Walking with Ghosts

A stunning memoir by Gabriel Byrne, the award-winning star of over eighty films, Walking with Ghosts is an exquisite portrait of an Irish childhood and a remarkable journey to Hollywood and Broadway success

As a young boy growing up on the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working-class parents and the eldest of six children, he harboured the desire to become a priest. When he was eleven, Byrne crossed the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. After being expelled four years later, he quickly returned to his native city. There, he took odd jobs as messenger boy and factory labourer in order to get by. In his spare time he visited the cinema, where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he began to imagine a life beyond the grey world of 1960s Ireland.

He revelled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin's streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollections of childhood in a now almost-vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.

Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies.