Wow. Just when I thought we were running out of GB reports... (Warning: This article mentions
someone. Be prepared.)
Gabriel Byrne's heading for 60 -- and he's still getting the heart-throb roles. In fact, they're now calling him... By Susan Daly - Friday, 19 September 2008 Life has come full circle for Gabriel Byrne, sex symbol. In the 1970s, he put the racy into rural life as roguish sheep farmer Pat Barry in
Bracken. Thirty years on, he has made a triumphant return to the small screen as a psychoanalyst in the HBO series
In Treatment -- and has been dubbed the "new Dr McDreamy" by the New York Times for his pains.
Byrne is philosophical about his perennial heart-throb status. "Well, when I started my career they were calling sheep farmers sexy, so it's nice to know that as one grows older..." He breaks off, changing tack.
"I'm nearly 60 years of age. So that Dr McDreamy thing, whatever that means, it's a nice thing but it doesn't change who I am as an actor, or alter my perception of who I am."
For the record, Gabriel James Byrne is wearing very well at the age of 58. The face is not unlined, but still handsome with the striking blue eyes that first set the hearts of the nation's housewives a-flutter. Dressed down in artfully ripped jeans, wine corduroy jacket and open-necked shirt, Byrne is in relaxed mode.
His career has come full circle too. While Pat Barry might be remembered in popular culture as sex-in-wellies, the role also earned Byrne the 1979 Jacob's Best Actor award.
In a nice piece of synchronicity, his role as
In Treatment's Dr Paul Weston is hotly tipped to win him a prestigious Emmy for Best Actor in a Drama Series this Sunday.
The show follows psychoanalyst Paul Weston through his week, capturing a session each night with his patients before concluding each Friday in the office of Paul's own therapist, Gina.
As ever, he plays down the hype but adds that, "Yes, it would be nice to win, if only to have it on my mantelpiece so my kids could make fun of me".
That mantelpiece is getting pretty crowded of late. Last year the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival gave Byrne its Volta lifetime achievement award. NUI Galway has made him an honorary Doctor of Arts and Trinity College Dublin outmanoeuvred his alma mater UCD by making him an honorary patron of its Philosophical Society.
Now here we are, sipping coffee and looking out over Dingle Bay as he prepares to accept the inaugural Gregory Peck award for lifetime excellence in acting at the Dingle Film Festival. Is someone telling Gabriel Byrne it's time to get off the stage?
He laughs. "Certainly I don't regard this as the end of anything. I was given that award in Dublin, for example, because I had made 50 films all around the world. It wasn't exactly the golden clock they give you when it's your retirement. Anyway, I don't work 12 months a year, I just do the things that I enjoy."
The pursuit of happiness, or at least career satisfaction, for Byrne has involved earning the freedom to pick and choose his projects.
"There were some films I had to make in Hollywood because I had to make the money," he shrugs.
"I looked at them and said, 'This is going to pay really, really well and I can go on and do something else that I like'. The vast majority of my films have been independent films in all kinds of weird places."
So while Byrne has popped up in some forgettable blockbusters, like
Ghost Ship or
Little Women, he is more often noted for nuanced, interesting performances such as his conflicted gangster in
Miller's Crossing, the crooked ex-cop in
The Usual Suspects, or the good guy at a moral crossroads in
Jindabyne. He is excited about what will surely be a difficult adaptation of Flann O'Brien's
At-Swim-Two-Birds, in which he will star with other members of the 'Pat Pack'; Brendan Gleeson, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy.
The former linguistics student and seminarian has proven his worth in screenwriting (
The Last Of The High Kings; TG4 drama
Draoicht) and film producing (
In The Name Of The Father;
Into The West). His next project is his own adaptation of Jennifer Johnston's novel,
Two Moons, about three generations of women in an Irish family, their relationships and their struggle to live within their social boundaries.
"We're at the casting stages and we shoot in Ireland next year," he says.
Although it will be his first time filming in Ireland since the mid-1990s, the recent Pat Collins-directed documentary about him,
Stories From Home, showed that Byrne feels he still has one foot in Ireland, one in America.
Exile, says Byrne, is not too strong a term for the state in which he has spent most of his adult life.
"The meaning of exile has changed in Ireland very much in the last 20 years," he muses. "I left Dublin because there was hardly any work in Dublin, or London, so a lot of my life has been about emigration and unemployment and return."
The boy from Walkinstown is very much tied to America, as his two children Jack (19) and Romy (16), by ex-wife Ellen Barkin, live there.
"But if you ask me if I'm American or Irish, I'll say that I'm Irish, without any hesitation."
Byrne comes across as a frank and thoughtful man, but that enigmatic quality that captivates audiences is also present. "I believe that every actor that you see on screen is essentially himself," he says.
Speaking about Gregory Peck, he says, "There was something about him that drew you in, and the more he drew you in, the more he retreated". But in fact, it's a good description of Byrne himself.
Up close and personal, he is a man who likes to keep his private life private, unwilling to drag into the limelight those close to him who have done nothing to court it.
You wonder, for example, about the significance of the large silver Claddagh ring he has worn for many years on his right hand. The heart is pointed inwards, as is the tradition for the loved-up.
Byrne is in Kerry with his girlfriend Anna George, who boasts an exotic CV of hedge fund manager and actress, and is soon to appear as the mysterious Mrs Singh in Peter Jackson's
The Lovely Bones. She is waiting patiently out in the lobby of the hotel for our interview to end, so they can take a drive around the Connor Pass.
But while only the ring on his finger hints at Byrne's inner passions, it is fair to say he wears his other, more public, heart on his sleeve. He was so exercised by the controversial design of the new Department of Finance building on Merrion Row that he rang the architects to complain.
"I feel as entitled to express an opinion about the architecture of Dublin as that architect is entitled to put up a building that's going to be here for the next 500 years, long after we are all dead," he argues.
His greatest ire is reserved for what he sees as the lack of dignity afforded to the dying in public hospitals.
"I have personal experience of someone dying in a hospital bed in Dublin and three feet away, this woman was in a locked-in position like in
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly and there's a television on, and people talking at the next bed, and one bathroom between all these people... it was just horrific," he says.
Like Brendan Gleeson before him, whose criticism of the health service on the
Late Late Show sparked a national debate, Byrne is conscious of the power of his celebrity.
"I understand that a doctor can come along and say, 'This is a disgrace' and no-one will listen to him, but that someone like me can say it and they say, 'Ah, that's your man, he's been in a couple of films, we'll listen to him'," he says.
"Well I don't care why they listen, as long as maybe somebody takes notice."
Later that night, he will graciously tell an audience at the Phoenix cinema in Dingle that he feels honoured to be mentioned in the same sentence as Gregory Peck, "an earnest man of integrity".
Peck, surely, has a successor.
SOURCE:
Independent.ie --
Edited by ychow at 09/18/2008 10:20 PM PDT
