by Gabrielle Donnelly for Woman's Journal, April 1998
A friend of mine, a rather exotic, globe-trotting Chilean journalist, was once sent by her editor to interview Gabriel Byrne. For most of the interview, all went as normal - Gabriel was forthcoming and witty, and he was not by any means the first drop-dead attractive movie star she had ever been eyeball-to- eyeball with. Then, she asked him a question about his love life, a subject he has preferred not to discuss since his divorce from Ellen Barkin a few years ago. Suddenly, his huge, azure-blue Irish eyes were fixed intently upon her.
"Which part of Chile are you from?" he asked. "Santiago", she told him. "Ah", he sighed, wistfully. "Santiago. That's a beautiful city." "Have you been there?" she asked. Sadly, his eyes never leaving hers, he shook his head. "Only in my dreams," he murmured.
My friend, who still goes all faraway when she talks about it, says she has never in her life had such a delicious experience in getting the brush-off from an interviewee.
To call Gabriel Byrne the thinking woman's crumpet is a little like describing the Irish climate as being on the damp side. The man, let's face it, oozes sex appeal the way other men breathe. And he's happy enough with the label. "It's OK, it puts me up there with people like Sam Shephard", he laughs.
The appeal lies partly, of course, in his face: his hawk-like features neither pretty nor particularly young for his 48 years, but ridiculously attractive nevertheless, and lit by those absurdly beautiful, heavy-lidded eyes under that mop of silvering raven hair. Then there's his voice, deep and gentle, the Dublin accent slow and creamy as a pint of Guinness. But mostly, it's his mind: his particular combination of keen intelligence and genuine enjoyment of women, the sense that he's been around, knows what it's all about, and doesn't take any of it seriously, and that, moreover, he suspects - and hopes - you're in on the joke, too.
Here he is, for instance, one sunny Los Angeles morning at the Hollywood-chic Four Seasons hotel, describing to me in tones of intense earnestness over a cup of tea just why he never intends to do a nude scene in a movie. "I couldn't do it," he explains, "because it would distract me too much from the business in hand. If I were naked, I couldn't think of the plot, or of my character. My head would be completely filled with thoughts of..." He pauses, brown furrowed, and sips at his tea. "...of Harvey Keitel," he concludes, pensively.
He checks to make sure I have enjoyed his joke, then, being a good philosophical Irishman, draws from a broader point. " I swear to God that's true, and I'll tell you why. It's so commonplace to see a woman naked on the screen, and so unusual to see a naked man, that if you do see a man, like Harvey Keitel in The Piano, you tend to remember who he was. It's unfair and sexist and all the rest of it, and it does tend to bring up the question of who actually wants to see nudity in the movies. They say market research indicates women have no interest in seeing naked men, but every woman I talk to say that's completely ridiculous. I remember quoting the research to one woman friend of mine and she immediately said, "What about Kevin Costner's butt?" I said "Well, what about Kevin Costner's butt? I really have no opinion about it one way or another." She said, "Well, every woman who went to see Dances With Wolves remembers it!"
Philosophy and anecdotes aside, he adds, we really won't be seeing a nude Gabriel on our screens any time soon. "Not out of any moral principle, I just think it's unnecessary. I don't think audiences need to see anybody naked, man or woman. Remember those great movies of the Forties and Fifties where they wew able to suggest all sorts of things without anybody ever taking off so much as a scarf? It's just a question of personal style".
Byrne was 30 before he became an actor - "definately long in the tooth," he agrees. "Pretty ancient, really. It's proof positive that if you want to do something, and feel you can achieve it, then you can. Before I was an actor, I was a schoolteacher, and before that an archaeologist. Before that, I was a variety of things. For my first job, I was an apprentice plumber, wedged into a toilet with four other plumbers trying to change a cistern. I was so bad at it, the other plumbers used to say to me, "Why don't you go back to the shop and get a hammer or a wrench? Don't take the bus, now, why don't you walk? Come back, say, five o'clock?" Eventually I left and got a job in a teddy bear factory, and I'll tell you, if you think you've had boring jobs, you should be putting eyes in teddy bears all day, week after week. Then I was a kitchen porter for a bit, which is one of the most humiliating jobs of all. Finally I went to college and started getting real jobs."
It was while he was teaching Gaelic and Spanish in a girl's school in Dublin that he discovered acting. "It was a bit like a Mickey Rooney movie, now that I think of it, because I started a drama class with the girls in the school. We did a co-production with the local boys' school and, at the last minute, one of the boys got sick. Nobody else knew the lines, so i took over his part - amd I was immediately bitten by the acting bug. At the end of term, I left teaching, the steady job, the retirement fund, all that I'd been told was so important, and went down to the welfare office to sign on and be an actor. Everybody told me it was a gigantic mistake!"
