Gifted Irish stage performer, born in South Africa who made his film debut in 1917's "Knocknagow", but did not come into his own as a strong screen character actor until 1947 with Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out". With his quirky features, playful authority and an elfin face that sometimes registers melancholy or stern morality, Cusack most often portrayed clerics ("My Left Foot" 1989) but in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1965), he played the spy chief and in Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451" (1966), the book-burning fire chief. One of the most acclaimed stage actors of his generation, Cusack was
