THE actor who played the handsome British soldier in the Kerry made movie blockbuster Ryan’s Daughter has died in California.
Christopher Jones, who has lost a battle with cancer at the age of 72, was cast as the dashing Major Randolph Doryan (pictured) in the 1970 David Lean classic.
Shell-shocked and crippled from his exploits in the World War I battlefield, the plot saw Doryan having a passionate affair with married Irish woman Rosy Ryan – played by Sarah Miles – and their tryst in the woods was one of the most iconic scenes in the double Oscar winning movie.
Ryan’s Daughter, which was shot in west Kerry with some memorable scenes captured on the spectacular beach at Inch, has been worth millions of euro in tourism revenue to Kerry.
Hundreds of visitors to Killarney every year make a day trip to Inch a tour priority as, even after four decades, they remain anxious to retrace the steps of Jones and Miles as well as Robert Mitchum, John Mills and Trevor Howard.
Ryan’s Daughter played an incalculable role in the branding and promotion of Kerry in the early 1970s and it has been of enormous value to the county down through the years, according to the PRO of the Kerry branch of the Irish Hotels Federation Michael Rosney.
“It still has a very high interest rate amongst American tourists over the age of 50 and it helped to put Kerry on the map at a time when there were not too many maps,” said the Killarney hotelier.
A James Dean lookalike, Christopher Jones quit show business soon after Ryan’s Daughter was released and concentrated instead on a career as an artist and sculptor.
He turned down an offer from Quentin Tarantino to play the role of Jed in the 1994 smash hit Pulp Fiction before he made a brief return to the screens in the 1996 crime comedy Mad Dog Time.
