O'Casey, Eileen (1897–1995), actress, author, and wife of writer Sean O'Casey (qv), was born 27 December 1897 in Dublin, youngest among three children of Edward Reynolds , accountant, from Athlone, Co. Westmeath, and Kathleen Reynolds (née Carey), nurse, from Ballina, Co. Mayo. Her parents had married in South Africa, where her two brothers were born and one died. Through a childhood of emotional deprivation and vicissitude she managed to preserve a fundamentally cheerful and light-hearted disposition. When her father, in a bout of his periodic improvidence, gambled away their Dublin house, the family moved to rented lodgings in London. After the death there of her other brother, her mother, a neurotically fussy personality, withdrew her affections. With her father returned to employment in South Africa, her mother found work as a live-in nurse companion and sent Eileen to an orphanage boarding school run by the Sisters of Charity. When her father died after suffering a nervous breakdown, wealthy relatives paid for her continuing education at the Ursuline convent, Brentwood, Essex, where she developed a love of theatre and choral singing. A debilitating illness and breakdown forced her withdrawal from schooling; after convalescence she worked as a tracer with several London firms, while taking singing and dancing lessons. She first performed professionally with the D'Oyly Carte company in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas (1923–4). Under the stage name Eileen Carey (after her mother's maiden name) she played musical comedy in England and America, supplemented by modelling work in both countries (1925–6).
Moved to deep empathy on her reading of O'Casey's Juno and the paycock, she formed an obsessive desire to meet the play's author. Returning to London from New York, she secured an introduction to O'Casey; seventeen years her senior, he was instantly attracted to her. Despite her inexperience, especially in dramatic roles, he invited her to play Nora Clitheroe in the first London production of ‘The plough and the stars' (1926), replacing for the first three weeks of the run the regular actress, who had fallen ill. Her blossoming romantic interest in O'Casey, who courted her doggedly, was complicated by her ongoing affair with a married man, American theatre impresario Lee Ephraim. In June 1927 she opened in her second O'Casey role, as Minnie Powell in the West End production of ‘The shadow of a gunman’, in a double bill with ‘Riders to the sea’ by J. M. Synge (qv), in which she appeared as a keener. Three months later she and O'Casey married in the Roman Catholic church of All Souls and the Redeemer, Chelsea (23 September 1927). After the birth of their first child (April 1928), she continued her acting career for a time, appearing for two years in Noel Coward's ‘Bitter sweet’, then in ‘The miracle’ by Max Reinhardt. Her final role was in the musical ‘Mother of pearl’ (1932), whereafter she retired from the stage to attend to her home, family, and social contacts. Noted for her remarkable physical beauty, which survived well into her later years, she and her husband cultivated a wide circle of friends in the worlds of literature, the arts, theatre, politics, and (Sean's demotic communism notwithstanding) the aristocracy. Both possessed considerable gifts for conversation, Sean's marked by cantankerous vigour and unpredictable fancy, hers by sweet-natured warmth and grace. They lived at addresses in London and Buckinghamshire before residing in Devon, first in Totnes (1938–54), then Torquay (1954–64). Providing O'Casey with ‘one of the most contented home lives in literary history’ (Times obit., 1995), she was a rock of support through periods of financial insecurity and the progressive blindness of his elder years. She was beside O'Casey when he died in his sleep in their Torquay home (18 September 1964). After living a few years in Dún Laoghaire, she made her home in London, with frequent stays in Dublin and New York, writing and lecturing about her life with O'Casey. She wrote three books: Sean (1971), a memoir of her years with O'Casey; Eileen (1976), an autobiography; and Cheerio, Titan (1991), a memoir of her and O'Casey's close friendship with George Bernard Shaw (qv). Her lengthy and affectionate friendship, dating to the 1930s, with politician and publisher Harold Macmillan (d. 1986), intensified after the death of Macmillan's wife (1966). Eileen O'Casey died on 9 April 1995 at Denville Hall home for retired actors, Northwood, London.
The O'Caseys had two sons and one daughter: Breon (b. 1928), an artist; Niall (1935–56), whose death of leukaemia was a severe blow to both parents; and Shivaun (b. 1939), an actress.