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Jeremy Irons: Why our TV isn’t what it used to be
Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons tells Roya Nikkhah why he fears Britain’s ’smutty, shower-room’ broadcasting is contributing to the breakdown of society
Jeremy Irons has an almighty bee in his bonnet. “Why are we doing this to ourselves as a society? In the name of what?” he demands in that gravelly voice, banging his fist down on a wooden table.
The spiralling standards of our nation’s broadcasters, in particular the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand “Sachsgate” scandal, is making his blood boil. “I just thought, this is smutty, shower-room nonsense. Why is it on the radio? Surely it can’t be in the name of actually building and nurturing a society that we value and that will be admired by people. I think there is a way of showing manners and behaviour that we would hope people would have in life in our broadcasting.
“It doesn’t mean it all has to be middle-class, shire-orientated behaviour. But good manners and kindness are what hold our society together. And I would think that broadcasting would try and convey that. If we don’t have respect for each other then everything breaks down.”
He is equally riled by the kind of films and television that are deemed suitable for children. “I was talking to a friend the other day whose kids wanted to watch a film. It was rated 15, they were 14, so he looked in when they were watching it and couldn’t believe it. It was all violence, terrible language, several sex scenes. I know children know everything from the age of 12, but still… Now it’s ‘forget about the watershed, forget about what we show our kids’. It’s not good.”
Rant over, Irons sits back in his chair and lights the first of many roll-up cigarettes, hugging his long thin legs to his chest against the cold, which he says he will gladly endure so that he can freely pursue his “favourite vice” while we talk.
Irons had been due to work with Russell Brand next year on a new Hollywood film adaptation of The Tempest (Brand has been aptly cast as the potty-mouthed Trinculo) but tells me he has wriggled out of the production by tactfully finding another project, a film about the love affair between the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe and the photographer Alfred Steiglitz that clashes with The Tempest’s schedule.
“I’ve decided not to do it because they offered me Alfonso, the most extraordinarily boring part in Shakespeare,” he says, laughing.
Today, he’s just finished recording Mr Luby’s Fear of Heaven, a John Mortimer play for Radio 4. He plays Lewis Luby, a writer and critic who doesn’t believe in the afterlife but, after falling into a coma following an accident, wakes in what he thinks might be heaven.
Irons has arrived at the west London recording studio on one of his beloved motorbikes — acting aside, motorbikes and hunting are his two great passions — and says that his bikes have resulted in some near misses. At 60, when he skids around a corner or comes tumbling off his mount, does he, like Mr Luby, ever ponder what may or may not await us when our time is up?
“Not at all,” he replies matter-of-factly. “For me, heaven or hell is what we leave of ourselves behind for other people. That is the afterlife for me. That’s probably what it’s meant to be.”
It is the first time that Irons and Mortimer have been reunited since the latter wrote the screenplay for the 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisisted, in which Irons played Charles Ryder opposite Anthony Andrews’ Sebastian Flyte, a role that catapulted him to stardom.
Despite much prompting, he has remained notably silent on the subject of this year’s film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic, starring Emma Thompson, Matt Goode and Michael Gambon. So what did he think when he heard there was to be a re-make?
“Well, about three years ago they actually sent me the script because they wanted me to play Lord Marchmain but I couldn’t get [Laurence] Olivier out of my head, [Olivier played Lord Marchmain in the 1981 adaptation] so I passed on it.
“At first I thought, how come we took 13 hours to tell this story? But later, thinking about it, I thought they’d set themselves a big task. The television series worked because it was allowed the luxury of telling the story at its own pace, which we rarely allow now and I don’t think they could give it the full weight that television gave it.
“Then I thought it might be quite witty to play Charles’s father, so I said why don’t I play him, but they said no, you’re too upper class for that,” he continues, raising an eyebrow. “Actually, in the novel, Charles’ father is bookish but still fairly upper class, but I think it [the film] got slightly vulgarised because perhaps the makers felt that would help the drama — that the audience were not as perceptive now, which is not true.”
So has he seen the new film?
“Seen it?” he repeats with undisguised disdain. “No. It would be a bit like going to a party hoping I could be introduced to my ex-wife. It’s not something I would do. There are a lot of films I would like to see, and Brideshead is fairly low down on the list.”
Since making his mark as Charles Ryder and starring opposite Meryl Streep in the film adaptation of The French Lieutenant’s Woman in 1981, Irons has never been out of work. He is one of those rare British actors who have had their pick of the best roles going in Hollywood, including the leads in Dead Ringers, Damage, The House of Spirits and the 1997 remake of Lolita.
