PROFILE GABRIEL BYRNE: Despite rave reviews and raised temperatures among middle-aged female viewers, Gabriel Byrne's HBO series faces the axe. But, from 'The Riordans' to 'The Usual Suspects', the heart-throb from Walkinstown has always fallen on his feet
HE WAS an Irish teacher, a clerical student, a cook and an archaeologist before taking up acting at 29. He never set foot in the US before he was 37 years of age and this week finds himself one of the most discussed actors in America.
Gabriel Byrne's HBO series In Treatmenthas won strong reviews and a cultish devotion yet is on the brink of being axed for plummeting ratings.
Even HBO's unusual decision to place entire episodes on YouTube has been largely ignored. The first episode attracted 56,000 hits and numbers tumbled from there; by the fifth episode, the number of online viewers fell to just 6,500. (A fake news piece about a space vibrator attracted more than 1 million YouTube hits on Thursday alone.) In Treatment, in which Byrne plays psychiatrist and cerebral sex magnet Dr Paul Weston, has little action outside of his office. It is all knowing looks, long pauses and occasional sexual tension, brazenly mining the psychiatrist-as-love-object set-up HBO first explored in The Sopranos.
This time around, the gender roles are reversed and The Sopranos'violent undertone has vanished. The sexual tension is with a hospital worker, not a mobster, and the audience has yet to show any lasting interest.
"The final episode is here and In Treatment'sfuture is in talks," a HBO spokeswoman said about the show, which won strong praise in the US media, articles invariably mentioning Byrne's smouldering good looks.
The New York Timesquotes one fan who said she would like to lick him all over, a line repeated to Byrne's face by perky interviewer Katie Couric on CBS television last Sunday.
"I'm gettin' menopausal here, listenin' to this," Byrne said to Couric with a playful grin. "I'm gettin' hot flushes. Or hot flashes, or whatever they call them."
Byrne's latest role gets its biggest response from middle-class American women in their 40s, at least according to a flood of e-mail responses to an Irish Timesposting to an In Treatmentfan site.
Kristy Deer, a 45-year-old with a masters degree in mass media studies, offers a typical response and believes Byrne to be "quite humble, approachable and real".
"I love the fact that he lives in New York and is part of the city instead of living in LA or Hollywood. I think if I ran into him in my hometown of Indiana, he'd fit right in," she said.
Anna Blume (43) from Quebec is married with two kids and is a self-confessed "lame" Gabriel Byrne groupie. She gave him a self-composed poem after his production of Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet two years ago. "While we chatted, he was smiling, looking straight at me . . . LOOKING AT ME!!!" she writes. "As I left, walking on air (really, not touching the ground I swear), feeling intoxicated with joy, he waved goodbye. This feeling of weightlessness kept on for more than a week."
PAULINE TURLEY, vice chairwoman of the Irish Arts Center in New York, says groups of women fly into New York to attend the centre's annual gala just to meet Byrne.
Promoting the arts centre is one of Byrne's consuming passions. "We throw money back and forth to each other when he insists on paying to see performances," says Turley.
Byrne is currently chairman of a working group that hopes to raise $30 million (€19.1m) for a much larger arts building and has had many meetings with the Taoiseach, Minister for Arts Séamus Brennan and his predecessor John O'Donoghue.
"He told the Taoiseach he wants a New York centre that will be forward-looking, not looking back to the days of Synge or Beckett," says Jim Houlihan, who has worked closely with Byrne on the project.
While Byrne has used his star power to attract the Irish government and major Irish American benefactors, Turley says he is shy in large crowds and is most relaxed around small groups of friends.
Every Christmas, he throws a small party at his spacious townhouse in Brooklyn. In 2006, Harvey Keitel listened as the then Irish consul played the piano while Chris Noth (Mr Big from Sex and the City) sang for Byrne's neighbours and close friends.
Last April, Byrne threw a $4,500 (€2,800) per person fundraiser party for Irish supporters of Hillary Clinton, earning a personal thank you from Bill Clinton during speeches in Byrne's living room.
IT ALLseems so many lifetimes away from Byrne's childhood in Walkinstown in Dublin, the eldest of six children of a barrel-maker and a nurse. He moved to England at age 12 to join a seminary but was later told he had no vocation, much to his relief.
He studied archaeology at UCD, a university he disliked intensely, telling approving Trinity students years later that Belfield felt like a grey airport, waiting for a plane that never arrived.
