Glen Hansard, Irish singer-songwriter known for 'Once' Oscar win, dies at 56

Janine Schaults and Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times on Jul 29, 2026

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Glen Hansard, the Irish singer and songwriter best known for starring in the hit 2007 film “Once” — and for winning an Academy Award for original song with the movie’s “Falling Slowly” — died Wednesday in a motorcycle crash in Dublin. He was 56.

In a statement, Hansard’s representatives at ATC Management said he died “in the early hours” of Wednesday. The Irish police reported that emergency services had been alerted shortly before 4:30 a.m. to a collision involving a motorcycle in the suburban village of Lucan; the motorcyclist, the police said, “was treated at the scene but was pronounced deceased a short time later.”

In a social media post, Ireland Prime Minister Micheál Martin called Hansard a “talented musician and actor who made a significant contribution to Ireland’s cultural landscape over many years” and sent his sympathies to Hansard’s family, friends and fans.

Hansard, who was born in Dublin in 1970, grew up busking on the street before forming a rock band, the Frames, in 1990. In 1991, he portrayed a guitar player in “The Commitments,” Alan Parker’s movie about a rough-and-tumble soul band that spawned a hit soundtrack album. Hansard and Markéta Irglová formed a duo, the Swell Season, in 2006 and released a debut album with the almost painfully intimate duet “Falling Slowly,” which starts with the two singing in close harmony, “I don’t know you / But I want you / All the more for that.”

“There’s nobody on this Earth that I’ve ever met who can do what Mar does when we sing together,” Hansard told The Times in 2025.

“Once” depicts the personal and creative relationship between an Irish street musician and a Czech pianist with whom he falls in love; the low-budget movie was later adapted into a Broadway show that won a Tony Award for best musical.

At the Oscars in 2008, “Falling Slowly” beat three songs from the Disney musical “Enchanted” for the original song prize. “What are we doing here? This is mad,” Hansard said from the stage as he and Irglová accepted the award. “We never thought we’d ever come into a room like this and be in front of you people.”

The Swell Season released a second album, “Strict Joy,” in 2009 and toured intermittently in the following years; they reconvened last year for a third LP, “Forward,” which they recorded at a studio in Iceland overseen by Irglová’s husband.

Hansard is survived by his wife, the Finnish poet Maire Saaritsa, and their 4-year-old son, Christy, whom he described in a song as a “full-blown solid-gold miracle.” In the 2025 Times interview, the once-hard-drinking Hansard said that becoming a father had “made me think much more about staying alive”; he’d quit alcohol, he said, and changed his breakfast order. “I choose porridge over the bacon and eggs,” he said.

In addition to the Swell Season and the Frames, Hansard recorded several solo albums, including 2015’s “Didn’t He Ramble,” which was nominated for a Grammy Award. Last month, he released a career-spanning live record that he said captured what he loved most about music.

“I’ve always been more comfortable onstage than in a studio,” he said in comments published on his website. “I love making records. I love the process. But the song lives before an audience. A song needs witnesses. It’s where I feel like I can really grab hold of it.”