Although he picked up an Oscar in 1991 for his sinister portrayal of Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune, a dramatisation of the story behind how his socialite wife, Sunny, who died only recently, slipped into a 28-year coma, it was Irons’ role in the animated film The Lion King that won him a legion of young fans. His dark brown tones sent shivers down the spine of millions of children when he provided the voiceover for the villainous Scar.
In 2005, Irons won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as Robert Dudley in the Channel 4 series Elizabeth I, starring alongside Helen Mirren’s virgin queen. Yet these days, he avoids television as most of it is “just not very good”.
“Television has changed — it has lost its excellence. We used to have really great TV and the Americans used to admire our output, but theirs is better than ours now. They are making amazing dramas for television.”
The current crop of “dumbed-down” period dramas especially displease him, “with Victorians speaking in modern dialogue”.
The son of an accountant and a housewife, Irons was raised in the Isle of Wight and Hertfordshire, and now divides his time between homes in Oxfordshire and Kilmainham, Dublin, with his second wife, the actress Sinéad Cusack. The couple have two sons, Sam, 30, a photographer, and Max, 23, an actor.
After attending Sherborne School in Dorset, he trained at the Bristol Old Vic before joining its repertory company, the traditional route for actors “back then”. Now, however, he is all too aware — and saddened by —what he sees as young actors’ ever-increasing drive to chase fame instead of good, solid roles.
“I think that there is this idea that what you should go after is fame. That is a hugely mistaken idea because fame means absolutely nothing. This whole culture of wanting to become famous is on a hiding to nothing, a sign of a society that’s lost its way and will only judge people as being valid if they’re famous, which of course is all bull—-.
“As Tom Stoppard said, the only thing that fame means is that more people know you than you know.”
I ask him for an example of a young actor whose career he thinks the fame game has played a more important role in than raw talent. “I suppose, what’s her name, um, you know… who was in Bend it Like Beckham?”
Keira Knightley?
“Yes, but it has nothing to do with talent. She is very beautiful, guys like her, and I think probably if she was directed right she might be OK …”
After playing Alfred Steiglitz, his next project will take him behind the camera as director on a film that’s currently under wraps.
“I’m getting on a bit,” he jokes, feigning doddering hands as he rolls yet another cigarette. It will be only the second time that Irons has directed — his first, in 1985, was for the video of a Carly Simon song, Tired of Being Blonde — and is relishing the prospect of bossing around some actors.
“I’m looking forward to it, I need a new challenge before I completely run out of steam.” He quickly adds: “Not that I ever intend to.”
• ‘Mr Luby’s Fear of Heaven’ will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on December 31
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Will of Irons – Inside Jeremy Irons West Cork castle
By Martina Devlin
Saturday November 22 2008
from independent.ie
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Though a notoriously private man, Jeremy Irons invited Martina Devlin inside his restored West Cork castle and held nothing back on a dizzying array of topics from abortion and the Catholic Church to farming and marriage
Jeremy Irons is not quite like other people. Not because he has an instantly recognisable face and voice. Or because he lives in a medieval castle keep. Or because he casually mentions Dan (Daniel Day-Lewis) and John (Sir John Gielgud).
He is not quite like other people because there is an unconventional side to him, despite having been shoehorned into the British public school system.
Anyone who paints his castle walls peach is inevitably a little quirky.
Above all, he has an unguarded quality. Jeremy Irons has many, many opinions and out they come — whoosh! — without pausing to consider how they will play. Whether they will offend, make him look nutty or pretentious, or leak like a sieve under scrutiny.
On abortion: “It’s evil.”
On the Catholic Church: “I love its intransigence.”
On the gender of his castle: “It’s feminine. I felt hugged by it when I arrived last night.”
On the Dáil: “A lot of cronies in there.”
On the Georgian Society: “It has a painfully small membership and a reputation for being obstructive.”
On 30 years of marriage: “I take it a day at a time.”
On Irish farmers: “The land is farmed according to the grants, not a feeling of responsibility to what the land needs.”
On modern Ireland: “I’m saddened by how everyone is chasing worldly goods and the churches are empty.”
And that’s the tip of the iceberg.
“Sinéad is always telling me to be more careful about what I say. I just come out with things — I don’t try and censor myself,” he admits.
It is unusual to encounter someone in the public domain expressing opinions so freely on the record. But he will back down in a surprisingly humble way if you challenge him. Perhaps he has a diplomatic streak, or it could be a dislike of confrontation?
Jeremy Irons is an actor who has been famous and bankable on an international scale since the Brideshead Revisited days 27 years ago. He is presumably accustomed to entourages.
When we meet, however, there is no sign of the phalanx of PAs and PRs you normally encounter. Just Jeremy. Answering the door himself, making the coffee himself, taking pleasure in the way our jaws dropped — and stayed slack — at the magnificence of the setting.
