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Gabriel Byrne commands attention the moment he enters a room, and when he settled into THE LATE LATE SHOW studio fresh from Cork’s International Film Festival, the 75-year-old actor brought with him three decades of gravitas earned since THE USUAL SUSPECTS catapulted him into cinema’s permanent consciousness. Before heading west to the Dingle Literary Festival, Byrne sat down to discuss everything from American politics to the Irish soul, delivering the kind of passionate, unfiltered commentary that has defined his extraordinary career.

Politics ignited the conversation immediately. His criticism of Donald Trump has been well documented, but on this Friday night, he channeled his hopes into Zohran Mamdani, who he insists represents genuine hope for ordinary Americans. “It’s time for the old guard in the Democratic Party to move on,” Byrne declared. “The reality is, I think they have lost, did quite a long time ago, lost touch with the American working class, who are really disillusioned.” Mamdani, in Byrne’s view, stands against the bankers, billionaires, captured politicians, and Silicon Valley titans who wield unprecedented power over our lives.

When host Patrick Kielty produced a 1989 photograph showing Byrne campaigning alongside Michael D. Higgins, the actor’s face softened with admiration. “I think we were absolutely blessed in having such a magnificent President, a representative of our country, a poet, a public intellectual, a campaigner,” he said. Of Ireland’s new president, Catherine Connolly, Byrne praised her empathy, compassion, and intelligence. “We’ve been very lucky, really, in terms of the presidents that we’ve had, Mary McAleese, Mary Robinson,” he reflected, before adding, “sometimes I wish we’d vote that way when it came to the general elections.”

Would he himself ever consider entering politics? Byrne’s answer revealed something fundamental about the independence that has shaped his life. “I could never belong to a party. The older I get, the more I value independence.”

That independence has served him well across his remarkable body of work, which continues to expand with vigor. Having portrayed Samuel Beckett in DANCE FIRST (2023), capturing Ireland’s most enigmatic literary genius, Byrne went on to appear as Enzo Ferrari in LAMBORGHINI: THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND (2023), starred in the romantic Irish drama FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE (2024), and took on a role in this year’s BALLERINA, set within the JOHN WICK universe. These recent projects sit alongside earlier work like his chilling turn in HEREDITARY and MURDER AT YELLOWSTONE CITY, demonstrating an actor who refuses to be confined by genre or expectation.
But it was when the conversation turned to storytelling and Irish culture that Byrne truly came alive. The actor traced a direct line from Ireland’s colonial past to its present creative power, arguing that oppression paradoxically strengthened the nation’s imaginative capacity. “I think, you know, because of colonialism, our culture was suppressed, buried, denied, and we went underground, and we went into an oral tradition where poems were passed from one person to another, stories were told around the fireside,” he explained. “That was a form of theatre. And what was in play there was the imagination.”

“We’ve always retained this power of imagination and the power to tell a story,” Byrne continued. “When Irish people are on their game and you get a good storyteller, there’s nobody quite like them.” He invoked Oscar Wilde’s claim that the Irish are the greatest storytellers since the Greeks, calling it Ireland’s “soft power” that radiates outward to touch the entire world. “We’re a nation that people look to and respect and admire, and we have so much to offer.”

Then came the challenge, the moment when Byrne’s passion crystallized into something approaching a manifesto. “Retain the Irish character,” he urged. “Speak our own language.” He identified one of colonialism’s cruelest legacies: the shame it instills in the colonized, making them feel their own culture is something to hide rather than celebrate. But something has shifted, Byrne insisted. “I think we are coming into a place now where we are beginning to—at last—embrace the richness and the power of our own culture, and we don’t have to look anywhere else to get it.”

Three decades after THE USUAL SUSPECTS, Gabriel Byrne remains as committed to the power of storytelling as ever. He stands as living proof of what Irish culture can produce when given the space to flourish: artists who refuse to compromise, who value independence above all else, and who understand that the most powerful act is simply telling the truth about who you are and where you come from.