Gabriel Byrne: Byrne-ing Up

Q: Sex? Drugs?

A: I can't say, but I'll tell you another story. I was in a restaurant having dinner with some friends and this incredibly well-known person, I can't say who, was having dinner in the restaurant. When she left in a great flurry of excitement I said, "Wow, I can't believe who that is!" So we're sitting there eating dinner and the next thing I know a waiter comes over and says there's a phone call for me. So I go to the bar and I pick up the phone, and on it is the person who had left the bar 15 minutes earlier. She said, "Hi, it's me. I didn't want to come over to your table because I'm a little shy and I didn't want to make a scene, but I'm in my limo and I'm just driving around, and I've always wanted to meet you. I think you're somebody I could really get along with. I don't know how you feel about this and I feel kind of weird saying this, but where do you live?" And so I said, "I feel really weird about telling you where I live." She said, "Well, you want to do something completely crazy?" And I said, "You know what? OK. OK. But what do you mean, crazy?" She said, "Something that you've never done before." I said, "It depends what you mean." And she said, "Well, don't you want to find out?"

Q: I can't believe this.

A: This is a gospel true story. So I said, "OK, I'll go with it." And she said, "Tell me where I should pick you up." And when the limo pulled up she said, "Get in," and I got in.

Q: My head's gonna explode.

A: And I've never seen her again. Except, you know, I've seen her around everywhere. And there's nobody apart from the driver and her and me who know what happened. It was one of those moments where the choice between doing it and not doing it, was, like, "Maybe when I'm 80 I might regret that I never did this so I'm just gonna go with it."

Q: Is she gorgeous?

A: Yeah.

Q: Did it happen in New York or L.A.?

A: I can't really say any more about it, but it was one of those "limo moments."

Q: Can I ask how long the limo ride was?

A: I left the restaurant between half past twelve and one o'clock and I was dropped off at five. I've told this story to a few people, and there's this guy who rings me every three or six months, and says, "You've gotta tell me. I mean, this drives me crazy." I say, "I promised I would never tell so you're just going to have to live with it." What I liked was that she was brave enough to do it and I was flattered that she chose me.

Q: Now that we're firmly on the subject of women, I have to say you seem to have had a very amicable divorce situation with your ex-wife, Ellen Barkin. How have you managed that?

A: I think that you have to overcome your own personal pain for the sake of your children. It's about having respect for each other as individuals, despite the pain. You can think of them as being the mother or the father of your child, you wouldn't want to hurt that person because it is part of the child that you love.

Q: Do you think about getting married again?

A: I did think about getting married again, but I laid down and the feeling passed. I have no plans to get married, no. I am free. Well, maybe not free, but reasonably free in the sense that I'm not involved in any deep, meaningful relationship.

Q: What is it about actresses that intrigues you outside of work?

A: Their need to be loved. Trying to separate the image that you have of them and the reality of them is exciting, too. Actresses are like a prism. There's a reality about them that's incredibly touching and yet at the same time you wonder if that's real.

Q: When you have gotten personally involved with somebody who is part of pop culture, is it surreal to see them in magazines and on TV?

A: It's the same thing as when you have a relationship with somebody in, let's call it the normal world, and you break up and a friend of yours says, "Hey, I saw so-and-so at a restaurant the other night. God, she looked great!" only if they're famous, you'll turn on the TV and she's being interviewed. It's painful up to a certain point, then it's OK.

Q: But it's fun while you're in the romance, right?

A: Yes. It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said--

Q: There's such a fine line between those two.

A: [Laughs]--"We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we're not, we cling to."

Q: Your natural love of storytelling must help you as a producer.

A: Oh, yeah. Our production company, Mirabilis, has five projects that are greenlit that didn't cost me a dollar, that came out of my head. I see producing as my way of contributing positively to the universe. I was at a lecture that Gloria Steinem gave a few months ago, and she said, "You should never ask whether what you do is important or not, because it is. Scientists have acknowledged that the fluttering of a butterfly's wing in one hemisphere influences the weather in the other. So if you've got an idea, you have a duty to go with it."

Q: What kind of projects are you attracted to as a producer?

A: Things that are beneath the surface in contemporary life. When I [executive produced] In the Name of the Father, nobody here wanted to do it. I said, "Listen, this movie is about your justice system, not just about the British justice system. It's about what happens when somebody who's innocent gets put in jail and somebody who's guilty goes free." Two years later, OJ. Simpson happened.

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