Dublin prepared me for Hollywood. I was ready for the bulls ** t ‘

In his new memoir, Walking with Ghosts, the actor recounts his struggle with fame and the sexual abuse he suffered while training for the priesthood, and reflects on a rapidly changing Ireland.

Gabriel Byrne has waited long enough to write a book. The friendly, dark-voiced actor, a movie star when Ireland didn’t have those things, has always had the gift of well-structured conversation. When the shackles are removed, it slides into something like a blank verse. He is also good at scandalous Hollywood Bacchanalia stories.

There’s more of the former than the latter in the lovely Walking with Ghosts: A Memoir. Structured around an imaginary and haunted visit to the Dublin of his youth, the book offers sketches of cinematic wonderland: John Boorman being bossy in Excalibur, irritable encounters with Laurence Olivier in the 1980s, but has more to do with evoke an Ireland now gone. The smell of the Guinness Brewery. Early acting experiences in a Christmas play. The church, everywhere the church.

Dublin was in its own way more cruel than Hollywood. I never got into a fight in Hollywood. ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ Nobody said that in hollywood

Why has it taken you so long to write this? Because right now? Did that 70th birthday push you to the keyboard?

“I don’t think it has anything to do with reaching ‘a certain age,'” he says. “I was curious to look back at an Ireland that is now changing so rapidly. I wondered if the world I grew up in is as distant to this generation as the Victorians were to us. However, the Victorian era took hold of our generation. What formed me? What were the influences? If some of those influences hadn’t existed, I may not have become the person I am today. “

Born in Walkinstown to a working-class Catholic family, Byrne took a difficult path to the acting profession. As a teenager, he somehow found himself preparing for the priesthood at a seminary in Worcestershire. When that didn’t work, he went home and ended up studying archeology and linguistics at UCD. If things had been different, he could have become academic. You certainly have the brains for it. But he taught for a time in a high school and then stumbled upon acting.

There’s fun stuff on Walking with Ghosts about your first encounter with fame. Anyone old enough to remember The Riordans, RTÉ’s wildly popular rural soap opera, will appreciate how his life must have changed when he was cast as Pat Barry.

“The fame of The Riordans was as intense and crazy as anything I have ever experienced,” he says. “It was like having a number one single at age 20. He may have been the first homegrown drama star. I remember getting off at the wrong stop in Galway during the winter. Very dark. I see a light in a house and knock on the door. This woman opens the door. ‘Almighty divine God! Look who it is!’ They brought me in and, I’m not kidding, I was on TV. “

But the usual suspects? Miller’s Crossing? In treatment? Hereditary? Gabriel has been at the head table for decades. That was the fame of Mickey-Mouse. Right?

Dublin prepared me for Hollywood. I was so ready. Nothing in Hollywood surprised or surprised me after Dublin, ”he says. “I was ready for nonsense. He was ready to stab in the back. He was ready for rejection. Dublin was more cruel in its way than Hollywood. I never got into a fight in Hollywood. ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ Nobody said that in Hollywood. “

There is enormous and heartbreaking affection for Dublin throughout Walking with Ghosts. But family miseries are intertwined with nostalgia. Byrne was born in 1950 and grew up in a poor country struggling to connect with the modern world. Fondness for his working parents lights up the pages marinated in soot and stale stout.

It goes without saying that the Catholic Church looms over every incident. Byrne tells me that questioning divine authority was inconceivable during those years. However, that doesn’t explain how he found himself preparing for the priesthood.

He was terrified of the Dublin he lived in every day. The priesthood seemed like an escape. I believed the fairy tale they were telling me … You hear God telling you what to do. It’s like joining a cult

“For my mother’s generation, a priest in the family was a gift from God,” she says. “That is not an age where you really know what you are doing. An innate, unconscious desire to escape attracted me. He was terrified of the Dublin he lived in every day. This seemed like an escape. I believed in the fairy tale they were telling me. It was backed by people who said: you have a vocation. I did not understand that sometimes you can ask your conscience a question and it can be answered by your own unconscious. You hear God telling you what to do. It’s like joining a cult. “

Byrne is frank in his treatment of the sexual abuse he suffered in seminary. The book recalls a learned priest who entertained young Byrne in a red robe. “It is strange, I thought, for a priest to dress like this,” he writes. The priest speaks of his love for Chopin. He gives young Gabriel a cigarette. What follows is as horrible as it is predictable.

Walking with ghosts doesn’t explain how the experience harmed him. Perhaps “damage” is too bold a word. Perhaps the book is too short to adequately address such a complex dilemma.

