Gabriel Byrne shares his Hollywood tales; from rivaling Leonardo DiCaprio for poor swordsmanship in The Man In The Iron Mask to getting taken on an all-night limo ride by an unnamed celebrity who picked him up at a restaurant.
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The difference between Gabriel Byrne and just about everyone else in Hollywood is that if you went up to him and said, "Hey, I have this great idea for a movie," he wouldn't file a restraining order.
"I love it when people say they have an idea," confesses Byrne. "I immediately say, 'Tell me the story.'"
Maybe Byrne loves a good story because he has so many delicious ones himself. Since the end of his six-year marriage to Ellen Barkin, he's been one of the most eligible bachelors in Hollywood, and his name is constantly brought up in gossip columns for romancing leading ladies, but he tells the best tales of his own romantic adventures. And Byrne's career alone could inspire a novel.
Born in Ireland, he moved to England to study the priesthood, moved back to Ireland to become a teacher, then gave it all up at age 29 to pursue acting. It wasn't until age 40 that he landed a starring role, in the Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing. He's since had a steady, successful career, often playing intense loners in films such as Little Women, The Usual Suspects and Smilla's Sense of Snow, and he's been involved in producing films like Into the West and In the Name of the Father (with fellow Irishman and friend Jim Sheridan). Lately, he's been all over the big screen with The Man in the Iron Mask, The Last of the High King_s and this summer's _Polish Wedding.
DENNIS HENSLEY: It's practically unheard of today for an actor to hit Hollywood in his late 30s and become successful, but you did. Do you wonder what it would have been like if you had started making movies earlier?
GABRIEL BYRNE: I don't know that I would have been able to handle it. I've worked with a lot of young actors and I feel sorry for some of them, because the people who are drawn to this business are not terribly confident or secure, for the most part. And then suddenly the universe is telling them they're amazing.
Q: Ever seen any crash and burn?
A: A lot of them turn to drugs or drink. What people don't realize is that everybody is dispensable. I remember Anthony Hopkins once said to me, "There are three and a half billion people at this moment living, breathing on this planet. I can guarantee you right now very few of them are thinking about you." And it's the truth.
Q: Speaking of young talent, you recently starred in The Man in the Iron Mask with Leonardo DiCaprio, who had just finished filming Titanic before you started working with him. Was he still gurgling up water and picking icicles out of his hair?
A: All he said about Titanic was that it was an incredibly difficult shoot. I asked him if he thought it was going to be a success and he said, "I'd be surprised if it's a big deal."
Q: Would you want to be in a blockbuster the size of Titanic?
A: No. If it's a hit, that's great, but you can't go in saying, "This is going to be a big success," because the truth is that actors don't really have any control over the end product. To think that you have control is a delusion and it's also incredibly frustrating to be investing that much hope into something that essentially boils down to marketing. So you try to do movies that you feel connected with and you work with directors and actors you admire.
Q: On The Man in the Iron Mask, you crossed swords with Gerard Depardieu, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich and Leo. Were you the best swordsman?
A: No, I'm completely uncoordinated. John Malkovich is really good at it and so is Jeremy. But Leo and I were like the fencing dunces. We acquitted ourselves nobly at the end.
Q: You also recently worked with another young star, Claire Danes, who plays your daughter in Polish Wedding. What was she like?
A: We were just cracking up the whole time. There are times when we would walk into a scene barely able to keep it together, do our acting, walk out and collapse. At the end of the picture she gave me a photograph and wrote on it, "I'd love to work with you again, but I'd be in danger of being hospitalized from laughing."
Q: What about Lena Olin, who plays your wife?
A: In terms of sexiness, Lena wipes most of these women away who are so-called "sexy." You can't define it, but it's just there.
Q: People seem to find you sexy, too. I was at the Independent Spirit Awards a few years back when Linda Fiorentino said that she hadn't been laid in three months and would like to trade her Spirit Award for a date with you. Did you ever take her up on it?
A: Well, I was completely shocked. [Miramax cochairman] Harvey Weinstein said to me, "Your stock just went up." It was kind of weird. Then I thought I should acknowledge this in some way so I called her and said, "Thank you very much for that very sweet thing you said." Unfortunately, I can't report the rest of the conversation because it veered off into something else.
Q: How do you react when somebody says you're sexy?
A: What's to be upset about? It's flattering. And it's nice because there'll come a time when it won't be said. The thing about sexiness is that you can't actually cook it up.
Q: Since we're talking about sexy things, have you ever done anything sexy in a limo?
A: To me, limos are the places where you fulfill all those fantasies that you ever had of being a rock star or a movie star. You can't just sit in a limo and be brought from one place to another.