The venue is his 15th-century castle keep in West Cork, a McCarthy stronghold built in 1458 which had been sinking into ruin since its fall in 1603. He took it on 12 years ago and renovated it, a labour of love which absorbed six years and the proceeds of several films. But he mentions, with some pride, how the director Hugh Hudson told him it was worth 20 films.
Kilcoe Castle is near Ballydehob, and only someone who enjoys isolation and the odd wallow would be comfortable living there. While it is remote, it is a location of breathtaking beauty. The twin towers of the castle rear 100ft into the skyline, perched on an outcrop of land overlooking Roaring Water Bay.
Irons sails there, and a covered boat is lying in the bailey of the castle as we arrive. Nearby is parked a modest, seven-year-old Audi, which he later hops into and drives at lightning speed along the maze-like side roads.
We cross water and press a buzzer at an imposing outer gate. A familiar voice crackles through the intercom and the gate swings open. We enter a courtyard, step outside the car — and are almost blown away by the force of the gale. There is no shelter from the elements.
Another gate opens, and a head pops out. It’s wearing little round spectacles, as though we interrupted him reading. Jeremy Irons appears in slippers decorated with a little skull on each one.
We follow him into an inner courtyard and he gestures for us to precede him up the steps of a tower. Easier said than done. You almost need to be winched up the vertical incline of the heavy stone staircase. He mentions that there are slits at the base of each step for spears to be poked out at intruders. Unwelcome guests had to fight their way up this tower, step by step.
Huffing and puffing, we enter a vast room. A room so striking you pause and look around, with so much to take in that your eye hardly knows where to settle.
You could fit a two-storey house into this room. A wooden minstrel’s gallery runs along the top, while the floor is covered in patterned north-African rugs. The sound system plays blue grass, while a joss stick burns on a side table alongside a 20-year-old photograph of Jeremy with his wife Sinéad Cusack and their sons Sam and Max, now grown-up.
“It’s a jazz riff on the medieval,” is how he describes the restoration.
A life-size wooden stallion stands in one corner — “every castle needs a horse” — while a sword is propped against a wall. Ridley Scott gave it to him as a memento from their Crusades film, Kingdom of Heaven.
It is an unexpectedly snug room. We know the wind is howling outside, we can see how choppy the sea is from slit-like windows more suited to firing arrows than admiring the view. But only music breaks the stillness.
Jeremy says the reason is that the walls range between three feet and seven-feet thick. He sleeps at the summit of the tower — essentially seven rooms piled on top of each other: “It’s wonderful to hear the wind howling when you’re in bed at night. But that’s the only room you hear it in.”
Like any anxious home owner, he remarks on how relieved he is that it stayed leak-free during recent rain storms.
It is informal and easy, sitting here with him. He removes his spectacles, kicks off his slippers and rolls a cigarillo, the first of many. There is no wedding band on his left hand, but he wears a signet ring on the little finger. A silver bangle glints on his wrist.
He lights up and the opinions come thick and fast. Here he is on the lines on Sinéad’s face. They have been married for 30 years, incidentally, yet he pronounces her name in an odd way: ’shin-add’.
“Sinéad has grown more beautiful as she has grown older,” he announces.
Oh dear. It’s generally a bad sign when men come out with that.
But he goes on: “As a person, she has become easier and wiser. She was very pretty when she was young, but she was complicated. She has grown easier in her skin as she has grown older and that shows in her face.
“I think it’s a more interesting face now than when I first met her. It has lines, which I like. In LA, I find so many people who have nipped and tucked and their faces have lost all semblance of humanity. Your face has to show what it has lived through.”
Jeremy takes his marriage “a day at a time” and erupts into laughter at the reminder that this is the AA slogan. As far as he is concerned, the best thing about being married for so long is all the shared history. “You could never know that again with someone else.”
Fiddle music
Jeremy Irons was born 60 years ago in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, the son of a tax consultant. He boarded at Sherborne public school, where a teacher suggested he join the armed forces — a career path he declined to follow.
Instead, he starred alongside David Essex in the musical Godspell and made the seminal Brideshead Revisited TV series (he has no curiosity about seeing the new film version).
He went on to appear in a raft of films, from The Mission to The French Lieutenant’s Woman to Lolita. Reversal of Fortune bagged him an Oscar. The Lion King brought him a younger audience.
TG4 and his love of fiddle music are the reason Jeremy has agreed to the interview — he learned to play traditional fiddle for the Faoi Lán Cheoil series, in which personalities attempt to master a traditional musical instrument. The experiment culminates in a live performance.
Established fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh tutored him over a six-month period, including flying out to film sets for lessons. The two of them would sit in his trailer, practising his diddly-eyes between takes.
Jeremy puts his stripy-stockinged feet on the coffee table and is at his most animated when talking about fiddle playing, and how he feels the music connects to some wellspring of Irish identity.
