Helen McCrory remembered: ‘She had a brightness about her. She was a star’

Richard Eyre, the National Theatre director who cast the actor in some of her earliest roles, pays tribute to her after her death

Part of the tragedy of Helen McCrory dying at such a young age, leaving a husband and two young children, is that professionally she had everything to look forward to. She had established herself as a very considerable actor in the theatre and on film and television.

She had a brightness about her, a luminosity: she was, in short, a star. She lit up a stage or a screen - you knew you were in the presence of a force of character and talent.