STYLE TO BYRNE

GENTLEMEN’S QUARTERLY - September 1990

Onscreen and Off-, Gabriel Byrne Reveals a Distinctive Flair

“I’ve always wanted to do a pirate, a gangster, and a cowboy,” says Byrne, how with his next role-as a self-described “villainous sea captain,” in Disney’s upcoming Hakon Hakonsen - fulfills two of the three.

“In Hollywood, a town as jaded as a Chinese flea market, incongruity doesn’t count for much - seeing as how even gym-studs-turned-stars don’t turn heads anymore. Take Gabriel Byrne. His resume has him down as an archaeologist, a professor of Spansih, a treader-of-the-boards, who’s done Shaw and Shakespeare, at Ireland’s Abbey theatre; and now a film actor, in such roles as a British sergeant in A Soldier’s Tale and King Arthur’s father in Excalibur (in which his neat trick was raping the Duchess of Cornwall while wearing a full suit of armor). All this might not even rate a double take had he not made it look so easy. Fact is, though the Dublin-born Byrne, 38, came to the States just two years ago, he’s already on Hollywood’s hotlist, starring as a tough-witted con artist in this month’s Miller’s Crossing, a canny gangster flick by those sibling wizards of dead pan the Coens (who gave us Blood Simple and Raising Arizona). And he even got the girl: husky-voiced Ellen Barken, his costar in the steamily surreal Siesta. (Their son, Jack, turns 1 this month.) As for his clothes, they’re as smooth as his brogue-though never tweedy. “I’ve always had a horror of the Irish-civil-servant look, circa 1953,” he says. Instead, silk shirts or khakis-or anything Italian-suit him just fine while off the set and plotting his next moves. On those: “I have a couple of plays I’d like to take a bash at before they carry me out.” he ventures a bit modestly. But then, despite his full-tilt talent, Gabriel’s not one to too his own horn.