Tuesday, April 1, 1997
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun
BEVERLY HILLS -- Gabriel Byrne has a sense of what snow means.
"It's cold. Damned cold. And if you're filming in Greenland, Sweden and Denmark in the winter, the snow never goes away," recalls Byrne of his experiences filming the romantic thriller Smilla's Sense Of Snow.
"At first, you're humbled by the white silence of the incredible landscape in Greenland. Then it becomes tedious and cold. Very cold."
Byrne adds that "snow is also insidious. I was complaining so much about the cold in Greenland that (director) Bille August gave me two weeks off.
"I went back to Los Angeles to spend some time with my (seven-year-old) son Jack Daniel. I felt great. I arrived back on set and promptly got pneumonia."
Making Sense Of Snow definitely had its compensations. Byrne fell in love with his leading lady Julia Ormond.
They were inseparable during the shooting of the film. Their busy shooting schedules are keeping them apart. Byrne is in Paris shooting The Man In The Iron Mask and Ormond is in Moscow filming Love In The Mist.
This is the second time Byrne has been smitten by one of his leading ladies.
Back in 1986 when he was filming the erotic thriller Siesta, he met, wooed and married Ellen Barkin. They have since divorced but are good friends and jointly raise their son.
"What happens between actors off-set shouldn't find its way onto the screen. The emotions of the actors and the emotions of their characters are worlds apart."
Byrne is 46. He has only been acting for 16 years and is the first to admit that "by Hollywood standards, I was bloody ancient when I started acting."
That's because Byrne literally stumbled into the profession.
As a teenager, he left Ireland to train for the priesthood in England.
"I got thrown out after four years for smoking in the seminary's graveyard," recalls Byrne, who worked as a plumber and then a bartender in a gay pub.
He eventually went to university where he majored in archeology, went on several archeological digs and ended up teaching drama in a Dublin school.
"I became the drama teacher because the school couldn't afford to hire a real one. I directed a couple of plays and then in one of then, the lead boy got sick so I had to step into his role at the last minute."
Fate was sitting in the audience that night.
Several directors of Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre were in attendance and they approached Byrne to join their theatre company.
"It was quite a company. Me and Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea and (directors) Pat (Circle Of Friends) O'Connor, Jim (My Left Foot) Sheridan and Neil (Donnie Brasco) Jordan.
"I bought the whole scene. I grew my hair, wore tight jeans and cowboy boots, slept around and smoked pot."
Byrne eventually got his own TV series called Braken and a small role in John Boorman's film Excalibur.
"Every actor in Dublin was in that movie. We all lied saying we could ride a horse. None of us had ever seen a horse.
"Liam and I went off to London and learned to ride on polo ponies in Hyde Park. We got a ticket for riding too fast."