Actor/Producer

One of Ireland’s foremost actors, Gabriel Byrne is equally adept on the other side of the camera. Byrne began his acting career at Ireland’s famed Abbey Theatre, and moved to London in 1979 to join the Royal Court Theater. Just a year later he made his first feature film, and his name has steadily appeared in the acting credits ever since. Such films as The Usual Suspects, Frankie Starlight, Miller’s Crossing, Trial by Jury, and Into the West have served to make Byrne a box office star. 

He is career as a producer began on Into the West, and Byrne worked as executive producer on In the Name of the Father, the Oscar-nominated movie about the Guildford Four. His autobiography, Pictures in My Head, was enjoyed by fans every-where. Byrne is extremely interested in Irish history, and in the year of the 150th anniversary of the Famine, has given lectures to raise awareness across the U.S. “The famine of the mid-19th century is our holocaust,” he told Irish America. “It is not an isolated incident in the history books. The psychological effects and reverberations are still being felt today, because not only did this great catastrophe influence us as people, but in a broader sense it changed forever the social history of Ireland and consequently of the United States,” he said. 

“It is my belief that until we deal with the trauma of the great hurt to our soul we will not be fully free to own our true identity as a people. There is a profound link between the starvation of the Irish a century ago and world hunger today. For, simply put, the conditions which caused the Famine are the same as those which continue to perpetuate world hunger today.”