Acclaimed actor Gabriel Byrne has praised Irish people for their "rare gift" of storytelling, saying our nation is one that others "respect and admire."
The 75-year-old award-winning star said he firmly believes Oscar Wilde's famous quote that the Irish are the greatest storytellers since the Greeks.
Speaking on Friday’s Late Late Show on RTÉ One, the Walkinstown man, who now resides in New York, said: "Look at the number of writers we have; it’s just astonishing. Musicians, actors, painters - we have a fantastic cultural imprint around the world, and that is power that goes around the world."
He added: "We're a nation that people look to, respect, and admire. We have so much to offer."
Byrne, who is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Academy Award-winning crime thriller The Usual Suspects, explained how he once met a fan of the movie who stopped him in his tracks.
"I once met a man in New York who said, 'Would you mind if my friend came over to say hello?'" Byrne recalled. "His friend came over and he started at the very first line of The Usual Suspects. He was about twenty-five lines in and I was like, ‘Stop, how do you know this?’ And his friend said it was the last movie he saw before he went blind."
Byrne also spoke about the impact he had on another man after his role in 1992’s Into the West, where he plays a once-legendary Traveller named Papa Reilly.
"A priest came up to me one day and said, ‘I want to thank you, because my mother had Alzheimer’s and I used to bring her to the movies just to give her a day out,’" Byrne said. "He told me the last thing she said that made sense - she was deep in the horrors of Alzheimer’s - but while she was watching that movie she pointed at the screen and said, ‘Gabriel.’ He said that was the last moment that he ever really connected with her."
Byrne also hailed Ireland's new President, Catherine Connolly, who was inaugurated as Ireland’s 10th President at a ceremony in Dublin Castle earlier this week, saying, "She is going to be a wonderful representative of the country."
"She is empathetic, compassionate and intelligent. She speaks to people and for them. I think she reached people with her own sense of dignity and reality," he said.
The Late Late Show, Friday nights at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
