Written By: Michael D. McClellan |
Ciaran Byrne has travelled a great distance from the Northern Ireland of his childhood to New York City, where he lives today, but that doesn’t mean the builder-turned-actor has forgotten his homeland, or dismissed the tanks and guns and bloodshed as a dreamlike series of unfortunate events, or chalked it all up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Troubles were at a fever pitch on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on peaceful protesters marching against a British internment policy. Thirteen innocent civilians died outright. A fourteenth would succumb to his injuries four months later. Byrne, born eleven months after what came to be known as the Bogside Massacre – or, more infamously, Bloody Sunday – spent his formative years being shaped by its aftermath.
“I was born into that,” Byrne says. “We lived in a terraced house in Newry, a border town between the North and the South. I remember men in camouflage fatigues walking the streets with rifles and guns. There were jeeps and tank-type vehicles everywhere. We were surrounded by British soldiers on our way to school and back again. It wasn’t normal. Even as children, we knew it wasn’t normal. But children are resilient. Children are masters at adapting to their circumstances.”
About 15,000 people gathered in the Creggan area of Derry on the morning of 30 January 1972 to take part in a civil rights march.
If it’s true that actors piece together characters from what they’ve experienced in real life, then it’s hardly a stretch to see some of Byrne’s childhood in his riveting star turn as Angus McGlaughlin, the private investigator hired to track down a mysterious stalker in the 2020 thriller, DieRy. Angus’s straight-line intensity is felt in every scene, Byrne walking the fine line between restrained and untamed, the edginess of his performance something to behold. It’s more than a little disorienting to those who know him best, because Ciaran Byrne is, above all else, a warm and friendly soul.
“To be honest, I was quite intimidated by the role when I read it,” Byrne says. “I’d be lying if I said that I thought Angus was in my skillset. I’ve made a career out of nice guy characters, the loveable loafer types, the sort that deliver comedic relief. DieRy marked a diversion into another land entirely.”
Produced by Mailer Tuchman Media, DieRy stars Claudia Maree Mailer as Marie Clark, who is using her influencer status to pay for her Master’s Degree in Comparative Religion, while moving on from an abusive past. Marie’s life finally appears to be on the right track, but everything changes when an obsessive fan steals her diary. The unknown antagonist sends Marie a series of twisted love letters, promising to kill anyone who is a danger to her. Mailer sizzles and Byrne smoulders, a powerful one-two punch that director Jennifer Gelfer maximizes to great effect, the film hooking you from the opening scene and loosening its grip only after the final credits roll. To see Byrne, as easygoing as they come, transform into Angus, begs the question: How did he get there?
Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
“It started to come together when I shaved my head,” he says quickly. “Angus isn’t the nicest guy in the world. I thought, ‘How am I going to do this?’ I was having a big crisis of confidence, and then I got out of the shower one night and I looked in the mirror, and that’s when I saw him. I immediately shaved my head. I had a big, bushy beard, and I shaved it to this [mustache and goatee]. It made sense to me in that moment. Actors often work from the inside out, which is more method-type stuff, but, in this case, I worked from the outside in. Once I saw my face and my head in the mirror, that started to inform the rest of the character.
“I was 45 years old when I made DieRy,” Byrne continues, “so there were scars that I didn’t have to play. I let all of that feed into Angus. When I put on his clothes and I slipped on that leather jacket, I became him. The validation came when my family watched DieRy in Northern Ireland. They’ve seen me in everything I’ve done, but they didn’t see me in Angus. I felt really good about that. I knew I’d done something right.”
The Troubles may have played a part in shaping Angus, but Byrne’s love affair with Newry burns bright. His parents still live in that same terraced house from his youth. There are plenty of fond memories from his time spent at St. Colman’s Abbey Primary School, and then, later, St. Joseph’s Boys Secondary School. He was obsessed with sports, dreamed of becoming a professional footballer, and is still a soccer fan today.
Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
“I had a happy childhood. We weren’t rich, at least not in terms of material things, but we had happiness. My parents worked hard their whole lives. My dad was a bread delivery man. He had a little truck filled with loaves of bread, and he would deliver all around the country. He would go into places where Catholics weren’t supposed to go, whatever it took to do the job. Later, he became a bus driver for young children with special physical and emotional needs. He would drive them to school, and there were times when I got to see firsthand how much they all loved him.
“My mom worked in a sewing factory. She also worked as the hostess at my uncle’s restaurant, The Boulevard, where everyone in town would pop in to see her. So, she also set a good example. She was faced with great adversity in her life the day that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but she leaned into love during that time, and ultimately beat it. She is a very compassionate person, and deeply loved. I learned how to love from my mom.”
Byrne pauses. In many ways, he’s still that boy from the streets of Northern Ireland in the 1980’s.
“We were an occupied country,” he says at last. “There were shootings and bombings daily. There were over 3,500 people killed over a 25-year period. As an adolescent you struggle to comprehend it at times, but my mom had a way of keeping things in perspective. The Royal Ulster Constabulary were the Northern Irish police force – or, as we would call them, the anti-Catholic police force. People despised them, and the British Army, who patrolled our streets. My mom would say that all of those young boys in uniform were some mother’s son. ‘Have compassion,’ she would say. ‘They were recruited and promised to see the world, and the next thing you know, they’re stuck in a bog in Crossmaglen.’”
Ciaran Byrne is just getting started.
DieRy, in many ways, represents both the endpoint in his circuitous journey to becoming an actor, and the launching pad for things to come. He’s clearly found a home at Mailer Tuchman Media, where John Buffalo Mailer – the son of the legendary Norman Mailer – serves as the creative compass, leveraging MTM’s roster of artists, directors, screenwriters and producers to deliver thought-provoking content. It’s a formula that has quickly set Mailer Tuchman Media apart from other independent movie/television studios.
“Everyone at Mailer Tuchman Media is great to work with,” Byrne says. “They’re a family of artists that want to make movies with up-and-coming actors. They don’t want to raise huge chunks of money for big stars, and then not have any money left to tell the story. They work with up-and-comers, and they take wonderful care of us. Claudia and I have several movies in the works with Mailer Tuchman Media. I’m very grateful for them.”
Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
MTM has released a series of impressive films, including Blind, starring Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore, and Dylan McDermott. Keeping things in the family, the film was written by John Buffalo Mailer and directed by his brother, Michael Mailer.
“They’re really good people,” Byrne continues. “Martin Tuchman is the Executive Producer. He’s also a big fan and patron of the arts. Jennifer Gelfer – it really doesn’t get any better than Jennifer Gelfer. She’s the Executive Director at Mailer Tuchman Media, a brilliant director, and a trailblazing woman. John Buffalo is the kindest soul and an exemplary artist. It really makes it easy to be a part of the team.”
DieRy is a reflection of that teamwork. From Buffalo’s crisp screenwriting to Gelfer’s deft touch behind the camera, every aspect of this film is on point. Together, Claudia and Ciaran deliver breakout performances, feeding off of each other to ratchet up the tension. For Byrne, the moment was a lifetime in the making.
“Angus was the biggest role in my career, so it didn’t land lightly on my shoulders,” Byrne says. “My wife is a great acting coach. She teaches voice at Juilliard Drama, and has coached actors from all over the world. I remember her saying quite early in my career that there will come a day when I realize that I’m enough for the roles that I play. That happened with Angus. I really felt there was no other Angus – I had not seen an Angus on TV, in a movie, or in the theater. At that point of discovery, other people’s interpretations of a private investigator were completely irrelevant to me. I knew that I was enough.”
Ciaran Patrick Byrne may have been born to act, but his isn’t the story of a childhood prodigy who started life in front of the camera. Byrne came to his craft almost accidentally, and only years after working with his hands as a builder in Northern Ireland. As hard as it is to imagine – especially for a man who grew up during the Troubles – it was an act of terrorism on foreign soil that led him to the stage.
