Boyle was born on 20 October 1956 in Radcliffe, Lancashire (now in the modern day metropolitan borough of Bury, Greater Manchester),[2] into a working-class Irish Catholic family. His mother was from Ballinasloe in County Galway, and his father was born in England to an Irish family.[3]
It was a very strict, Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years, I was supposed to be a priest and really, it was my mother's fondest wish that I would become one.[3]
When he was 14 years old, Boyle applied to transfer from his local school to a seminary near Wigan, but was dissuaded from doing so by a priest. During an interview with The Times for his film Millions, he said:
I was meant to be a priest until I was 14, I was going to transfer to a seminary near Wigan. But this priest, Father Conway, took me aside and said, ‘I don’t think you should go’. Whether he was saving me from the priesthood or the priesthood from me, I don’t know.
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