Known for Acting
Brían Francis O'Byrne (born 16 May 1967) is an Irish actor who works mostly in the United States. He was born in Mullagh, County Cavan. O'Byrne first attracted notice for his performances in the Martin McDonagh plays The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) as Pato Dooley (for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play) and The Lonesome West (1997). He is known for taking on serious and dramatic roles, such as a serial killer in Frozen (1998) (for which he won a Tony Award) and a priest accused of child molestation in Doubt (2004), for which he received a Tony nomination. O'Byrne also appeared as a priest in the 2004 film Million Dollar Baby. In May 2007, O'Byrne was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance as Alexander Herzen in Tom Stoppard's 2002 trilogy The Coast of Utopia. In 2011, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance in Mildred Pierce as Bert Pierce.
Born
May 16, 1967 (age 59)
Birthplace
Mullagh, County Cavan, Ireland
Filmography
30 films, 23 shows


Dead of Winter
2025 · 1h 38m
country: Germany
A widowed fisherwoman, travelling alone through snowbound northern Minnesota, interrupts the kidnapping of a teenage girl. Hours from the nearest town and with no phone service, she realizes that she is the young girl's only hope.


Conclave
2024 · 2h
country: United Kingdom
After the unexpected death of the Pope, Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with managing the covert and ancient ritual of electing a new one. Sequestered in the Vatican with the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders until the process is complete, Lawrence finds himself at the center of a conspiracy that could lead to its downfall.


Twig
2024 · 1h 45m
country: Ireland
Twig dreams of escape from a divided Dublin. Her brother's gangland feud traps the people in a culture of fear, surveillance and containment. When tragedy strikes, Twig seeks to do the right thing, stand up to King Leon and face her fate.


The Wonder
2022 · 1h 48m
country: Ireland
Haunted by her past, a nurse travels from England to a remote Irish village in 1862 to investigate a young girl's supposedly miraculous fast.


My Salinger Year
2020 · 1h 41m
country: Canada
A college grad takes a clerical job working for the literary agent of the renowned, reclusive writer J.D. Salinger.


Sergio
2020 · 1h 58m
country: Albania
A sweeping drama set in the chaotic aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, where the life of top UN diplomat Brazilian Sérgio Vieira de Mello hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career.


Queen & Country
2015 · 1h 54m
country: Romania
In this sequel to Hope and Glory (1987), Bill Rohan has grown up and is drafted into the army, where he and his eccentric best mate, Percy, battle their snooty superiors on the base and look for love in town.


Jimmy's Hall
2014 · 1h 46m
country: United Kingdom
In Depression-era Ireland, Jimmy Gralton returns home after a decade's exile in America. Witnessing the levels of poverty and oppression, his inner activist reawakens and he seeks to reopen the dance hall that led to his deportation.


Medeas
2013 · 1h 38m
country: Mexico
An intimate portrait of a rural family's inner lives and their relationship to a harsh and shifting landscape.


Gilded Lilys
2013 · 1h
country: United States
Set in 1895, show revolves around the opening of the first luxury hotel in New York City and all the intermingling of love, treachery, and disdain between the classes set against a backdrop of vicious family rivalries, scandalous secrets, and conflict and co-mingling of classes.


Season of the Witch
2011 · 1h 35m
country: United States
A 14th century Crusader returns with his comrade to a homeland devastated by the Black Plague. The Church commands the two knights to transport a witch to a remote abbey, where monks will perform a ritual in hopes of ending the pestilence.


Brooklyn's Finest
2010 · 2h 12m
country: United States
Enforcing the law within the notoriously rough Brownsville section of the city and especially within the Van Dyke housing projects is the NYPD's sixty-fifth precinct. Three police officers struggle with the sometimes fine line between right and wrong.


The International
2009 · 1h 58m
country: Germany
An interpol agent and an attorney are determined to bring one of the world's most powerful banks to justice. Uncovering money laundering, arms trading, and conspiracy to destabilize world governments, their investigation takes them from Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. Finding themselves in a chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk.


Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
2007 · 1h 57m
country: United States
When two brothers organize the robbery of their parents' jewelry store, the job goes horribly wrong, triggering a series of events that send them and their family hurtling towards a shattering climax.


No Reservations
2007 · 1h 44m
country: United States
Master chef Kate Armstrong runs her life and her kitchen with intimidating intensity. However, a recipe for disaster may be in the works when she becomes the guardian of her young niece while crossing forks with the brash sous-chef who just joined her staff. Though romance blooms in the face of rivalry, Kate needs to look outside the kitchen to find true happiness.


Alexander Hamilton
2007 · 2h
country: United States
One of the most controversial men of his age, Alexander Hamilton was a gifted statesman brought down by the fatal flaws of stubbornness, extreme candor and arrogance. His life and career were marked by a stunning rise to power, scandal and tragedy. But his contributions survive. As Secretary of the Treasury during the tumultuous early years of the republic, Hamilton led the transformation of the young country into industrial powerhouse.


