Gabriel Byrne

There is a pantheon of Irish actors. And they can do any mood you want. There’s Pierce Brosnan for humour or sexy insouciance. There’s Colm Meaney for hard-working but amused or hard-working and put-upon. There’s Liam Neeson for whatever the hell Liam Neeson feels like doing. And there’s the trilogy of Vaguely Depressed Irishmen, Stephen Rea and Ciarán Hinds and Gabriel Byrne. (Anyone without a link is on the schedule, I promise.) And it’s not that I don’t think Byrne could do hard-working but amused, and he could definitely do hard-working but put-upon, but what you really want him for is Vaguely Depressed. Or, in the case of some of his roles, Severely Depressed.

At fifteen, he was a failed priest, having been kicked out of seminary for smoking in a graveyard. Quite the history for a boy from Dublin. As a boy, he was physically abused by teachers and sexually abused by priests. One of his younger siblings—he’s the oldest of six—died. Tá sé líofa sa Gaeilge, as he himself would put it. He is proficient in Irish. Bilingual, even. I’d love to talk with him about it, if only to practice my own and get him to explain to me how you express wanting things, which I have a hard time working out.

But if you watch enough Gabriel Byrne performances, you get a feel for how to want in Irish without words. He does a powerful longing. Most of the characters of his I’ve seen fit into something of a Jeremy Irons feel, albeit Irish instead of English. There’s something he’s wild for. Even if it’s his own mental stability, he’s obsessed with it. There’s only so much we want to talk about The Usual Suspects, in retrospect, but it’s a fine performance from the man, and his character is the one who least wants to be where he is because what he wants in that movie is respectability.

He hated the fame that came from In Treatment, but my Gods it’s a fantastic show. The first place I discovered Mia Wasikowska. Excellent performances from Dianne Weist and John Mahoney and even Dane DeHaan. It’s made me add multiple people to the schedule while working on this piece, which is something that always ends up happening when I cover someone with a great career, or often even a mediocre one. Paul Weston is a deeply problematic figure, but Gabriel Byrne is so good at portraying him. I won’t say I’d want him as my therapist, but I loved visiting him at it.

I won’t say he’s done no turkeys. I’ve seen Cool World. But he’s also done several movies that you’d hope would convince even Byrne, who says he has low self-esteem, that he’s good at what he does. The Coens, known for hating improvisation and wanting actors to just read their lines, accepted his suggestion that perhaps his character should have an Irish accent rather than an American one in Miller’s Crossing. Whether that’s because he believed it or because he didn’t trust his American accent, I can’t say. But either way, it’s a hell of a performance, and you’d hope Byrne is proud of it.