Personal journey
Her life was a celebrity whirl, but Lisa Byrne has since dealt with loss and serious illness. Now her dream is to bring the life of an inspiring woman to our screens
Sitting in a medieval banqueting hall, listening to the film director Niall Johnson give a passionate talk on how to achieve the seemingly impossible – get your screenplay on to the screen – Ifeel waves of gratitude for being here. Niall, who’s worked with famous actors including Dame Maggie Smith and Michael Keaton, is my mentor to help me develop my screenplay, A Terrible Beauty.
It tells the story of the first woman elected to the UK House of Commons, the Anglo-Irish Countess Constance Markievicz. Born into huge privilege, her world changed when she came across a political pamphlet about the struggles of the Irish people and joined a revolutionary army fighting to liberate Ireland from the control of the British Empire. My story about this courageous, reckless and headstrong woman led to me being offered a scholarship to work on my script at the Rocaberti Castle Writers’ Retreat in France. Like Constance, I feel as if I am relishing my own transformational moment after a heartbreaking few years.
LOVE AND LOSS
In February 2014, I was lying in the bath at the Victorian cottage I shared with my husband Davey and daughter Brontë, then six, in north London. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the bathroom mirror and winced. I had spent a year undergoing gruelling treatment for breast cancer – but looking in the mirror still proved to be a shock. I expected to see a confident magazine editor with long, lustrous brunette hair, and didn’t recognise this jaundiced-looking alien staring back at me with a bald head and no eyebrows or lashes.
Hearing the phone ring from the lounge, I suddenly felt apprehensive. I hadn’t heard from my brother, Nick, for a few days, which always caused anxiety as he suffered from acute depression. With a feeling of dread, I listened to the message that had been left. It was the human resources office at the hospital where Nick, 38, was an ICU doctor. He hadn’t turned up for work for a couple of days, something he’d never done before. In that split second, I knew he was gone.
I’d always felt so smug about the close relationship I’d had with my brother. Five years younger than me, he was my best friend, the person who made me laugh so much with his mischievous humour. Growing up in York with our Irish mother and Indian doctor father, Nick was a happy child, always smiling and joking. But in his second year at medical school, our mother Philomena was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia, and this, combined with the enormous stress of work, had a huge effect on him. He became withdrawn and would often call me in the middle of the night in a state of high emotion.
Then our mother died suddenly from a brain a