Q: So then you must have some stories to share.
A: I could but I would implicate too many people.
Q: How many people are we talking about?
A: Six. A great time was had by all and it was filmed with a video camera by the one non-participating member.
Q: What would happen if the video got out?
A: Believe me, I have the only copy. I've shown it to a couple of people and they cannot believe that this actually happened, but it did. Three of the people are extremely well-known and they would be dead of mortification if they ever thought that I was even remotely referring to that night.
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.
Q: Didn't you meet that film's director, Jim Sheridan, when you were just starting out?
A: Yes. We worked in a small theater group in Dublin in 1976 that had Neil Jordan, Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea and myself. We were all in that same little dump of a theater. It was a great, very exciting time.
Q: What's a message that was left on your answering machine that you play over and over?
A: Kevin Pollak calls me up regularly. He's a brilliant impressionist and he calls as, say, Johnny Carson or Alan Alda or William Hurt or Gregory Peck. He called up one day as Bill Clinton phoning from the campaign bus. And he said [as Clinton], "Hi, Gabe, it's Bill here. Hillary and I are coming into town and we were going to get liquored up at Dan Tana's, maybe get hold of those Baldwin boys ..." It went on for 20 minutes.
Q: You made The Usual Suspects with Pollak. I heard that set was pretty frolicsome.
A: It was. I had a serious mental block with that name, Kee-Keezer... even now it's difficult.
Q: Keyser Soze?
A: I could never get it. One night we were shooting, it was like midnight, and I was supposed to lean on the billiard table and say, "There is no Keyser Soze." Instead I said, "There is no Keezer... excuse me... there is no Koozer. Excuse me. What's his fucking name?" It was so embarrassing because everyone just sat there looking at me. We have it on a gag reel.
Q: What scene have you been in that you're truly thrilled with?
A: That scene in the forest with John Turturro in Miller's Crossing. He was brilliant. Each time that we did that scene, I could see the goose bumps on his arms. I think that's what's addictive about acting. That for a few seconds, you get a hit of being in some other world.
Q: What's the worst costume you ever had to wear?
A: The suit of armor in Excalibur, which was made from real iron. I was in it for months. It was torture because they didn't design any trap doors for, you know, for obvious functions. We were on horses all the time, and you would just see clouds of steam coming out from the armor. People just got used to it, you know. It was appalling.
Q: Would the director be like, "OK, film's rolling, nobody pee!"
A: It was mostly the look you saw on people's faces where you'd see that they were like [grimaces] and then you'd see this total relaxation. It was really Monty Python-esque.
Q: Do you have a favorite souvenir from a movie set?
A: No, but Melanie Griffith gave me a bar of crystal and said, "This will be a magical thing in your life, and it will change your life if you rub it every day."
Q: How long did you do it for?
A: Well, I've rubbed it every day for two years and nothing has happened. [Laughs] Not really, but I take it up occasionally. It's something I value a lot.
Q: How did you learn the facts of life?
A: From this kid who brought a medical encyclopedia to school one day. We all went into the bathroom and he showed us all the things. It made no sense whatsoever. None. Here was this illustration of this guy on top of this woman and I just couldn't understand it. And then you try to apply it to your parents and people on the street and you just can't imagine.
Q: When did you catch a clue?
A: Three years ago. I finally said, "Oh, that's it." [Laughs]
Q: Do you remember the first girl you had a crush on?
A: I was eight. It was a little girl in a raggedy dress and all I wanted was to sit beside her at the movies, and I couldn't because I thought that if I sat beside her, she'd know what my intentions were, which were actually just to sit beside her and to inhale her aura and her beauty. She's a married woman now with, like, eight kids.
Q: You saw her recently?
A: Yeah. Going back to Dublin provides great continuity for me. I see women pushing kids down the street and they say, "Hello Mr. Byrne, you used to teach me," because I used to be a schoolteacher there. And I start to think, "How could I ever have taught you? You're a married woman with four kids."
Q: In your early 20s you worked as a tutor in Spain. Were you girl-crazy?
A: Completely. The Basque women there were so beautiful and they had this built-in arrogance. I fell in love with a girl there who I later found out was a terrorist. We would be in bars and she'd say, "Shhhh! Secret police, secret police." At that time, Franco was still the guy and they had secret police who kept tabs on everybody and she was a member of the Basque guerrilla force. But she had this delicacy. Her room was like an altar with all these little vials of perfume and nail polish. Then she'd show you how to assemble an AK-47, like, blindfolded. I thought she was the most beautiful girl in town. I used to go to this bar and one night she was there and she started talking politics to me and she became really passionate about it. Soon, I became as heated as she was.
