By Hillary Johnson
Premiere Magazine, March 1997

Gabriel Byrne, the Irish actor whom the New York Times once labeled the thinking woman's poster boy, has never been in such demand. In the just-released Smilla's Sense of Snow, he helps Julia Ormond investigate the death of a young Inuit boy. Later this year he'll be seen in the romance Last of the High Kings, which he wrote and produced, and the family drama, Polish Wedding. Byrne, 46, has also just signed a first-look deal with Phoenix Pictures. But what he looks forward to most is the publication later this year of his first novel, The Woman Who Danced With JFK (a memoir, Pictures In My Head, was published in 1995). We met for a beer in the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, a setting the famously down-to-earth Byrne occupied with as much ease as if it were the village pub.

You don't like to watch your own movies. Why not?

I used to hate it. Now I've come to the conclusion that there's really nothing I can do about the way I look. The first time I saw myself on a big screen, I was depressed for months. The things you notice about yourself magnified 365 times. There was a very famous actress who sat beside me at a screening of her first movie, and she banged the girl who was sitting on her other side and said, Can I fucking act, or what! That's the kind of confidence one should have. I looked and said, Jesus Christ Almighty, my nose is enormous!

Much of Smilla's Sense of Snow was shot in Denmark and Greenland. What was that like?

It was a really difficult movie to do physically, because of the snow and the cold. I got pneumonia, and I was in the unique position of being in a hotel room in Copenhagen with this very attractive young Danish doctor saying to me, You know, we can't get an accurate reading of your temperature with the thermometer under your tongue. So I put it under my arm and she said, "Look, I'll go next door and have a smoke and you..." So I said, "You go next door for a smoke and I stick the thermometer up my own ass, that's really what you're saying?" This is what medicine has progressed to? But she saved me, so it was worth it.

How do you navigate the Hollywood star system?

The problem I find, and its not just Hollywood but the unspoken pressure of American life, is that there's no middle ground: You certainly can't fail. And you're not allowed to be moderately successful. I know an actor who is worth over $100 million. When he was drunk he told me that, and I have no reason to doubt it. So I said, What's it like to have $100 million? Can you get better ingredients in your pizza?

What made you decide to write your memoirs?

I was walking with my five-year-old son (by ex-wife Ellen Barkin) one day, and I had a mobile phone, which he picked up and just dialed, and I was amazed at his technical dexterity, his lack of fear. I realized that his world and mine are already eons apart, and I thought, if I were to die, what would he know about me? The kind of world I came from and what it meant for me to leave Dublin and come to America, because I never thought I would. So I decided to write about it.

How Americanized have you become?

Well, I have met two of the ex-presidents, which is kind of strange. I've been at one baseball game in my life, and I was trying to make myself feel, like, This is an experience, but it really wasn't, I was just bored. And then there was a disturbance over in the far corner, and I decided to see what it was. In the middle of this swelling, pressing crowd was Richard Nixon. When I was a kid I used to look for autographs, and I found myself caught up in the hysteria of the moment. I had an empty cigarette pack, so I pushed it forward. This Secret Service man said, "Hey, you do not ask the president of the United States to put his autograph on a cigarette packet." But Nixon took it from me and said, "What's your name?" And he wrote, "From Richard Milhous Nixon." And then I met Ronald Reagan, who walks up and down my road to Rodeo Drive, with his secretary.

Why do you live in Beverly Hills, of all places?

Somebody asked me that the other day. They said, "It's a summer's day in L.A., and suddenly I arrived at your house, and it was Ireland in 1954. It's bizarre for you to live in Beverly Hills." What part of L.A. can you live in? It's peaceful and quiet, and I can walk. If you really stretch your imagination, you can think of Beverly Hills as the local village. You do need some imagination.

Do you believe in God?

My father used to go to Mass every single morning at 6 o'clock. I envied him, that his faith was so easy for him. For me, faith is hard-won. I used to think that if we live in this world, then we should know what it's all about. And then one day I woke up and thought, that's the very point. Because if you don't have doubt in the world, there'd be no such thing as faith. I think the reason I believe in God is because I believe in the idea of universal suffering.

Hillary Johnson