“I was plastering a house in Belfast on the day the planes crashed in the World Trade Center towers,” Byrne says. “I remember the foreman calling me in from the job site to see it on the television. All of my friends who lived in New York started to leave and come back home to Northern Ireland after 9/11, because no one felt safe anymore. Well, I’ve always been the kind of person who’s done the opposite of most everybody else. I’d tried many times to get my green card but had been unsuccessful. The rejection was always the same – I didn’t have a specific skill that was needed in the States. That didn’t stop me this time around. I moved to the U.S. in June, 2002.”
Byrne had a hometown friend on Nantucket who offered to put him up for a couple of weeks. Having a roof over his head provided a safety net, but he struggled to land a job.
“I made some friends who gave me money as money was running out. I spent my days going to the lumber yards on Nantucket to see if anybody coming in for supplies needed someone to give them a day’s labor. I would also go to construction sites, asking the foremen if they needed extra labor to do physical work of any kind. Nobody was biting. It was all dead ends.”
Nearly broke, Byrne’s persistence paid off.
“I eventually got a job as a plasterer,” Byrne says. “There was a foreman who wouldn’t answer my phone calls, so I decided to show up on the job site and introduce myself in person. We talked for 10 minutes and he hired me on the spot. I started the next day. I’m very thankful for that gentlemen. I worked for him the entire time that I lived on Nantucket. The work sustained me.”
Byrne made friends and established a name for himself in the community. He quickly grew to love his new island home, but the specter of deportation was always there, lurking in the back of his mind.
“I entered the country the right way,” he says. “I was documented. I just didn’t have a green card. I’d been in the States for six years, but I was actually only allowed to stay for 90 days. That was considered an unlawful stay, so there was always the chance that Homeland Security was going to swoop in and send me back to Northern Ireland. The hardest part was that I couldn’t travel back home to see my family. I missed spending six Christmases with them, along with the final years and funerals of all three of my remaining grandparents. That was hard. I loved my grandparents to pieces, and that was a hard one.”
Homesick and looking for something to fill his free time, Ciaran Byrne came across a poster for acting classes, which were being held at the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. Intrigued, he jotted down the number and gave them a call.
“I hesitated, and almost didn’t call,” Byrne says. “The poster stated that the workshop was for experienced actors with resumés only. This wonderful woman by the name of Meredith Martin answered the phone. She wanted to know if I had any experience. I said that I loved movies, and that I was a really enthusiastic guy [laughs]. To this day I don’t know what possessed her to take a chance on me, but she told me to come on down to the workshop. It changed my life.”
The Theatre Workshop of Nantucket was located in the basement of the Methodist Church. Byrne showed up that first day and was immediately hooked, fascinated by Martin’s class on the Uta Hagen technique. He eventually started acting, taking small parts in plays before working his way up to meatier roles, eventually being cast as Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol.
“Growing up in Ireland, nobody shares their feelings. Nobody says, ‘I love you.’ Suddenly, I’m in a 30-person cast. Everybody is sharing their feelings. Everybody’s loving everybody. I’m still just this builder guy from Newry. When the production was over, I went to stay with a friend of mine in New York City. She was an usher in a Broadway theatre. She was asking me what I thought of acting in the play. I said, ‘I don’t think acting’s for me. There’s too much love. There’s too much sharing.’ She gave me a ticket to see a play at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and asked me to tell her what I thought about it when I came out.
“I’ll never forget it. The play was called Doubt: A Parable, and it changed my life on a dime. Philip Seymour Hoffman did the movie a few years later. John Patrick Shanley was the playwright, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for it. An Irish actor named Brían F. O’Byrne played Father Flynn. When it was over, I remember ejecting out of my seat, covered in tears, and applauding like a maniac. On that day – December 23, 2005, I knew that I wanted to be an actor, and I knew that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.”
