and launched the tempestuous career of that gifted man.”
In a speech full of very funny anecdotes, Niall ended his remarks with these words:
“I recall one inspiring moment from 1961 in another production here. The director, Frank Dermody had a weakness for adjusting the on-stage lighting manually during the performance, always attired in a dark overcoat and hat and wearing heavy horn-rimmed spectacles.
On one occasion, the audience was quite puzzled by the intervention of his vaguely gangster-like figure....he paused in the wings to admire some singularly impressive aspect of my own performance and then roared his approval “Attaboy, Niall. By God, you are a most underrated actor!”
Is it any wonder that with this unambiguous endorsement ringing in my ears down the four decades in between that I should be collecting my just reward under the very same roof tonight.
Seriously folks, it is lovely to be honoured. Maybe I even deserve it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Niall Toibin has won the 2001 CFT Excellence Award as Best Actor in a Television Series for his portrayal of parish priest, Father Frank McAnally in the BBC’s drama, Ballykissangel.
