Donal Donnelly, an Irish actor who embodied a variety of Irish characters on the American stage and in American movies, notably in the plays of Brian Friel and in John Huston's adaptation of James Joyce's short story "The Dead," died Monday in Chicago. He was 78.

The cause was cancer, said his son Jonathan.

Donnelly, a handsome, spindle-framed performer, was, in his own words, "an itinerant Irish actor."

He made his first impression on American audiences in an antic 1965 British film comedy, "The Knack ... and How to Get It."

The following year he came to Broadway in Friel's "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" Donnelly became known mainly as a regular member of Friel's casts, appearing in "Faith Healer" (1979), "Dancing at Lughnasa" (1991) and "Translations" (1995).

In movies and television, Donnelly was busy but cast so as to be often overlooked. He had small roles in blockbusters like "Twister" and "Godfather Part III," and appeared in "Law and Order" and "Spenser: For Hire," among other television series.

His most celebrated film performance was as Freddy Malins, the amiable and sentimental sot who attends the dinner party in John Huston's widely praised adaptation of Joyce's "The Dead."

Donal Donnelly - his first name is pronounced DOE-nul - was born on July 6, 1931, in Bradford, just west of Leeds, in north central England, where his father, James, who was from Northern Ireland, was working as a doctor. His mother, Nora, was Irish, and the family moved to Dublin when Donal was very young.

He would eventually have seven brothers and sisters, six of whom survive and are still in Ireland, among them his youngest brother, Michael, formerly the mayor of Dublin.

His survivors include his wife of 45 years, the former Patricia Porter, a former dancer who is known as Patsy and whom he met on a production of "Finian's Rainbow" in London; and two sons, Jonathan and Damian, both of Chicago.

Early in his career, Donnelly worked at the Gate Theater in Dublin and was a member of a theater company founded by Cyril Cusack.

Before coming to the United States to work in the 1960s - he and his family moved to Westport, Conn., in 1979 - Donnelly appeared in London in J.M. Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" and Sean O'Casey's "Shadow of a Gunman," and in British television productions of "Playboy" and O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock" and "The Plough and the Stars," among other plays.

To round out his personal history of the Irish theater, in the late 1970s he toured in a one-man show called "My Astonishing Self," based on the notebooks and letters of George Bernard Shaw, in which he played Shaw as both a young and old man.

All of this was quite possibly foretold in his youth. As a boy Donnelly attended the Synge Street Christian Brothers School in Dublin, an academy known for turning out actors. Synge Street was not named for the playwright, though oddly enough, Shaw was born there. Synge, it turns out, was born on Shaw Street.

"If you open yourself to Sam Beckett and 'Godot,' if you open yourself to Brian Friel and 'Faith Healer,"' Donnelly once said in a discussion of Irish playwrights, "you benefit from it."