As he drifted between jobs, he took up amateur acting.
It was "something to do in the evenings" and a way to meet women. His talent and photogenic looks led him to high-profile roles in RTÉ drama The Riordansand a stage production of Brendan Behan's Borstal Boyat the Abbey.
Fellow Borstal Boyactor Niall Tóibín remembers Byrne benefitting from a bad turn in international politics. Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia, and two weeks of performances by the Red Army choir were cancelled at the Gaiety in protest. The void was filled by Borstal Boy, which had just finished at the Abbey. "I noticed straight away that the posters for the show didn't include me, but had Gabriel instead. He was the draw, not me," said Tóibín.
The two would meet a decade later in Riordansspin-off Bracken, when the country spat collective bile at Tóibín's rapacious landlord as he fought a young good-looking farmer and man of the people played by Byrne.
"I remember we were shooting a big argument between us at a Wicklow lake. The noise attracted a swan that attacked the pair of us," says Tóibín. "I jumped over a barbed wire fence, nearly losing my testicles in the process and Gabriel came tearing after me. It was that kind of show. It was rough-and-tumble."
Already known in Ireland for his good looks and occasional flash of bad boy temper, Byrne was part of a set of young Project Arts Centre actors that including Liam Neeson and Stephen Rea.
His big Hollywood break came in the Coen brothers's Miller's Crossing, which led him to occasional stand-out movies such as The Usual Suspects.
The surprise ending of the movie allegedly brought out Byrne's rage. Kevin Spacey, who won an Oscar for his role as "Verbal" in the film, claimed that Byrne berated director Bryan Singer when he learnt after filming that his character was not the real identity of shadowy drug lord, Keyser Soze.
"I remember this incredible argument going on. Gabriel was screaming, 'I thought I was Keyser Soze! I was Keyser Soze!" Spacey recalled in a 1998 edition of Smokemagazine.
Along with such notable hits, Byrne has been involved in some turkeys, especially in romantic or lightweight films.
"He's a tremendous actor but he's definitely best in straight roles. His lighter stuff has not been as good. He's best when he really burns himself into a part," says Tóibín.
ON THEset of the critically panned Siesta, Byrne met his future wife, Ellen Barkin. The couple have two children, Jack and Romy, who are both in their teens and accompany their father to various events in New York, including an exhibit of his African photographs at Glucksman Irish House in 2005.
Despite a split in 1993 after five years of marriage, Byrne and Barkin did not divorce until 1999 and they remain close friends. Byrne stayed several times with Barkin and her next husband, billionaire Revlon chairman Ron Perelman, and Barkin presented Byrne with an Irish Arts Center award in 2002.
"I met her a couple of weeks ago and she was raving about In Treatment," says Irish director Terry George. "She was concerned about the intensity of the recording schedule but she was very proud of Gabriel. They really are close after all this time."
George recalls that he was doing a short story reading in the Sin É bar in Manhattan's lower east side in the early 1990s when Byrne showed up and told him he wanted to produce a story about the Guildford Four's Gerry Conlon. George wrote a script and brought in director Jim Sheridan. The result was In The Name of the Father.
"I still have a video of me, Gabriel, Jim and Gerry Conlon in a karaoke bar in LA singing Please Release Me," says George. "We were out celebrating when we heard the film was going to be made; it was all very exciting and Gabriel made it happen."
The key to understanding Gabriel Byrne is that he is not in the film business to be a sex symbol, he says.
"He loves to act, it's that simple. If the other stuff . . . what do you call it? Heart-throb? If that comes along too, well and good. It's an added bonus, but it's not what Gabriel Byrne is about. He has too much going on to even care. He has a vision and he knows how to get there."
CV GABRIEL BYRNE
Who is he?Gabriel Byrne - Irish actor and middle-aged heartthrob.
Why is he in the news?The future of his high-profile psychiatry drama hangs in the balance after disappointing US ratings.
Appearance?The thinking woman's love muffin.
Most appealing characteristicA passionate interest in the arts. And he refuses to be Pierce Brosnan.
Least appealing characteristicHas spent the last few weeks leading American Christian women to thoughts of sin.
Most likely to say"There's more to me than just a sexy smile, smouldering good looks and a seductive, soft-eyed gaze."
Least likely to say"I came to Bracken to raise sheep, Dinny, and in Bracken I'll stay."