Once a month, Ciaran Byrne would finish his workweek and travel by boat from Nantucket to Hyannis on the Cape Cod peninsula, a two-hour crossing, where he’d take an eight-hour bus ride to Manhattan. He’d crash at a friend’s place, and then beat a path to HB Studios for the acting classes early on Saturday morning. This went on for a year, and then it became a twice-a-month journey, a serious commitment from a man working long hours making things with his hands. Little did he know that these trips would not only open doors for him as an actor, but that they would also lead him to his soulmate.
“I’d convinced the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket to put on a production of Doubt, and I was playing Father Flynn,” Byrne says. “I was in a video shop one day, looking for videos with characters who spoke with a Bronx dialect. The shop manager behind the counter recognized me. Her name was Wendy, and she explained that her sister was the Head of Voice and Dialects at Juilliard. Even more ironically, she said her sister was also coaching the dialect for the cast of Doubt on Broadway. She thought Kate would be happy to help me, so I gave her my number. The next day, Kate called.”
Byrne nailed his performance. He was so grateful for the help that he offered to take Kate and her four-year-old daughter, Ella, to lunch on his next trip to Manhattan. There were no romantic notions. He simply wanted to thank her for helping him nail his performance as Father Flynn.
“It was Saturday, April 5th, 2008,” he says without missing a beat. “We were meeting at a restaurant in New York City called Vinyl. I’d gotten out of my taxi, it was two in the afternoon, and I kid you not, I knew that I was going to marry her as soon as I clapped eyes on her.”
The lunch date ran eight hours and included a trip to Central Park. Sparks flew. Their courtship continued over the phone and through the computer, and Byrne proposed two months later. They were married two months after that, on his mother’s birthday.
“Catherine Zeta-Jones helped me propose. Kate was working at Silvercup Studios, where Catherine Zeta-Jones was doing a movie called The Rebound. Kate was her dialect coach. I’d never been to a movie set in my life. I was a community theatre actor who worked in construction to pay the bills. I showed up in my builder clothes and explained that I wanted to propose to Kate Wilson. They looked at me like I was from outer space. Nobody does that. Nobody stops production on a feature film.
“Well, calls were made, and this woman takes me to Catherine Zeta-Jones’ dressing room. Catherine stops production for half a day. Director Bart Freundlich wasn’t one bit happy about it [laughs]. Catherine called Kate and told her that she needed her on the set right way. So, Kate came, and I’m standing there on the set when she arrived. They’d set the whole thing up with lighting and beautiful scenery, and I proposed right there. They even recorded it for us, too. It was incredibly generous, and like something out of a fairytale. It was a moment that neither of us will ever forget.”
Ciaran and Kate were married in August, 2008. By then he’d moved to Manhattan. There was Ella to support, a future to build, and a child on the way. Kate needed to take maternity leave, and Byrne needed a job. He tried Craigslist. He hit the lumberyards. He walked the streets of Manhattan, canvassing the West Side Highway for construction jobs. He was offered $11 an hour if he could do electrical, plumbing, and carpentry. It was a cold shot of reality for a lifelong master plasterer who knew how to do one thing really well.
“Times were tough,” Byrne says. “The financial crisis hit, and nobody was hiring. I eventually found a drywalling company where this young American guy was willing to pay me $25 bucks an hour. I had to learn to drywall. It worked out well in the beginning. Unfortunately, he’d made some bad business decisions and didn’t pay me all I was owed. I ended up about $6,000 short. Still, there were no hard feelings. That job sustained us until my wife could go back to work.”
Byrne started bartending in the Greek restaurant Kefi on the Upper West Side, a trade learned on the job in order to help provide for his family.
“I worked my way up from never having pulled a pint to becoming the head bartender. This was one of the busiest restaurants in the Upper West Side, so I was learning a brand-new trade in an extremely high-pressure environment.”
Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
He worked there three years and made countless friends. The owner even threw a citizenship party for him. He also continued to act, landing a juicy part in The Freedom of the City at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Before long he’d developed a reputation as a respected journeyman actor who was not only nice to work with, but who could also be counted on.