He has been having the last laugh for some 10 years now. Not only is he respected satge and film actor on both sides of the Atlantic, but he is increasingly regarded as a producer to reckon with. His production company, Mirabilis Films, works in close association with Miramax, and was involved in the making of films like In the Name of the Father, which he developed and produced, and Into the West, which he produced and starred in with Ellen Barkin. He is also a writer, with a book of his own, Pictures in my Head, a co-writing credit on the Irish film Last of the High Kings, as well as a variety of script-doctoring experiences under his belt.
"Yeah, I have quite a career these days. I started the production company because, as an actor, I found the scripts I was being offered were not for the kind of movies I was interested in making. I'm not really a producer-type, as in being on the set and saying, "Hurry up, we've got to get this in on time", and knowing how much to pay the caterers, and smoking cigars. I'm more interested in getting the idea for a film, getting the people together, and then putting it all into motion. A film, for me, has to be about something I feel passionate about - otherwise, there's no point in being involved for 18 months. Into the West was a film that was very close to my heart, because it dealt with how important it is to be aware of your heritage, your past, your culture, if you like."
Byrne is fiercely proud of his Irish heritage. He has said, "I'm Irish. I carry the black dog of melancholy on one shoulder, and madness on the other." Today, he's less melodramatic. "Oh, yeah, I'm proud of it, even though I live in Los Angeles now, so I really am an emigrant, or an exile, or whatever you want to call it."
He rolls his eyes briefly, acknowledging the cliche of being a wandering Irishman."But I'll tell you one thing about living outside Ireland - it allows me to look at it in a different way, and I am so thrilled to see the tremendous explosion of self-esteem that's going there right now. Look at all the people who've come bursting out in the last few years. U2, Van Morrison, Sinead O'Conner, Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan, Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson: there's films being made, books being written, paintings being painted, music being recorded. It's like Paris in the twenties, an incredibly exciting place to be - not that I'm biased or anything, you understand."
He remains in America for work reasons and to keep his children, Jack, seven, and Romy, four, within easy reach of their mother Ellen Barkin. Nevertheless, he says, he is making every effort to bring the chilren up as proud as possible of thei father's heritage. "We go back to Ireland every year and, most important of all, I tell them the old stories, the folk tales. I let them know how important it is to me because even if they don't get it now, some day they will. It's essential for kids to have a culture they can draw on, whether it's Irish or whatever, because your national culture is made up of the wisdome of the years. So telling my kids about our mythological Irish heroes os one of the things I need to do for them."
How much of the stories are going in, however, he confesses ruefully is another matter. "I romantically like to think of them as Irish kids, but the truth is, they think they're American. And as for the culture, I realize every day with them that I'm losing the battle of vocabulary, because American kids can get by in almost any situation with about five phrases - "wow", "awsome", "butt", "cool" and "it sucks". My kids use all of those. Fighting popular culture in America is a major battle - and I'm fighting on, but whether I'll win or not, time will tell!"
He remains on excellent terms with Barkin. They live close by, confer on family matters, and regularly take vacations together. "It's all very civilised," Ellen told me recently. "We're both concerned most of all with the children, and we think the kids need to see us as much as possible in terms of a family unit. Regardless of what Gabriel's or my relationship is."
Gabriel agrees, "I happen to think there is nothing more important then raising my children properly. When I was growing up, I was led to believe that if a relationship broke up, it meant the end, and the children suffered irreparable damage. It is unfortunate that Ellen and I split up - even though the split has been extremely amicable and friendly - but out of it has come a new hope that if two seperated parents come together and make a real effort for the kids' sake, then they can overcome ... not all of the damage, but most of it. I know people who have been brought up in houses where the parents stayed together "for the sake of the children", and were miserably unhappy, and of course the children picked up on it, and it was disastrous. Our children don't have parents who live together, but they do know I have the highest respect for their mother, and the fact our relationship didn't work out is not something to be ashamed of: it's something that happened, and we dealt with it."
As for who he might or might not be seeing romantically these days, he is no more inclined to spill the beans. He fell for Julia Ormond when they filmed Smilla's Feeling for Snow. "She's a very sweet and dear person, she really is, and very beautiful and sexy," he said at the time. But the romance has reportedly fizzled out and rumours that he is involved with Naomi Campbell are, he says, false. The two are simply casual friends.
So, he's alone, then? He looks at me, thoughtfully, eyelids drooping over those "sky blue" eyes. "Did I ever tell you," he enquires, "about the time i was working at the Cafe Royal in London, and I nearly blew up the kitchen making a cassata ice cream for Jacqueline Onassis?"
He hasn't, as it turned out, so he does. It's a good story, I'll tell you some
other time. Whoever she is, she's a lucky lady.