“That is a very interesting question,” he says. “For many years, until maybe four years ago, I thought I was the only man abused by this man. It was only when I connected to a group of WhatsApp alumni who revealed that they had been abused by the same man. I can’t tell you, Donald, what weight it took off my shoulders. It wasn’t just me. Memory is something delicate and fragile. “

He goes on to talk about the power of addressing their own trauma and the skepticism victims still encounter when they tell their stories. Byrne eventually tracked down her abuser’s phone number. He got the now-elderly priest into contact, but was unable to unleash his previously planned tirade. He said nothing about the abuse and hung up the receiver.

I drank all over the world: in Kilburn, in Venice, in Los Angeles. The price of the wine didn’t matter. I didn’t drink because I was a connoisseur, turning it over on my tongue. I just wanted oblivion

“What surprised me the most was how kind his voice was,” he says. “Right? If you’re 11 years old and someone who has authority, who, you know, comes directly from God, he was speaking to you with that voice at the time… What chance do you have? When I called him it was the same voice. He said no It reminded me. I said, ‘I remember you! ‘But he didn’t hear anything about it. “

Eventually, it became clear that Gabriel was not cut out for the priesthood and he returned home to a Dublin that was not exactly up to the height of the 1960s. The social revolutions associated with that decade did not hit Ireland until the 1970s or 1980s. Byrne has fond memories of working in one of Dublin’s pioneering gay bars.

“I think you are absolutely right,” he says. “I got a job as a waiter at a pub in Dublin called Bartley Dunne. I saw a wedding between two men. But they still seemed to be living in a different world than the one I inhabited. Outside, the education system had done its job. And that was the story that shook the dog for a long, long time. Fear. Shame. Don’t put yourself above yourself? Who do you think you are?”

With all that pressure to be normal, it should come as no surprise that Gabriel didn’t take the stage until he was nearing 30. He landed the part in The Riordans in 1978. Three years later he played Uther Pendragon in John The Magical, Noisy, Excalibur. Boorman’s brilliant. It would be wrong to suggest that he hit the business like a meteor, but was never out of work again. Along with Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan, he became one of the few Irish movie stars with boomer ancestry. No one else handles that mix of worn intelligence and eerie introspection.

Maybe I protected myself from becoming one of those people who went to Miami for the weekend and came back with an American accent. I never wanted to be that person

We now know that another familiar Irish specter loomed over his life. Walking with Ghosts tells us about the drinking traditions of mid-20th century Dublin and recounts his own gradual realization that he had a problem with sauce. He checked into a facility over 20 years ago and hasn’t touched a drop since. But he is not self-righteous on the subject.

“I had a fantastic time!” he admits. “I drank all over the world: in Kilburn, in Venice, in Los Angeles. The price of the wine didn’t matter. I didn’t drink because I was a connoisseur, spinning it on my tongue. I just wanted oblivion. And I wanted to escape by myself. Jung said that an addict is someone who seeks a spiritual solution. I think that is correct. But I had a fantastic time. It took me out of myself. “

The drink also helped with Byrne’s stubborn shyness. There is a fascinating section of Walking with Ghosts that finds the author panicked to the point of hysteria over the acclaim that ensued at The Usual Suspects in Cannes. This was in 1995. Byrne has already been around the block several times, but he had not adapted to the complications of global success. He also admits to a persistent problem with stage fright.

“There was a well-known producer who is now in jail. . . “I cannot imagine who he is referring to. (Use your head). “Yeah ha ha! He said: ‘Be prepared to lose your anonymity. It’s over.’ There was an awards ceremony in Cannes and this woman said, ‘I will return my award if I can go on a date with Gabriel Byrne.’

“Everyone heard that. The Riordans had helped. Because I couldn’t walk into a pub and sit alone with a pint. And he didn’t want to live like this. It was clear that my life was not going to be mine now. All of that hit me that night. It was a panic attack. I left Cannes and went to a hotel room on my own. I don’t like people coming up to me and talking to me, even if 98 percent of people are very nice, which it is. “

He seems to have come to terms with fame. In the mid-1980s, he moved to New York to be with his partner, actress Ellen Barkin. The couple divorced in 1999, but he has remained in the United States ever since. He married Hannah Beth King in 2014 and the couple had a daughter in 2017.

Happily, Byrne has continued to find good roles in his grayer years. In Treatment was a hit on television a decade ago. He played alongside Toni Collette in the recent brilliant horror Hereditary. He just returned from a Covid-altered filming for the French-American television adaptation of War of the Worlds.

And through it all, he has stubbornly remained, without question, a Dublin man. Despite decades in New York City, the accent has barely altered a nano-syllable. The vernacular is still in place. Attitudes are not altered.

“Maybe it’s because I started later,” he says. “Maybe I protected myself from becoming one of those people who went to Miami for the weekend and came back with an American accent. I never wanted to be that person. “

Without fear of that.

Walking with Ghosts: A Memoir is published by Picador