Gabriel Byrne to Play Samuel Beckett in New Biopic Directed by James Marsh

Tony-nominee Gabriel Byrne has been tapped to play Nobel Prize-winning playwright Samuel Beckett in a new biopic, titled Dance First.

Variety reports that the new film will be directed by Oscar-winner James Marsh. Penned by Neil Forsyth, the film is named after Beckett's famous philosophy of "Dance first, think later". The film is described to be "a sweeping account of the life of this icon of 20th-century literature."

Marsh won an Oscar for Best Documentary for his "Man on Wire" feature in 2009. He also directed Eddie Redmayne in the 2015 Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything.

Byrne as starred in more than 60 feature films including Millers Crossing, The Usual Suspects, Excalibur, Into the West, Little Women, Dead Man, The End of Violence, The Man in the Iron Mask, Vanity Fair, Jindabyne and Wah-Wah. He recently completed The 33 and Louder Than Bombs.

On Broadway, Gabriel received a Tony nomination for his performance in Eugene ONeill's Moon for the Misbegotten and he won the Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance in A Touch of the Poet. Gabriel starred as Dr. Paul Weston in HBO's In Treatment, for which he received the Golden Globe Award and was nominated twice for the Emmy.