It is with great sadness we bring you the news that Glen Hansard, Oscar-winning star of Once and The Commitments and singer-songwriter, has died at the age of just 56. The Irish balladeer, who was also the frontman of rock group The Frames, was killed in a single-vehicle motorcycle crash on Wednesday in Dublin, the BBC has confirmed.
Born in 1970 in Ballymun, Dublin, Hansard quit school aged 13 to busk on the streets of his hometown, and formed his own band, The Frames, by the time he was 20. By the age of 21, his impassioned guitar playing and soaring vocals had caught the eye of Alan Parker, who cast the young Irishman as brilliantly named guitarist Outspan Foster in 1991’s The Commitments.
It would be 16 years before Hansard made his big-screen return, alongside Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová, in Once – a film his former bandmate John Carney spent many years trying to get off the ground to no avail. After Cillian Murphy left the film in its early stage, Carney came to Hansard on a wing and a prayer, and Hansard said yes.
Once was a hugely consequential inflection point in Glen Hansard’s life. It landed him an Oscar for Best Song (for ‘Falling Slowly’). It prompted Steven Spielberg to declare it the film that “gave me enough inspiration to last the rest of the year”. And it birthed Hansard and Irglová’s musical project The Swell Season, as well as a romance between the duo that is chronicled — warts and all — in 2011 music documentary The Swell Season. It also spawned a Tony award-winning musical that still tours to this day.
In the years since Once, Hansard — alongside his music career — continued to make sporadic but welcome appearances on our screens. There was a memorable Simpsons guest spot in 2009, an appearance in The Last Man On Earth episode ‘Falling Slowly’, and a turn as a balladeering guard in Joe Wright’s musical movie Cyrano. There, too, were soundtrack spots on Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan pic I’m Not There and The Hunger Games.
Glen Hansard will be remembered as one of Ireland’s most acclaimed and influential musicians, a gifted songwriter and staunch humanist. We will, inevitably, remember him best for the two classic movies that he starred — and indeed shone — in. All of our thoughts are with his friends, family, and loved ones at this time.