He wanted to learn the fiddle to take part in impromptu sessions in the pubs dotted around this nook of south-west Ireland.
He has had a home here for 20 years and is genuine in his desire to integrate into the community, although mistaken when he says that he can be anonymous in West Cork. That face is never nameless. That woody voice never goes unidentified.
If Jeremy is left alone, it is because of the instinctive Irish reluctance to let anybody think they are important enough to be recognised. Yet here is a man who could live anywhere — and he is happier in a medieval castle in wet and windy Munster than in a Beverly Hills hacienda or a New York penthouse. And this castle, which was derelict, has been reclaimed as a home.
“My desire here is to place myself in the community,” he says. “I do it in many ways. I sail here, I’m a joint master of the hunt, I had a station mass in the castle last year and 65 people came; we partied afterwards until all hours.
“The community is extraordinary. People live apart, but come together for births, marriages and deaths. I really respect that.”
He describes English society as fragmented, and responds to the sense of community here: “I felt I had come home when I first came here 20 years ago. I know a lot of English and Europeans feel the same about Ireland, but not all of them last the course. Some find they can’t take the weather or the lack of a real work ethic — people here work to live, not live to work — but I love it.”
Jeremy does not look his age, partly because he moves in a nimble way (he does yoga, “although not as much as Sinéad — she’s brilliant”). When he smiles, his teeth are stained from all the roll-ups, and it is interesting he has chosen not to take the mainstream Hollywood route of whitening.
He returns often to a discussion of Catholicism, which seems to fascinate him. He had the local priest in to bless the castle when work began. It’s not that he believed it was haunted, he just thought it sensible to lay to rest any uneasy spirits in view of the fact that men were on scaffolding 100 feet above ground. He has never felt any spectral aura, although a guest spoke of “a sad female presence”.
I point out that a castle would have witnessed so much pillaging and marauding, it should be inundated with sad female — and male — presences. And he laughs along good-naturedly.
But back to the Catholic Church. “It has gone through a difficult time, with the reputation of some of its priests in tatters, but everyone is tarred with the same brush. I’m saddened by that. The difficulty was the church held such power and absolute authority,” he says.
“The great thing about the Catholic faith is that it’s unwavering. If you take the Pope’s stance on abortion, it’s the only one that’s been constant within western religions.
“Others have said abortion is allowed — it’s not an evil. You only have to abort a child to see what it does to a woman’s spirit. You can never say it’s right. Sometimes abortion is the lesser of two evils, but you can never say it is not an evil.
“If you stop saying that, where do you draw the line?” he continues. “Do you say because a family has a lot of children that there are too many and it’s all right to kill one? We have to accept that there is a difference between right and wrong.”
When asked if he would consider becoming a Catholic, he insists he is “not a club man”. He was brought up Church of England, but regards himself less specifically as Christian.
“I know I’m a blow-in,” he answers, on the question of whether this castle and community are home. He has homes elsewhere, including in Oxfordshire. And Sinéad has an “artisan’s cottage” in Dublin city centre.
She has a son in Dublin, the aspiring politician Richard Boyd Barrett, whom she gave up for adoption 40 years ago. They were reunited several years ago. It certainly puts Jeremy Irons’ views on abortion into context.
“It’s wonderful for Sinéad, who has always been political, to discover that the son she has re-met has very much her instincts. I see her in him. She’s been married to a man who is apolitical so now it’s lovely for her to have someone to talk politics with,” he says.
“We talk a lot about politics when Richard is about. He was only 120 votes off getting into the Dáil [in the general election last year]. Not bad for a Marxist. It would be great fun to see a Marxist in the Dáil.
“What’s needed are well-educated people with convictions. If, in any way, a little bit of his attitudes rubbed off, it would be a positive thing for the country.”
When it’s suggested he must be a lively addition to Irons’ family, Jeremy says: “He has his own family — he is not really part of my family.” But he adds: “I’m very proud of him. But I’m not a Marxist. We would have disagreements.”
Jeremy is mannerly. He offers tea or coffee several times, and when we finally accept, he leads us into the kitchen. It’s a comparatively small room on a half-return, with an empty dog basket under the window.
The dogs are in Oxfordshire: he is only in Kilcoe for three days, and due shortly to fly to Santa Fe to make a film with Joan Allen. She plays the modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe and he is cast as her photographer husband, Alfred Stieglitz, instrumental in having photography recognised as an art form.
Jeremy makes the coffee himself, with Bewley’s ground coffee. Imran Khan tried to make me tea once and hadn’t a clue which cupboard to find the mugs in, or where the tea bags might be. We gave up in the end. But Jeremy knows his way around his own kitchen.
