Sebastian Barry

Television: The actor was 'fettered' by self-absorption, according to Barry, whose father apparently regarded philandering as his mission in life.

[writing a letter](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/marriage-referendum-1.2208406) to The Irish Times in favour of the marriage-equality referendum after his then 17-year-old son, Theo, came out to his parents. The success of his play The Steward of Christendom is identified as a key point in both his life and his career. Nor is there much about his latest novel, [Old God’s Time](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2023/03/04/old-gods-time-review-a-dark-but-warm-book-of-memory-lyricism-and-death/) – which he would presumably been keen to plug. It traces his hell-raising days at Trinity College Dublin, where he seemed to suffer from undiagnosed depression, and his early relationship with his wife, the screenwriter Alison Deegan, which plays out like the lyrics to a Smiths song. In his literary output and in person, he is larger than life: loquacious, with great hair but also with a sense of being slightly haunted. (He still owes her the fiver he cadged from her during a first date at Bewley’s.)