Q: And you know where that leads.
A: That can only lead to one place--the bed, consulting a medical encyclopedia.
Q: That's when those illustrations come in handy. What's something you're good at that might surprise people?
A: Playing the accordion.
Q: Have you ever wooed a woman with your accordion skills?
A: You know, embarrassingly to report, yeah.
Q: Did it work?
A: It did actually, but it has to be used in combination with other things. You can't walk up to a woman and start playing the accordion and say, "Oh my God, where have you been all my life?" The way to do it is ... No, I better not give the secret away.
Q: Do you ever get mistaken for other actors?
A: I was mistaken for Sam Waterston in a strip club in Las Vegas. We were doing night shifts for [Cool World] and I went into this bar coming home from work one night. The guy was saying, "Now for your dancing pleasure, Candy!" and this stripper came out and she was bored to death, and then the guy says, "Tonight, we have a really amazing surprise. We have movie and TV star Sam Waterston." And I thought, "Sam Waterston is here?"
Q: So you let them think you were Sam Waterston?
A: What was I gonna say? "I'm not Sam Waterston!" I eventually told Sam Waterston this story and he just looked at me. But back to the story--I got an invitation from the stripper to go backstage to see her, which I did, and then I bought her breakfast.
Q: Because you don't want to look back at age 80 and think, "I could have taken Candy to IHOP."
A: Why not? I was going with the experience. She was 42 or 43, married with two kids, husband had left. We talked for two hours. She ate a steak, two eggs, bacon, sausages, toast, then she said she was going to the bathroom and I never saw her again.
Q: You were raised a Catholic. Why don't you tell us what you talked about during your last confession.
A: [Laughs] I should say, that's between me and my priest. People who are not Catholic are amazed at the whole concept of confession. When they say, "How could you?" I say, "Do you go to therapy? It's exactly the same thing only less expensive." I always think my confessions are serious when I'm telling them, but there are far more serious sins. That's another thing that I'd like to teach my kids; that everything passes and that nothing really is that terribly, terribly important. I remember reading about this guy who jumped out a window during the San Francisco earthquake. If he'd waited eight more seconds, he would have survived. I often think of that guy, because no matter what it is, everything that happens eventually passes, the good things, the bad things. They all pass and it's a matter of keeping your balance.
Q: If you could relive one day from your childhood, what day would you pick?
A: There was one day, when I was about six, where I learned that life was not eternal. As a child I thought that life went on forever. My father used to work for the Guinness brewery and they had their 100-year centenary celebration. It was a big field day for the kids with free ice cream cones and lemonade--everything that a kid wants. We weren't that well-off growing up, so it was exciting. There was a greasy pole, pillow fighting, races and prizes, and everything was free. It was an incredibly beautiful, still summer's day, a child's paradise. So I remember saying to my father, "Can we go to the next one, because this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me." He said, "It's going to be in a hundred years. I'll be dead and you'll be dead." And I remember thinking to myself, "That's one thing I'm never going to experience again, ever." What I'd like to do is go back and change it and not ask that question because it spoiled the day for me.
Q: Were you named after the angel?
A: My mother told me that when she was pregnant with me an angel came in the window and told her to call me Gabriel.
Q: Did he have a horn?
A: She didn't go into the details.
Q: What's one thing you were picked on for at school?
A: My name. I used to be called Gabby and then later on it was Gay. Now I think it's a really cool name.
Q: Is it true you worked in a gay bar for a while and didn't realize it was gay?
A: Yeah. I was 16 at the time. I was a busboy and I remember saying one night to the bartender, "Not many women come in here" and he said, "That's because it's a bar for homosexuals."
Q: How long had you been there?
A: About four years. [Laughs] No, about two weeks. I remember a guy asked me if I was gay, and I said yes because I thought he was referring to my name. It was an experience because I witnessed two guys getting married in the bar, which for Dublin in 1967 was truly amazing. Everybody was lined up on either side singing "San Francisco (If You're Going To)." People were in tears and cheering--it was moving. I still keep in touch with the bar owner.
Q: You seem to have a wonderful inventory of the things that have happened in your life and what they've meant to you.
A: I think that we have to do that. If everything just happens and you don't ever think about it, what's the point? There's nothing that doesn't mean something. It's fun to think of your life in that way. What's amazing is that we all have the same life, basically. We all have the same fears, the same highs and the same lows. When you can spread it out and give it to other people, people identify with it and that brings people closer together.
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Dennis Hensley interviewed Milla Jovovich for the February '97 issue of Movieline.