The theatrical pedigree of the genial Dubliner Harry Webster, who has died aged 84, went back to the Abbey Theatre of Sean O'Casey and WB Yeats, and to gruelling and fun days of the pre-television touring theatre that enlivened Irish rural life. One of life's natural character actors, he came to London in the mid-1950s and was regularly in work until a few years before his death.
Born into a professional family, Harry was lost to the medical profession when the Dublin college of surgeons sent him, as a student, to the Abbey Theatre to learn communications skills. He then shared a small house with Cyril Cusack, Denis O'Dea and Liam Redmond.
Having toured America in repertory, he worked with John Ford in Hollywood. Back in Europe, he worked with director Carol Reed in the Ireland-based James Mason thriller, Odd Man Out.
The raw stage remained his first love. His companionship backstage became as valuable to the company's morale as his dependability on stage. He helped nervous newcomers with stage anecdotes - such as how he spent a day in a pub with Laurence Olivier. He toured frequently, notably in the 1960s production of Brendan Behan's The Hostage, in which he played Pat, the brothel-keeper, a role he compared to that of a theatre manager.
In between tours and film stints, he lived for many years in a small flat in Notting Hill Gate, west London, where he helped found the Gate Theatre in 1980. At his wake, held at the Gate, and attended by the likes of Stephen Rea, David Halli-well and Brenda Fricker, a favourite line of Harry's was read, from the poet FR Higgins: "With whom he is one under yew branches/ In a graven silence no bird breaks."
• Harry Webster, actor, born February 19 1915; died December 26 1999