After 17 years on the stage, four Tony nominations, and parts in films including 'Million Dollar Baby' and 'Intermission', New York-based Cavan man Brían F O'Byrne is finally having fun, he tells Derek O'Connor
Brían F O'Byrne has nothing to prove. It might seem an obvious remark about a man who has been nominated four times as best actor in the Tony Awards, and who has just spent a year on Broadway, to unanimous acclaim, in John Patrick Shanley's acclaimed drama Doubt. On the other hand, the Cavan man's rise seems not to have troubled the radar in this country, perhaps because his greatest theatrical successes have occurred in the US - he won a green card 17 years ago and now calls New York city home.
"It does get a bit tedious," he says with a smile, "doing these interviews where they expect you to sound so grateful that you've come all the way from Cavan to Broadway, and 'Haven't you been so lucky?' and that kind of thing. I've been incredibly lucky. I know that. I don't take that for granted for a moment. But I've worked my ass off for almost 20 years now. I've won the Tony. I'm not just starting out here."
Last year was especially memorable for O'Byrne. Although it wasn't the year of his Tony - he picked his up in 2004, for his role as a child murderer in Bryony Lavery's Frozen - Doubt was named best play and Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, in which O'Byrne had a small but pivotal role, won the Oscar for best picture. "That will always be the year when I got to say that I was in the best play and the best movie," he says.
Both feature O'Byrne offering unique versions of the Catholic priest, that tried-and-trusted staple of US drama. "I'm going through my holy phase at the moment," he says, light-heartedly. "I'm looking to tackle bishop roles next, and then, fingers crossed, a pope or two."
At a time when crowd-pleasing musicals are dominating Broadway, the critical and commercial success of a well-built drama such as Doubt (which won a Pulitzer as well as a Tony last year) has been remarkable. Set in the Bronx in the mid 1960s, Shanley's play pits Sister Aloysius, principal of St Nicholas Church School (played by Cherry Jones, who won a best-actress Tony), against O'Byrne's Father Flynn, a popular parish priest suspected of molesting a male student.
From the opening moments, as O'Byrne's charismatic, working-class clergyman addresses his parish - the theatre - with a winning charm, Doubt plays its audience beautifully, working as both gripping drama and resonant, layered examination of faith, devotion and the ambiguities that define us all.
A home-grown production, preferably one that returns O'Byrne to the Irish stage, is being discussed, as is a film version. "The funny thing about this play," he says, "is that you'd tell people, Well, it's about this priest who's accused of being a paedophile. And before you'd even said the 'p' in 'paedophile' they'd go: 'Well, he did it.' So our thing, from the beginning, was to have this priest walk on stage and to change the audience's perception on the spot. That's the brilliant thing Shanley did by creating this blue-collar guy from the Bronx.
"Our notion of these men in the church is that they went away; they changed, separated themselves and became immune from everything. But making this guy a salt-of-the-earth, from-the-neighbourhood type . . . I talk straight to them, look into their eyes. I smile at them, and they smile back. Bam! We've got them. It reminds them of church when they were kids. They laugh. And then, when the accusations are posed, they go: 'What?'
"Every time you turn on the news, and something like this happens, there's another abuse scandal, that's the one thing they always say: 'He seemed like such a lovely man.' These people - and I'm not saying that this character is guilty - are not going around foaming at the mouth. They're very charming."
It's the latest in a series of roles that O'Byrne has made his own, from his star-making turn in the original Druid productions of Martin McDonagh's Leenane Trilogy to parts in films such as John Crowley's Intermission, Barry Levinson's An Everlasting Piece and Johnny Gogan's underrated The Last Bus Home.
Working on a film, he says, can almost feel like a break, insofar as it offers respite from the passions that can accompany working on stage. A provocative, meaty piece such as Doubt gives O'Byrne a connection with the audience that he relishes. "People want to talk and talk about this show. Shanley always said that the last act of the play takes place after the curtain, when people argue about what really happened and what happens next. I love that. I've had people offer me money - seriously. They need to know what happens. It's the notion that they can't sit with doubt."
Except for a few weeks in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit, to film Bug for William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist and The French Connection, and a stint alongside his Intermission co-star Colin Farrell on The New World, Terrence Malick's new film, O'Byrne's life has been dominated for the past year by Doubt.
On January 8th he finally hung up his dog collar, having played to close to 250,000 people, and is enjoying some time out. O'Byrne can't stay away from the stage for too long, however. He will return to Broadway in May, for the US premiere of Conor McPherson's most recent play, Shining City. The role? That of a troubled former priest.
The years of graft, then, are paying off. For the first time O'Byrne has found himself in a place where he can truly enjoy his work. It has been a long time coming. "My whole attitude has changed lately," he says. "The success has been fantastic, sure, but the biggest change has been in myself. Doing Leenane, on and off, for five years, I went a bit mad. That's the only way I could describe it. I always felt the show had to be exactly the same as the previous night, and I worked so desperately hard to make sure that it was. Then the hour before the show became the same, and then the hour after, and suddenly it was like Groundhog Day. In order to have that energy, my entire life became the same day, over and over. That's going to wreck anyone's head.
"Now I'm in this much freer place, and every night doing a show is different. I'm much looser than I was years ago. I can play with a part, and that keeps me fresh. For the first time I enjoy the process. I enjoy the audience. This is what I do, and I think it's possibly taken me 17 years of doing it to really embrace that fact. I'm having a ball."
The New World is on general release