“I was known as an actor who worked hard and who was dependable. Everyone knew me as a team player. I was very proud of that. When someone hired me, I used to joke that they weren’t getting Marlon Brando, but they weren’t getting the headaches, either.”
Byrne’s agents at New York City’s highly regarded Harden Curtis Kirsten Riley Agency then scored him an audition in an upcoming Ed Burns / Steven Spielberg series called Public Morals. He read for the part of a mid-50s, off-the-boat sergeant-type guy, catching the eye of casting directors Maribeth Fox and Laura Rosenthal. Even though he didn’t get the role, he stood out.
“It was 2012. I went off to Pittsburgh to do a play called Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which was being put on by the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre. I’d heard through the grapevine that Public Morals was scheduled to film in New York City in the fall, so I reached out to Maribeth and Laura. They asked me to read for another role, and then sent the script to me in Pittsburgh. I found a professional videographer and taped my audition, and sent it back. Ed Burns loved it. They wanted me to come to New York to meet the producers, but I was doing the play in Pittsburgh six days a week. I thought I’d lost the job, and then my agent called. I’ll never forget that moment. Mary Harden said, ‘It’s official. Edward Burns has approved you. Steven Spielberg has watched your tape and personally approved you. And, TNT’s management have approved you.’ I hung up the phone, and you could have knocked me down with a pillow.”
Ciaran Byrne is on a roll.
Fresh off his star turn as Angus McGlaughlin, Byrne’s set to play District Attorney Ian Kerns in the upcoming Mailer Tuchman Media thriller The Madness Inside Me, currently in post-production. He’s also slated to play Jebediah in MTM’s The Best Friend, a film that’s in the early stages of development. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted timelines, but hasn’t dampened Byrne’s spirit.
“I’m very blessed to work with the fine folks at Mailer Tuchman. Funnily enough, Jen [Jennifer Gelfer] was my acting teacher from 2010 to 2013. I’d met her at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in New York. Then she formed her own company, Haymarket Annex, so I’ve always been a big fan of Jennifer’s. Every Monday night for three years, an eclectic group of people – some of whom are in DieRy, such as Nick Mathews, Chase Coleman, Samantha Strelitz, and Danielle Guldin – would come together and act in Jennifer’s class. In fact, that’s how she came to offer me the role of the bartender in the Mailer Tuchman film, The Second Sun. I attribute a large part of my success to her continued guidance and support.”
Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne
Byrne pauses.
“It hasn’t been an easy road, coming to acting so late in the game, but I think that my work ethic has served me well. Back in 2010, Jennifer asked me why she should take me on as a student, I told her that no one would work harder or come more prepared. Then, years later, Jen offers me the role of Joe in The Second Sun. I think that speaks to my work ethic, to my commitment, and to the reputation that I’ve developed along the way. I’m thankful to be an actor that people want to work with. I’m very proud of that.”
Above all else, Ciaran Byrne is a family man.
The massacre on the streets of Derry on January 30, 1972, still haunts many in Northern Ireland, and is never far from the collective consciousness of those who lived through the country’s darkest days. Byrne often thinks about his homeland, but not like you might expect; rather, his mind goes to the good times that he shared with his parents, his brother, his friends. He grew up in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, heard the stories of soldiers pursuing civilians into Glenfada Park, and still visibly hurts at the thought of the unarmed being shot in the back. Through violence, Byrne learned compassion. From hate bloomed love. Byrne has his parents and younger brother to thank for setting a good example, for showing him that he could rise above the most trying of times. They taught him to keep a level head, and to value the things that are truly important.
Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne
“I love acting, but I have to tell you, my wife and my daughters will always come first,” Byrne says. “Since I was something of a late bloomer, I think I avoided a lot of stuff that can consume young actors. I was able to keep things in perspective. I appreciate the roles that I get and the work that I do, but the most important thing to me is my wife, Kate, my beautiful daughters, Ella and Mabel, and my family back home. All of the other stuff can come and go. Family, my friend, is everything.”