Bug
2007 · 1h 38m
country: Germany
In Oklahoma, Agnes, a lonely waitress living in an isolated and dilapidated roadside motel, meets Peter, a quiet and mysterious man with whom she establishes a peculiar relationship.


The New World
2005 · 2h 31m
country: United States
A drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century.


Million Dollar Baby
2004 · 2h 12m
country: United States
Despondent over a painful estrangement from his daughter, trainer Frankie Dunn isn't prepared for boxer Maggie Fitzgerald to enter his life. But Maggie's determined to go pro and to convince Dunn and his cohort to help her.


The Blackwater Lightship
2004 · 1h 38m
country: United States
A man in the final stages of AIDS is cared for by his sister and mother and grandmother.


Easy
2003 · 1h 39m
country: United States
Quirky Jamie Harris is a magnet for less-than-kind men as she hops beds. But things start to look up when she becomes the object of affection of two seemingly normal men. Unfortunately, there's the immense problem of her self-imposed 90-day moratorium on sex.


Intermission
2003 · 1h 45m
country: Ireland
A raucous story of the interweaving lives and loves of small-town delinquents, shady cops, pretty good girls and very bad boys. With Irish guts and grit, lives collide, preconceptions shatter and romance is tested to the extreme. An ill-timed and poorly executed couple's break-up sets off a chain of events affecting everyone in town.


Mapmaker
2001
country: Ireland
Hired to draw a map of tourist sites in a small Northern Ireland town, cartographer Richie Markey (Brian F. O'Byrne) uncovers a dark secret and realizes that his map may hold the key to the mysterious disappearance of another surveyor. The missing man had been accused of informing on two IRA soldiers, and when Markey discovers his body, it doesn't take long for him to draw the conclusion that he may be next on the group's list.


Disco Pigs
2001 · 1h 33m
country: Ireland
Pig and Runt born on the same day, in the same hospital, moments apart. Twins, all but by bloodline. Inseparable from birth, they are almost telepathic. They are one, needing no one else, inhabiting a delicate, insular and dangerous world where they make their own rules and have their own language. But days before their 17th birthday the balance of their world begins to shift. Pig's sexual awakening and jealousy begins to threaten their private universe.


Bandits
2001 · 2h 3m
country: United States
After escaping from prison, Joe and Terry go on a crime spree, robbing banks through Oregon and California in order to finance their scheme for a new life south of the border. Unfortunately, things get more complicated when they meet Kate, who runs into them with her car. She joins the bandits on their cross-country spree, and eventually she steals something, too: their hearts.


The Grey Zone
2001 · 1h 48m
country: United States
The story of Auschwitz's twelfth Sonderkommando — one of the thirteen consecutive "Special Squads" of Jewish prisoners placed by the Nazis in the excruciating moral dilemma of assisting in the extermination of fellow Jews in exchange for a few more months of life.


An Everlasting Piece
2000 · 1h 43m
country: United States
Colin is a Catholic and George is a poetry-loving Protestant. In Belfast in the 1980s, they could have been enemies, but instead they became business partners. After persuading a mad wig salesman, known as the Scalper, to sell them his leads, the two embark on a series of house calls


The Fifth Province
1997 · 1h 39m
country: Ireland
Timmy Sugrue is a persecuted guesthouse keeper and writer who lives with his mad mother in a very rainy part of the Irish midlands. His only consolation are his visits to Dr. Drudy, a psychiatrist whom he can tell about the love of his life - the President of Ireland. A new motorway puts Timmy's guesthouse off the map. A strange Spanish pilot named Marcel comes to visit and create havoc in the guesthouse. Timmy goes to a scriptwriters' conference where only fast, urban and up-beat stories are expected, nothing like Timmy's own story. Uneasy in any of the four provinces of Ireland, he desperately tries to reach the Fifth Province, the province of magic, of passion, of possibility.


The Last Bus Home
1997 · 1h 33m
country: Ireland
Though it is late in the punk rock movement, four Dublin youths get together in 1979 to form their own band. Accurately recounting the energy and rawness of the era, this drama follows their tumultuous and ill-fated journey on the rocky road to success. It takes three long years of unpaid performing for Reena, her lover Jessop, bassist Joe and drummer Petie to make a name for The Dead Patriots. Just as they are about to find real success, internal difficulties arise that leave each of them suspicious and mistrustful of the other.


Avenue X
1993 · 16m
country: United States
Dramatic portrait of the Coney Island boardwalk and some of the strange and shocking things that take place off-season in which along the windswept Coney Island boardwalk, Sonny meets young Eddie who introduces him to some of the many mysteries of this faded, forgotten neighborhood.