He takes organic milk from the fridge, insisting it’s the only kind to use. Local oatmeal biscuits are set in their packet on the table, alongside pottery mugs.
Looking at him move from kettle to cupboard, you can see he is extraordinarily thin with narrow hips and shoulders. He cuts an elegant figure, even in a zipped jumper chosen for warmth rather than style.
Why is he so drawn to Ireland? He surmises it’s to do with an inherent wildness in the people and landscape. The spirituality matters too.
“I have a little bit of Irish in me, but I come from a very solid Anglo-Saxon background,” he says. “But I have a side that’s very anarchic, wanting to live beyond the rules. I was brought up in a very strict way with the public school method of training people to run an empire that no longer exists. I had a reluctance to toe the line.”
On our way out, we pass some buoys in his yard painted a variety of pastel shades, instead of the usual orange. I jokingly wonder if they were testers for the castle walls — the peach hue is a controversial choice. He laughs and admits his neighbour, when invited to reveal which colour he would have chosen to paint it, plumped for grey.
But Jeremy Irons feels a splash of Mediterranean brightness adds some verve to the landscape. A bit like the man himself.
Jeremy Irons features in Faoi Lán Cheoil on TG4 on Wednesday, November 26 at 10.30pm with a repeat next Saturday at 8.10pm
- Martina Devlin
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Impressionism, with Irons and Allen, to Play the Schoenfeld Theatre
By Andrew Gans
November 19, 2008
As previously announced, Tony Award winners Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen will return to Broadway in 2009 in the world premiere of Michael Jacobs’ Impressionism.
Tony winner Jack O’Brien will direct the production, which will begin previews Feb. 28, 2009, at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, according to The New York Times. Opening night is scheduled for March 12. Additional casting and creative team will be announced at a later date.
The Schoenfeld, located at 236 West 45th Street, is currently the home of the revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, which will end its limited engagement Jan. 11, 2009.
Ostar Productions will produce Impressionism, which, press notes state, “is the story of a world traveling photojournalist and a New York gallery owner who discover each other and also that there might be an art to repairing broken lives.”
Playwright Jacobs is also the author of Cheaters, which was produced on Broadway in 1978 at the Biltmore Theatre; and Getting Along Famously, which was produced Off-Broadway at the Hudson Guild Theatre. His 15 television series have won the Emmy, People’s Choice, Parent’s Choice and Environmental Media Awards, among others.
Joan Allen won a Tony Award for her performance in Lanford Wilson’s Burn This, and she was also Tony-nominated for her work in The Heidi Chronicles. Allen has been nominated for three Academy Awards: for “The Contender,” “The Crucible” and “Nixon.”
Jeremy Irons won a Tony Award for his performance in the original Broadway production of The Real Thing. The English actor also won Academy and Golden Globe awards for his work in the 1990 film “Reversal of Fortune.” Irons was also Golden-Globe nominated for “The Mission” and “Brideshead Revisited.” Among his London stage credits are Embers and The Rover.
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Lifetime paints bio of O’Keeffe
Joan Allen, Jeremy Irons to play the artist and her lover
Nov 6, 2008, 01:00 AM ET
Joan Allen, left, and Jeremy Irons (Getty Images photos) |
Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons are set to star in a Lifetime biopic about the late American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, with Bob Balaban on board to direct.
Allen also will take on executive producer duties for the first time, serving in the role alongside City Entertainment’s Joshua D. Maurer (“Introducing Dorothy Dandridge”) and Alixandre Witlin (“Dodson’s Journey”).
“Georgia O’Keeffe,” from Sony Pictures TV, is something of a passion project for the three exec producers, who conceived and have been developing the movie as a team for four years; at one point, it was in development at HBO.
“Georgia” will follow the turbulent 20-year love affair between the celebrated artist (Allen) and photographer Alfred Steiglitz (Irons). The movie, set to premiere in third-quarter 2009, was written by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer (“Gia”). Tony Mark (“And Starring Poncho Villa as Himself”) is producing.
“Georgia” is the latest example of how Lifetime has been trying to boost the caliber of talent working on its original movies, greenlighting fewer movies but maintaining the same overall budget. More recent efforts include “Coco Chanel,” a biopic starring Shirley MacLaine, and “Living Proof,” exec produced by Renee Zellweger, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron and starring Harry Connick Jr.
“We can provide a place for filmmakers to make these films about strong, iconic women who have made a mark on pop culture or historical culture that strictly have been seen on HBO,” Lifetime senior vp original movies Tanya Lopez said. “We will try to do such a movie once a year.”
Helen Verno, executive vp movies and miniseries at SPT, called O’Keeffe “the iconic role model for unique, talented, brilliant and liberated women of all ages.”
“The project is sure to speak to viewers who are inspired by her love affair with Alfred Steiglitz and the extraordinary work they created during the many years of their relationship,” she said.
