Play. It was made into a film in 1988, starring Martin Sheen and Barnard Hughes, who reprised his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance. In 1984, Leonard discovered his accountant Russell Murphy had embezzled IR£258,000 from him. Leonard was particularly upset that Murphy had used his money to take clients to the theatre and purchased expensive seats at some of Leonard's plays. Leonard wrote two volumes of autobiography, Home Before Night (1979) and Out After Dark (1989). Some of his essays and journalism were collected in Leonard's Last Book (1978) and A Peculiar People and Other Foibles (1979). In 1992 the Selected Plays of Hugh Leonard was published. Until 2006 he wrote a humorous weekly column, "The Curmudgeon", for the Irish Sunday Independent newspaper. He had a passion for cats and restaurants, and an abhorrence of broadcaster Gay Byrne. In 1994, Leonard gave a review of Katie Roche' by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy which was performed in the Peacock Theatre, and he recalls his own acting role in an undated amateur production of 'Temporal Powers' which Teresa Deevy attended. Even after retiring as a Sunday Independent columnist, Leonard displayed an acerbic humour. In an interview with Brendan O'Connor, he was asked if it galled him that Gay Byrne was now writing his old column. His reply was, "It would gall me more if he was any good at it." Leonard was a patron of the Dublin Theatre Festival. In 1994, Leonard appeared in a televised interview with Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin, an Irish political party associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Leonard had long been an opponent of paramilitary groups and a critic of the IRA. However, on the show and afterwards he was criticised for being "sanctimonious and theatrical" towards Adams; at one point he referred to Sinn Féin as "dogs". Hugh Leonard- Odd Man In, a film on his life and work, shown on RTÉ in March 2009. Leonard's final play, Magicality, was not performed during his lifetime; a rehearsed reading of the second act was staged at the Dalkey Castle and Heritage Centre in June 2012. Leonard died in his hometown, Dalkey, aged 82, after a long illness, leaving €1.5 million in his will. Awards Writers Guild of Great Britain – Award of Merit for Silent Song, 1966 Prix Italia for original dramatic television programs – for Silent Song 1967 Jacob's Television Award for adaptations of