Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel James Byrneis an Irish actor, film director, film producer, writer, cultural ambassador and audiobook narrator. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's screen debut came in the Irish soap opera The Riordans and the spin-off show Bracken. He has now appeared in over 35 feature films, including Excalibur, Miller's Crossing, The Usual Suspects, Stigmata, End of Days, Spider, Jindabyne, Vampire Academyand The 33, and co-wrote The Last of...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth12 May 1950
CityWalkinstown, Ireland
CountryIreland
Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.
I thought to myself, there's a man who gave up his life to serve others - to touch people in that way is probably the greatest thing you can do as a human being.
The only way you can continue to make artistic films is to make an occasional one of those. They kind of keep your marketability going to the extent that people will employ you.
Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.
I had one of the best days of my life. I spent the afternoon with my two kids and my ex-wife at Serendipity. Then I came to the theater, and you know, I think I did the play the best Ive ever done it.
The manner of your death is not your choosing. But how you prepare for death is
Unfortunately, I experienced some sexual abuse. It was a known and admitted fact of life amongst us that there was this particular man, and you didn't want to be left in the dressing room with him. It took many years to come to terms with it and to forgive those incidents that I felt had deeply hurt me.
I would like to break out of this dark, brooding image, cause I'm actually not like that at all.
I think there's a bit of the devil in everybody. There's a bit of a priest in everybody, too, but I enjoyed playing the devil more. He was more fun.
When you come back to a country that you've left, you're in a very peculiar situation because, in a way, you don't belong to that country any more, even though when I'm in America I feel I don't belong there either.
This notion that Americans have. . . that they don't have to do anything other than be American in order to lead - that's very pervasive in the culture, it goes very deep into how they see themselves here.
It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we're not, we cling to.'
I would like to break out of this 'dark, brooding' image, cause I'm actually not like that at all. In Ireland, brooding is a term we use for hens. A brooding hen is supposed to lay eggs. Every time somebody says, 'He's dark and brooding,' I think, 'He's about to lay an egg'.
I'm not a very gregarious person. I can't bear attention being called to me in a public place, which is ridiculous in a business that pays you to be noticed.