In addition to “O’Keeffe,” Allen and Irons also are set to star on Broadway in the play “Impressionism,” starting in March.
ICM-repped Allen’s recent credits include the “Bourne” trilogy. CAA-repped Irons is on the big screen in “Appaloosa.” Balaban, repped by Gersh, directed “Bernard and Doris” for HBO Films. Cristofer is repped by ICM.
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Jeremy participates in “Palestine Aloud” 
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Iron man
Philippa Kennedy – The National
Jeremy Irons, who is narrating the opening night of the Abu Dhabi Classics series, says “it is all about highlighting the artists around the world who bring emotions to life.” Matt Crossick for The National
The connection between art, classical music and motorcycles might not be immediately obvious to the uninitiated, but according to the actor Jeremy Irons, you get an entirely different perspective from the seat of a BMW RT 100.
It’s what enticed the actor to Abu Dhabi for the first time three years ago, when he was invited by his fellow motorcycling companion, Thomas Krens, to come and see plans for the new Guggenheim Museum and take a ride into the desert. Along with Irons, Krens, who is the former director of the Guggenheim Foundation, belongs to one of the world’s most exclusive group of bikers, the Guggenheim Motorcycle Club, whose members include the actors Dennis Hopper, Lauren Hutton and Laurence Fishburne, the singer Bob Geldof, and Frank Gehry, the architect and designer of the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim. Their raison d’être is to visit art galleries around the world by motorbike, which according to Irons, heightens the senses.
“We parallel art and motorcycling. We launched the motorcycle exhibition in Bilbao, and we’ve ridden from St Petersburg to Moscow and from Munich to Monza. We try to do one journey every year. We rode down from Madrid to the new Picasso exhibition in Malaga on the principle that in order to be motorcyclists, you have to be very aware of your surroundings, the road and also be very sensitive to other people. It makes you overly conscious of everything. It’s the perfect situation to be in to see art,” he says.
In December 2005, several of the art-loving bikers were guests of Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoun, the chairman of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority.
“We went over to Saadiyat Island on a car ferry, which we had to ourselves, and rode out to where the site is going to be and had a most fantastic dinner on the beach. We were here for four or five days, which allowed us to learn all about the plans for the museum.”
Irons, who will be in the UAE capital tomorrow to launch the first in a yearlong series of concerts known as the Abu Dhabi Classics, is keen to develop his cultural links with the country. “What’s going on here is very exciting,” he says. “More and more people are realising that inspiring architecture is the most wonderful environment in which to put art. Bilbao is a fantastic example, and New York and now, Abu Dhabi.”
“Approaching Bilbao from distance by bike was a marvellous experience,” he says of the Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum, with its futuristic titanium-clad light-reflecting angles and curves. “At first you think, ‘What is that?’ Then the nearer you get, the more amazed you are. Then, you see the planting around it and you go into the foyer, and you are tingling and then you see the art. It’s a brilliant way to wind up the audience into that hyper-awareness. I think the way art is shown and the building that art is in is so important.”
The Abu Dhabi Classics series is “a wonderful opportunity to come back”. Irons is the narrator of A Journey of Emotions at the inaugural gala in the Emirates Palace auditorium. It is a musical journey that begins in India, the birthplace of the Abu Dhabi Classics conductor-in-residence, Zubin Mehta, which follows the music of the gypsies from Hungary, represented by the violinist Roby Lakatos, through the Arab lands, with Egypt’s Musicians of the Nile, returning to central Europe with the German jazz trumpeter Till Brönner and Russia, the homeland of the classical pianist Arcadi Volodos.
The musical voyage then crosses the Atlantic to the USA, the birthplace of jazz, spirituals and the Broadway musical, featuring songs by the young American soprano Indra Thomas. It ends in Andalusia, in southern Spain, with the flamenco group Arcángel.
“It is all about highlighting the artists around the world who bring emotions to life,” says Irons. “The performance features music from all over the world: Spanish, Austrian, American. I’m looking forward to going back to Abu Dhabi. I had been thinking for a while of trying to get some link having had such a good time there when I went for the Guggenheim trip.”
Irons was speaking at his London home, a mews cottage in Notting Hill filled with an eclectic mix of furniture and items that reflect a broad-based, international lifestyle. Comfortably distressed leather sofas, eastern weave cushions and hassocks, a cottage tweed lampshade; the house gets the leftovers from everywhere else, he says.
He and his wife, the actress Sinead Cusack, have four homes, the London mews, a wisteria-clad Georgian rectory in Oxfordshire, a townhouse in Dublin, Ireland, and a 15th century castle in West Cork, lovingly restored by Irons over a period of six years. “It’s too much, but it enables one to live the life of a rabbit – or a fox, even – whereby you have burrows where you can get away and hide in when you want to and it’s your own place. I don’t like hotels. I love creating places and got enormous joy out of doing the castle. I tend to buy things wherever I am, like handmade furniture from India and China,” he says.
