Born: July 26th, 1961
Died: April 20th, 2025
Martha O’Neill, the award-winning film and television producer who founded the Wildfire Films production company, has died at the age of 63 following a short illness.
The Dublin-born independent producer of documentaries, TV drama and feature films was widely respected not only for her passion for storytelling, but also for her pivotal roles in supporting the growth of the Irish film industry over the last four decades.
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Among the many awards she won, the CIRCOM Award for Best European Drama, for her production of Grace Harte for TG4 in 2018, stands out. The Irish language three-part drama series centred around a love triangle which ends tragically. The CIRCOM is the professional association of regional public service television stations in Europe.
Her most recent feature film was Stolen (2023), a critically acclaimed documentary on mother and baby homes in Ireland, directed by Margo Harkin.
O’Neill’s earlier film credits include The Last of the High Kings (1996) and Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000). The Wildfire Film productions that O’Neill was centrally involved with include Fairy Wife – the Burning of Bridget Cleary (2005); About Beauty (2008); Rough Rider (2014); Hidden Impact: Rugby and Concussion (2015), and Town of Strangers (2018).
O’Neill also produced a series of documentaries with the Galway-based theatre company, Druid. These include DruidSynge, recordings of the six plays of JM Synge, and DruidShakespeare about Druid’s production of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V.
Committed to developing the infrastructure of the Irish film industry, O’Neill served as a member of the board of the Irish Film Institute (IFI) from 1988-2005 and was its chair for five years. She was also on the board of Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland – then known as the Irish Film Board/Scannán na hÉireann – from 2001 to 2005. For 16 years, she was a director of Cinemobile 2000, Ireland’s mobile cinema which brought the big screen experience to small towns that didn’t have a cinema.
Colleagues described her as generous, warm-hearted, good-humoured, an engaged listener and a much appreciated mentor to young filmmakers. Highly motivated and driven by her passion for film, she was practical and pragmatic. “She was good craic but you wouldn’t mess with Martha O’Neill,” says Adrian McCarthy, who worked with her in Wildfire Films in Dame Street, Dublin, for over 20 years.
A city girl at heart, Martha loved working in the centre of Dublin, around the corner from the IFI in Eustace Street, Temple Bar and never far from the action or from her home off the South Circular Road in Dublin.
Martha O’Neill was the middle child of five to parents Kathleen and Dan O’Neill. She grew up in Orwell Gardens, Rathgar and attended St Louis High School, Rathmines. As teenagers, she and her sister Sinéad were members of Young Dublin Singers, singing in Jurys Irish Cabaret and at the Gaiety pantomimes while Maureen Potter was at the helm. “Martha was clever and was always very quietly confident. She had a superb work ethic from an early age,” says her older sister, Anne O’Neill.
After her Leaving Certificate, she worked in various jobs before deciding that she wanted to go to college to study film. Lelia Doolan and Michael Morris had just set up the first Irish course in media communications at the College of Commerce in Rathmines, so she enrolled. Afterwards, she worked for a number of years in Filmbase, the pioneering training and facilities resource centre for independent filmmakers in Temple Bar, Dublin.
When Doolan was making the film Reefer and the Model with Joe Comerford in 1987, O’Neill took on the role as trainee assistant director. “She was up for any job with great good humour and a witty quip – a lovely sense of the daftness of life. But she was personally very unshowy,” Doolan recalls.
After that stint of working on a film, her future was sealed as her enthusiasm for everything to do with making films in Ireland grew. The 1990s was an exciting yet precarious time for Irish filmmakers, but O’Neill was able to handle the uncertainty. Former film and broadcasting lecturer, Patsy Murphy, says she had a clarity of vision and a steely sense of purpose, at a time when not many women were working at that level of the industry.
She worked as locations manager on Far and Away (1992), the romantic adventure drama starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman which was partly shot in Ireland. For Little Bird Films, she produced On Home Ground, an eight-part series about a fictional GAA club (2001).
Her personal life was transformed when she met Garry Hynes, artistic director of Druid Theatre. “She had a new glow and a spring in her step,” recalls McCarthy. O’Neill and Hynes were married in a civil ceremony at the Druid Theatre in Galway in December 2014. The couple lived off the South Circular Road in Dublin and were joined in the last few years by their much loved Parson Russell terrier, Ladeen.
At the time of her death, she was working with a number of writers on various TV drama projects.
Martha O’Neill is survived by her wife, Garry Hynes, her siblings Anne, David, Eoin, Sinéad (Moyles) and Valerie O’Riordan, and extended family.
