excerpts and links to text and video interviews available online, including podcasts
2024
Business and Finance.com/David Monaghan, April 16, 2024
“Kindness is something that is seen and makes an impact on people” – An interview with Golden Globe winner Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel Byrne has starred in more than 100 feature films, and on Broadway he has received 3 Tony Award nominations. A prolific career with a considerable contribution to Irish cultural and public life, he was the perfect choice for 2023 TK Whitaker accolade at the Business & Finance Awards, hosted in December, 2023.
Here he discusses his career, the importance of the arts, Irish identity and culture, and what it means to be a leader with David Monaghan, Deputy Editor of Business & Finance.
We are sitting in a bar in the Shelbourne and Gabriel Byrne is happy to be in Dublin, the city in which he came of age against a backdrop of religious and societal oppression. It is December 7th, 2023, and in amongst the din of diners and drinkers, we discuss his illustrious career. . .
When we speak, Byrne is set to receive the 2023 TK Whitaker Award for Outstanding Contribution to Public Life at the Business & Finance Awards.
Does Byrne view himself as a leader? “I don’t … Except maybe leading by example, which to me is the best form of leadership.”
He continues: “There are people who are naturally charismatic leaders, but what they do is they bring a coherent vision together, and they’re able to articulate the needs and the wants and the aspirations of an audience. But I think that leading by example … If you are a kind person, you don’t have to stand up and say ‘I’m a kind person.’ Kindness is something that is seen and … makes an impact on people.”
“So, if I’m passionate about the arts and what I think the arts should be … I think people, it’s not that they learn from it or anything, but they say, ‘hm, maybe he has a point.’”
Byrne also notes that ‘practical things,’ like his work for the Irish Arts Centre in New York, “that is the manifestation of this passion for the arts.”
Portland Herald Press (Maine)/Ray Routhier, February 15, 2024
Actor Gabriel Byrne, living in Midcoast, lends voice to domestic abuse awareness fundraiser
Byrne will appear March 9 at a fundraiser for Finding Our Voices at the Camden Opera House, which includes a screening of ‘The Usual Suspects.’
An Evening With Gabriel Byrne will be held March 9 at the Camden Opera House as a fundraiser for the advocacy organization Finding Our Voices. The evening will include a screening of “The Usual Suspects” plus a question-and-answer session with Byrne.
Byrne said he offered to help Finding Our Voices after meeting founder Patrisha McLean, who lives in nearby Camden, at a Midcoast cafe. He said he was impressed with the work that she has been doing and wanted to help in some way.
“I do admire very much the work, the necessary work that she does, in Maine. She’s provided a refuge for these people. Of course, in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be necessary,” said Byrne, 73. “This is the first thing I’ve ever gotten involved with here. I usually just keep a very low profile, but I think this is something worth doing.”
2023
Gabriel Byrne: ‘The Catholic Church has left a black mark’
The Irish actor, who plays Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett in ‘Dance First,’ discusses the perils of fame
Now, at 73, Byrne leads a placid life in Maine. The Dubliner travels from the East Coast to shoot and promote films such as Dance First, a flawed biopic of writer Samuel Beckett’s life. But at least its September screening at the San Sebastián Film Festival allowed Byrne to smilingly recall his celebration of Francisco Franco’s death. He was in Bilbao, Spain, teaching English at the time. “I left a trail of English speakers with Irish accents there,” he jokes.
Simon Mayo Interviews Gabriel Byrne, November 3, 2023
On the Kermode and Mayo’s Take podcast, Gabriel talks about his new film, Dance First, which is premiering in London.
Radio Times Interview, November 3, 2023
Gabriel talks about playing Samuel Beckett and how his view on the literary icon changed over time.
HeyUGuys Interview, November 2, 2023
Gabriel Byrne on Dance First, his personal relationship with Samuel Beckett & the embarrassment of acting
In what is one of our favourite interviews in some time, we spoke to the brilliant Gabriel Byrne on portraying Samuel Beckett in Dance First, which is released on November 3rd.
In this fascinating chat with the affable performer, we discuss his process of playing a character like Beckett, as he talks to us about his own personal relationship with the author, and whether it’s been altered as a result of making this film. He also talks about the unique approach to the biopic which we see here, and he talks about acting as a craft, and how, in some ways, it’s all rather embarrassing.
NME.com interview, November 1, 2023
Gabriel Byrne says ‘The Irishman’ de-aging “didn’t quite work” but AI tech “will get better”
The acclaimed actor speaks out on the dangers of artificial intelligence in moviemaking
I think the de-aging process is at a very exploratory stage,” he told NME in an exclusive interview, before commenting on Martin Scorsese’s 2019 Netflix mob epic The Irishman, which aged down Robert De Niro and Al Pacino up to 50 years by using first-of-its-kind motion capture technology created from AI software. “I didn’t think it quite worked in The Irishman,” Byrne said, “but it will get better and it will get incredibly sophisticated.”
He continued: “The advent of AI is going to affect every single facet of life from now on, it’s especially going to affect the truth. And what we have come to think of as the truth. People say we won’t know what’s real and what’s not real, but to a great extent that’s already happened, we’re already living in a post truth society. I think it will have huge implications for the film business.”
Review Presents interview at San Sebastian International Film Festival, October 27, 2023
Gabriel discusses his role as Samuel Beckett in the new film, Dance First, which had its world premiere at the festival in September.
The Guardian interview, September 22, 2023
The Guardian, Claire Armitstead
A lot of biopics depend on likeness – this is braver’: Gabriel Byrne on playing Samuel Beckett
The actor talks about his new movie Dance First, in which he plays the Irish dramatist, the time he shared a drink with Richard Burton and why he had to leave Los Angeles
[In a scene in Dance First, Beckett/Byrne says} “You know this is going to be a journey through your shame,” he solemnly informs himself. “Isn’t everything?” he replies. It’s interior monologue played as dialogue, presenting an unusual challenge for the actor Gabriel Byrne, who found himself in an old quarry outside Budapest for three days, speaking to a broom.
“Well yes, that was difficult,” he says over video from his farmhouse in Maine. It wasn’t that the idea of speaking to himself was alien – far from it. “I’d spent my entire life talking to myself: even when I was a child in Dublin, I used to walk around the streets doing it, and if somebody walked past me, I’d pretend I was singing. But technically it was difficult because you had to do one guy here. And then you had to turn around and become the other guy. So the brush was standing there and you had to talk to the brush. And then you stood where the brush was and talked to … a brush.”
The Archbishop Interviews: Gabriel Byrne
In this series, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has conversations with public figures about their inner lives. What do they believe? How does that shape their values and actions?
This week’s guest is the actor, director and screenwriter, Gabriel Byrne.