Clearly, Kilcoe castle, overlooking Roaring Water Bay near Macroom, has a special place in his heart. “Wherever I am, I think of as home. Home is people, really, rather than places. But I do love Kilcoe. It has an amazing magnetic drag for me. My boat is there and my horses are there.”
Kilcoe has been a landmark since the 15th century, but even more so since Irons and Cusack bought it. A boatman who takes tourists from nearby Schull to Cape Clear Island delights in telling his passengers about the English actor who painted the castle with this amazing and very expensive paint containing copper nails. “But he hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that it rains in Ireland, and when the nails rusted it turned pink.”
Irons laughs when he hears the story. He took several years to get that paint right.
“It’s an additive that you put into lime wash. It’s called cuprous, which is iron oxide. When it goes on it’s green, but it reacts with the air and 20 minutes later it goes a browny, terracotta colour. When we put it on, we had been through four of the wettest winters working on it.” Of Kilcoe, he says, “It loves the sunset and the low light. It had been a ruin since 1963 and I spent six years in all doing it and spent much more on it than it is worth. But I never regret it. I feel a great affinity for the place, as a lot of English people have done.”
A keen supporter of hunting, Irons is the master of the West Carbery Hunt and keeps four horses in Ireland, including two hunters. He also grazes sheep on the 15 acres of land around Kilcoe.
“I’m not a city man. I have always liked sports that enable me to get out in the elements. I like riding and sailing and skiing. I have an eight-metre two-masted wooden boat in Ireland; just small enough for me to sail on my own, but big enough to sleep four people if they are prepared to get on with each other.”
He says he always wanted to marry an Irish wife and as a young actor was thrilled to be marrying into Irish thespian royalty. Cusack’s father, Cyril, was a giant of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in England.
“I was 24 when I met Sinead. My father was a chartered accountant and I didn’t have an artistic background, so I was delighted to become part of the Cusack family. I wanted to validate myself. I always knew I wanted an Irish wife. I knew that’s what my blood needed: a bit of wildness.”
The pair met when Irons was performing in Godspell at the Wyndham Theatre in London and Cusack was in London Assurance in the theatre next door. Both casts would repair to The Bunch of Grapes pub after the shows. Right from the start, theirs was a fiery relationship. “I called her Siobhan by mistake, the first time I met her and she hit me. She turned around and smacked me,” he says.
He has described both himself and his feisty wife as “difficult people” and their marriage as “dysfunctional”. But the fact remains that although they give each other a great deal of freedom, they have been married for 30 years and have two sons, Sam, a photographer and locations manager, and Max, who is studying acting at the Guildhall. Cusack is currently spreading her wings in a play in the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York after years of accepting work closer to home as the boys were growing up.
“She has worked pretty constantly throughout our marriage,” Irons says. “But she gave up a lot for the boys, especially the travelling jobs. She did some television, some films and a lot of theatre, but worked around the family. She has never done a huge television series. Those are the things that get you known if you want to be. I mean, I’m still best known for Brideshead, which I did 30 years ago.”
Their schedules are both full until well into next year. Irons may be making a film in the USA in November, although he doesn’t want to talk about it until the contract is signed. In the spring of next year, he will return to Broadway to star with Joan Allen in Impressionism, a new American play by Michael Jacobs. It will be his first time on Broadway since he was in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing in 1984. He spent this summer playing the former British prime minister Harold Macmillan in Howard Brenton’s Never So Good at The National Theatre on London’s South Bank.
The family will be together for Christmas in Oxfordshire. “Family is very important to us. We had a big family party in the garden in Oxfordshire this summer, all the Cusacks and the Irons with their children. There were 40 of us altogether and it was fantastic. I’m a great believer in family, as you only have one. I think I am even more family orientated than Sinead, although she is a fantastic mother,” he says.
Irons was born in 1948 on the Isle of Wight and his parents divorced when he was seven. He was sent to boarding school and then on to Sherborne public school. He joined the Bristol Old Vic, where he had a brief marriage to Julie Hallam, an actress. A period of odd jobbing as a gardener and builder followed before he got his break with the part of John the Baptist in Godspell with David Essex.
His reputation for playing the quintessential Englishman was established when he starred as Charles Ryder in the television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, but his career was quickly marked by edgier roles such as that of Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar in 1990. He has managed to maintain a presence in London and New York with a successful film career, starring in movies such as The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Mission, Damage, Stealing Beauty, Lolita, The Man in the Iron Mask, Callas Forever and Appaloosa.
