Gabriel Byrne

Born: 12 May 1950,
Where: Dublin, Ireland

The one time wannabe priest made his breakout performance as an Irish mobster in the Coen Brothers' noirish thriller Miller's Crossing.

Subsequent career highlights have included doomed conman Dean Keaton in The Usual Suspects, The Mechanic in Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow and D'Artagnan n The Man in the Iron Mask.

Bizarrely for a trainee priest, he appeared as a man of the cloth in Stigmata and then switched sides to play Satan in the Schwarzenegger action-thriller End of Days.

The first of six children, the 12-year-old Byrne entered the seminary in England with the intention of becoming a priest but was expelled four years later after being caught smoking in the graveyard.

He also told the New York Post he was abused by his Latin teacher while attending the seminary.

In his youth he played the accordion in Dublin pubs and went on to Dublin's University College, where he studied linguistics and archeology.

He worked as an archeologist for three years and then taught Spanish and Gaelic at a Catholic girls school for four years.

During his time as a teacher, Byrne appeared in an amateur productions and was good enough to attract the interest of an actor from Dublin's Abbey Theatre, who encouraged him to try professionally.

After becoming a member of the theatre he began to attract TV roles and made his film debut aged 29 in The Outsider in 1979.

However, he was more popular on TV thanks to the Irish series Bracken and the mini series The Search for Alexander the Great.

In 1981, he played King Arthur's father in John Boorman's Excalibur and a Nazi officer in Michael Mann's Second World War chiller The Keep.

His first major role was in the taut British Cold War thriller Defence of the Realm in 1985 and he followed it as Byron in Ken Russell's typically lively Gothic the following year.

He played opposite his future wife Ellen Barkin in the largely forgettable Siesta in 1987 (they were divorced in 1993) before the Coen Brothers cast him as mobster Tom Reagan in Miller's Crossing.

Roles followed in the romantic drama The Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda and the film adapation of Little Women with Winona Ryder.

In 1995, Byrne impressed in Bryan Singer's labrynthine thriller The Usual Suspects, alongside Kevin Spacey and Benicio Del Toro, and he went on to star in the hauntingly surreal Smilla's Feeling For Snow.

He followed the role of a fellow mustakeer of Gerard Depardieu and John Malkovich in The Man in the Iron Mask with the Tony Scott thriller Enemy of the State with Will Smith.

In 1998, he played a priest alongside Patricia Arquette in the religious chiller Stigmata and went on to play the devil in End of Days the same year.

Subsequent appearances have included David Cronenberg's Spider, seaborn horror yarn Ghost Ship and the role of the shadowy Marquess of Steyne in the film adaptation of Vanity Fair.

In 2005, he played a Detroit cop in the enjoyable remake of John Carpenter's Assault on Precint 13.