Gabriel Byrne Quotes

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Gabriel Byrne

Profession : Actor

Birth : May 12, 1950

Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.

Gabriel Byrne

I read a lot on the subject and had many conversations, and I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is a force for evil.

Gabriel Byrne

I never went to drama school, but I did learn a couple of things along the way.

Gabriel Byrne

When you're still, and some actors are really brilliant at that, you bring a kind of energy to you as opposed to sending the energy out. There are some actors, like Gary Cooper or Kevin Spacey, that are absolutely brilliant - Gene Hackman is another - at being and allowing the audience to just do the work.

Gabriel Byrne

I think that if you can convey a kind of a complexity, a mystery, a truth in stillness, that, to me, is really worth striving for, and I totally agree with Michael Fassbender in that less is more. If it's going on inside you, the camera will find it.

Gabriel Byrne

Where issues used to be, say, parochial or local in Ireland or England and so forth, all politics is global now because all business is global.

Gabriel Byrne

The Catholic Church is an innately conservative rock - they call themselves the 'rock of Peter' - and its resistance to change is, ironically, what has kept it constant throughout the ages.

Gabriel Byrne

No actor who's any good can say truthfully to themselves, 'Yeah, I'm good; I've got this sorted.'

Gabriel Byrne

Generally speaking, I don't think people know a great deal about the Viking culture, apart from the label that is usually attached to them, either pillagers or deviants who came and brought back loot to Norway. It was an incredibly sophisticated, complex and layered culture. They had their own laws, many of which protected women.

Gabriel Byrne

I would love to go back to any time in European history, especially in Irish history, to the second or third century, prior to the arrival of Christianity when Paganism flourished. I can always go back there in my imagination, of course. It doesn't cost anything, and it's a form of time travel, I suppose.

Gabriel Byrne

I think that when we look at something that's well acted and a story that's well told, it allows us to be a mirror of who we are as human beings and as a culture, and offers a glimpse of where we're headed.

Gabriel Byrne

The difference that a drama group or a cinema club can make to a small village or a town. It opens people up to ideas, potential about themselves that really, in a way, education often fails to. It's a way of drawing a community together.

Gabriel Byrne

I attended the bedside of a friend who was dying in a Dublin hospital. She lived her last hours in a public ward with a television blaring out a football match, all but drowning our final conversation.

Gabriel Byrne