- Gabriel Byrne is a Hollywood leading man that many know from the blockbuster films Miller’s Crossing and The Usual Suspects. Byrne has also starred in more than 80 films, television series, and acclaimed Broadway performances. Now he’s added author to that resume. Celebrity memoirs are not uncommon, but Byrne’s is uncommonly well written.
- The very first I saw of this book was something that slightly tainted my expectations. Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon, called it a masterpiece.Well. Before this, my expectations of Gabriel Byrne were limited, to say the least: I’ve only seen him in big-budget Hollywood films and TV-series, where I often found myself thinking he played quite the same character.
- A highly anticipated memoir by Gabriel Byrne, the award-winning star of over 80 films, Walking with Ghosts is an exquisite portrait of an Irish childhood and a.
Gabriel Byrne's Walking With Ghosts, a far cry from the usual ghost-written, humble-bragging of great actors, is destined to be a classic. Slow to judge others, he does not spare himself for what. 'The allure of Gabriel Byrne's memoir is that it persuasively humanizes what it is to be a big deal movie star. Byrne is wonderfully without cant or bluster or phony humility. Instead he leads with felicity, candor, humor and empathy. In the end, he seems to be somebody you'd be glad to know.'
As a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working class parents and the eldest of six children, he harbored a childhood desire to become a priest. When he was eleven years old, Byrne found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, Byrne had been expelled and he quickly returned to his native city. There he took odd jobs as a messenger boy and a factory laborer to get by. In his spare time, he visited the cinema where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he could begin to imagine a life beyond the grey world of 60s Ireland.
Gabriel Byrne Maine
He reveled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin’s streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, those who spin a yarn with acuity and wit. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.
Gabriel Byrne 2020
Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies.