Glen Hansard, the Irish musician who won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and fronted the rock group The Frames, died Wednesday in a motorbike crash in Dublin. He was 56.
Police said the single-vehicle crash happened on Lower Road in Lucan, west of Dublin, and was reported to emergency services shortly before 4:30 a.m. local time. Authorities are appealing for witnesses, according to BBC News.
Hansard was born in Dublin in 1970 and spent years busking on the city's streets before landing the role of Outspan Foster in Alan Parker's 1991 film The Commitments, which followed a soul band made up of working-class young people from the city. He had founded The Frames a year before the film's release.
His most celebrated work came through the 2007 low-budget film Once, for which he wrote Falling Slowly. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008. Hansard was also one half of the rock duo The Swell Season and released solo albums including Didn't He Ramble, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album in 2016.
In a 2023 interview with BBC Radio Ulster, Hansard spoke about how fatherhood had changed him, eight months after the birth of his son, who was three years old at the time of his death. He said he was in a "very different place than I've ever been before." He added: "It's completely, in the greatest way possible, upturned everything that I know." And: "It's absolutely incredible, I can't believe I stood on the other side of this chasm for so long."
Beyond music, Hansard was known for his work on behalf of people experiencing homelessness. He started a Christmas Eve charity busk on the streets of Dublin in 2010 in support of the Dublin Simon Community, a UK and Ireland charity that helps homeless people. The event grew over the years to include Bono, Sinéad O'Connor, Imelda May, and Shane MacGowan. The Dublin Simon Community said in a statement it was "devastated" to learn of his death. "While known to many as a genius songwriter and storyteller, for us, he was threefold that, in his generosity, a true advocate for our work and a giant in the fight against homelessness," the charity said.
Hansard's friend, artist Colin Davidson, described the annual Christmas Eve busk as "an international Irish institution in it's own right." Davidson told the BBC's Evening Extra programme that Hansard used the event as "Glen's way of getting him and his friends to, not just shine a light on the problem of homelessness, but to actually do something about it financially." Davidson said he is "quite broken" by the news.
In 2002, Hansard became the original presenter of RTÉ's acclaimed music series Other Voices.
