Cultural ambassador will add a string to Ireland’s bow in US, says Taoiseach
"I'M EXTREMELY honoured," Gabriel Byrne began his acceptance speech. It wasn't the Golden Globe – which he won for his role as Dr Paul Weston in the hugely popular HBO drama In Treatment– but the unprecedented role of Ireland's cultural ambassador.
Byrne stood on the lawn in front of the Saint Regis Hotel, where the Taoiseach Brian Cowen had just said that Byrne’s appointment will “broaden Ireland’s cultural footprint” and “add a string to our bow in relations with the US”.
The White House, where the Taoiseach will be guest of honour and Byrne an honoured guest tonight, seemed to beckon down the street. The Irish actor wore a silver Claddagh ring, a dark suit, an open-necked pale blue shirt and black suede runners. His blue eyes squinted in the sunlight.
“The worlds of culture and economics may seem to be strange bedfellows,” Byrne said. “Harnessing one of our greatest national strengths, our culture, will give us the strongest possible identification. It will build an artistic bridge between Ireland and the rest of the world.”
Byrne (59) moved to America in 1987. He was born in Walkinstown, Dublin, the eldest of six children. His father was a labourer. His mother came from Roscommon. He became famous in the US by playing a gangster in Joel and Ethan Coen's film Miller's Crossingin 1988.
The Usual Suspects, in which he played a thief in a gang that falls out after a heist goes wrong, was one of the most successful films of the 1990s. Jindabyne, a more recent, critically acclaimed film, examines a troubled male-female relationship.
To all his roles, including that of the not-so-stable psychiatrist
Dr Paul Weston, Byrne brings subtle and rich emotion.
Asked about the “American dream” quality of his success in US cinema and theatre, he replies: “Nothing is as wonderful as it seems . . . Life is a thorny path.”
How will he reconcile a demanding acting career with his new, unpaid role as Ireland’s cultural ambassador? “It’s not going to be a job where I get up at 8am every day and work non-stop; I wouldn’t have taken it on,” Byrne said. “I’ve worked a lot on this for the past three or four years. This appointment makes it official,” he continued. “I didn’t want it to be a political appointment. The cultural agenda transcends whatever happens to the Government over the next three years.”
In US politics, Byrne is a Democrat who once held a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in his New York home. "I've never been just an actor," he says. He studied archaeology and linguistics at UCD, was a teacher for eight years and did film reviews for the Catholic Standardbecause "you got free tickets to the pictures". He has produced films too, including In the Name of the Fatherand Into the West.
“I went to Hollywood, back to New York, back to Broadway. It’s been an unusual journey for an actor,” Byrne says. Now he’s starting another “unusual journey”. He’s studied the cultural policies of western governments, and none of them, he says, has a cultural ambassador.
Loretta Brennan Glucksman chairs the American Ireland Fund, which last night hosted a fundraising dinner for 850 people, including Byrne.
“Gabriel did hugely important research for the Irish government,” she said. “He talked to all different national governments about their arts policies. Then the world changed [with the recession] and it got side-tracked. He knows his stuff and he’s passionate about it. It’s a fabulous appointment.”