Ardal O'Hanlon
Ardal O'Hanlon (; born 8 October 1965) is an Irish comedian and actor. He played Father Dougal McGuire in Father Ted and George Sunday in My Hero.
Biography
Early life
O'Hanlon was born in 1965 in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Ireland, the son of Rory O'Hanlon, an Irish politician and doctor, and has five siblings. RTÉ's Who do you think you are? programme on Monday 6 October 2008 examined Ardal's family tree. He discovered that his paternal grandfather, Michael O'Hanlon, a UCD medicine student, had joined the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and was a member of Michael Collins's squad which assassinated British secret service agents on the morning of Bloody Sunday. Details of his grandfather's activities survive in UCD Archives, as well as Blackrock College. It also transpired that on his mother's side he was a close relative of Peter Fenelon Collier, the founder of Collier's Weekly and Collier's Encyclopedia.
O'Hanlon was schooled in Blackrock College in Dublin and graduated, in 1987, from the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin (now Dublin City University) with a degree in Communications Studies.