Here’s an actor who doesn’t get enough love from any of us (including me): Gabriel Byrne. I love this man. I think he’s so very talented, so very handsome, and his voice is basically one of the biggest panty-droppers ever. When I was about 16 years old, I think I must have watched The Usual Suspects every other day for a year, I loved that movie and Gabriel so much. So, so lovely.

Anyway, Byrne was being interviewed on an Irish television show, and he dropped a bomb: he was sexually abused as a child while in seminary school in Ireland. Byrne doesn’t say the words “a priest abused me” but that’s the subtext. Apparently, Byrne was planning to become a priest, and he was enrolled in a seminary school at the age of 11. He made it through 4 and a half years there, then quit when he became interested in girls. Byrne doesn’t go into detail about what was done to him or exactly what age it happened, but it does sound like something he’s still learning how to deal with:

Gabriel Byrne revealed to an Irish television show that he was molested when he was 11 years old. Byrne, who plays a therapist on “In Treatment” and starred in films like “The Usual Suspects” and “Stigmata” told of his years as an altar boy and in a Christian Brothers school on the show “The Meaning of Life.”

Byrne, 59, went to seminary at age 11 to begin studying to be a priest, and he lasted 4 1/2 years.

“Unfortunately, I experienced some sexual abuse,” he said. “It was a known and admitted fact of life amongst us that there was this particular man, and you didn’t want to be left in the dressing room with him. There were certain boundaries, sexual boundaries, that were crossed… I didn’t feel that i suffered at the time.. It took many years to come to terms with it and to forgive those incidents that I felt had deeply hurt me.”

“Again, I didn’t think it severely impacted me at the time. But I suppose when I think about my later life, and how I had difficulties with certain issues, there is the real possibility they could have been attributable to that.”

He later talked about his own battle with alcoholism.

He also said while, “I was beaten very regularly,” he has never laid a hand on his two children, whom he had with ex-wife Ellen Barkin.

He left the seminary when he discovered women and felt more excitement for the female form than he ever had for the priesthood. Byrne joined an acting group, he said, for the girls.

[From The Huffington Post]

He just sounds like a nice guy, doesn’t he? True, I have no idea what he’s really like. From what little I do know about him, he seems to have a great work ethic, he is beloved by the acting community, and he’s generally considered to be one of the most underrated actors working today. I had no idea about all of this personal stuff – the alcoholism, the sexual abuse, the physical abuse. Poor guy. He has his demons, but it sounds like he’s trying to find a way to say that the stuff that happened to him when he was a kid contributed to his problems as an adult, all while taking responsibility for all of it.

Meanwhile, Byrne received much critical acclaim for the first two seasons of HBO’s In Treatment, where Byrne plays a psychotherapist. The show was picked up for a third season last fall, and Byrne is probably going to begin filming any day now. Good for him!

Byrne at the 2009 Emmys on September 20, and at a press conference in New York on July 31, 2009. Credit: WENN.