Glen Hansard, Irish singer and 'Once' star, dies at 56

Glen Hansard, the Irish singer and songwriter who led The Frames and won an Oscar for the song Falling Slowly, died on Wednesday, July 29, in a motorcycle collision in Lucan, on the western edge of Dublin. He was 56. His representatives at ATC Management said he died in the early hours. Irish police said emergency services were alerted shortly before 4.30am to a collision involving a motorcycle, and that the rider was treated at the scene but pronounced dead a short time later.

Hansard was born in Dublin in 1970 and started out busking on the city's streets. He formed The Frames in 1990 and kept the band going for more than three decades. In 1991 he played a guitar player in The Commitments, Alan Parker's film about a rough-and-tumble Dublin soul band, and in 2006 he and the Czech pianist Marketa Irglova formed a duo, The Swell Season, whose debut carried the close-harmony duet Falling Slowly.

That song is what carried him furthest. Once, the low-budget film he starred in about a street musician and a pianist, took Falling Slowly to the Oscars in 2008, where it beat three songs from Enchanted. "What are we doing here? This is mad," Hansard said from the stage as he and Irglova accepted the award. The film was later adapted into a stage show that won the Tony for best musical.

The Swell Season released a second album, Strict Joy, in 2009, toured on and off in the years that followed, and reconvened last year for a third, Forward, recorded in Iceland. Hansard also made solo albums, among them Didn't He Ramble in 2015, which was nominated for a Grammy. Last month he released a career-spanning live record, and said he had always been more comfortable on stage than in a studio, because a song needs witnesses.

Ireland's prime minister, Micheal Martin, called him a talented musician and actor who had made a significant contribution to the country's cultural life over many years. His records sit across our rock and indie coverage and among our obituaries, and in the days after his death mourners filled a Dublin museum to say goodbye.

He is survived by his wife, the Finnish poet Maire Saaritsa, and their three year old son, Christy, whom he once described in a song as a solid gold miracle. In an interview last year he said becoming a father had made him think much more about staying alive. He had given up drinking, he said, and changed his breakfast order to porridge.