Gabriel Byrne Gabriel Byrne Gabriel James Byrne (born 12 May 1950) is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, writer, cultural ambassador and audiobook narrator. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's screen debut came in the Irish soap opera "The Riordans" and the spin-off show "Bracken". He has appeared in over 35 feature films, including "Excalibur" (1981), "Miller's Crossing" (1990), "The Usual Suspects" (1995), "Stigmata" (1999), "End of Days" (1999), "Spider" (2002), "Jindabyne" (2006), "Vampire Academy" (2014), "The 33" (2015), and "Hereditary" (2018), and co-wrote "The Last of the High
Francis John Byrne Francis John Byrne Francis John Byrne (born 1934 - died 30 December 2017) was an Irish historian. Born in Shanghai where his father, a Dundalk man, captained a ship on the Yellow River, Byrne was evacuated with his mother to Australia on the outbreak of World War II. After the war, his mother returned to Ireland, where his father, who had survived internment in Japanese hands, returned to take up work as a harbour master. Byrne attended Blackrock College in County Dublin where he learned Latin and Greek, to add to the Chinese he had learned in his Shanghai childhood.