It was a deliberate decision to base himself in the United Kingdom rather than America. “I looked at actors I admired, like Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and Anthony Hopkins and the decisions that they made. I have always tried to do work that interests me with good people, so I suppose that’s my game plan. I decided early on that America wasn’t for me. I was going to stay over here. I haven’t done many blockbusters, I have never led a film that has made a fortune, so I’ve never become a real box office star. I have always done interesting and good work and that has meant that interesting and good work has always turned up.”
He admits that along the way, he has accepted some films simply for money. “Yes, it’s true, there are some you’ll see and you’ll wonder, ‘Why has he done that?’ Sometimes, I’ll do stuff to earn the money, but I don’t really talk about those. I needed the money to pay for the castle. It was a very expensive job.”
He says that winning the Oscar made very little difference to either his finances or his lifestyle. “It’s like winning the Booker Prize, like joining a club. I don’t think it alters very much. The only difference I remember was that everybody who had a script that was unreadable sent it to me hoping that I liked it and they could get it made. I must have received 20 scripts over the next six months and there was nothing that I wanted to do.”
He celebrated his 60th birthday in September, but says he hardly noticed it and seldom thinks about the passing of the years. “It was a bit of a surprise. The last decade crept up on me actually. They say that the older you get, the quicker life rushes by. I have decided to sleep more in my 60s. I met someone in her 90s in Australia recently and I said, ‘Come on, tell me about getting old.’ She said, ‘Well, I still think of myself as 23. But there are some things I can’t do as fast as when I was 23. The secret about getting old is not to get cross about that.’ These days, I suppose 60 isn’t that old.”
Despite the odd appearance in the gossip columns (he was photographed in 2001 embracing his sultry co-star Patricia Kaas outside a Soho nightclub), he says he isn’t bothered by the inevitable price of fame and unwelcome attention from the media.
“I don’t get bothered a lot. I think I am in a good place in that way. There are ways you can behave in order to attract that kind of attention. There are places you can go and if you don’t go to those places, you don’t get bothered. I live a fantastic life, but it’s a very ordinary life with my own people.”
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Originally posted: October 2, 2008
from the Chicago Tribune:
Jeremy Irons speaks plainly, if elegantly
As a kid, living on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England, Jeremy Irons played cowboys and Indians and watched “The Cisco Kid” on television. I’m hearing this as I sit with my recorder in a suite at Toronto’s Royal York hotel, across from the 60-year-old Oscar-winner, and the information does not jibe with the man before me: a professorial-looking fellow curled up in a chair shoved next to an open window, so that the tiny skinny little brown cigarettes he smokes can waft directly back into the room.
Irons wears big owlish specs and a courtly air, and when he thinks about a question before answering, he’ll let a full 12 seconds pass before unrolling his answer.
Irons was in Toronto last month promoting “Appaloosa.” The movie is director, co-writer and co-star Ed Harris’ adaptation of a novel set in the lawless late 19th Century New Mexico territory town of the title. Irons plays a juicy supporting role, Randall Bragg, a rancher whose reign of violence meets a couple of formidable adversaries new to the region: Harris’ marshal, and the marshal’s sidekick, played by Viggo Mortensen.
“I think Ed wanted an actor who gave the feeling that he’d come from somewhere else—the foreigner, the stranger, the man not from there,” Irons says of his involvement in the project. “Which I don’t think I really gave it, because I don’t think that was terribly useful direction.”
So, he says, “I tried to play him as a good guy. Which we all think we are.” He smiles. He knows Bragg isn’t anyone’s notion of a good guy. He kills three innocent citizens point-blank in the opening scene. Anyway, he says, “it’s nice to have a chance to play that sort of character.”
The making of “Appaloosa” took place near Las Vegas, N.M. Irons acknowledged that working with a director who was also a co-star had its challenges. “Every actor sees the story from his point of view, and however clever the director is at separating himself from his role as actor ... it’s difficult.” He adds that “even Viggo would probably admit that one felt slightly hidebound by the fact that the director was also an actor.”
That said, Irons adds, Harris acquitted himself well. Quickly Irons mentions that the one time he directed himself (in a 1997 television project, “Mirad,” co-starring his wife, Sinead Cusack), his performance was “crap.”
It’s refreshing to hear someone talk about his work this way, as if the nearest studio handler were a million miles away. Irons is a gracious man, quick with the niceties (“May I offer you some fruit?”), gossipy about one of his cherished loves, the theater (“Weren’t the Tonys bad this year?”).
He returns to Broadway for the first time in decades, in next spring’s production of a new play co-starring Steppenwolf Theatre Company associate Joan Allen. It’s called “Impressionism,” written by Michael Jacobs and directed by Jack O’Brien, and it deals with a photojournalist’s relationship with a New York gallery owner.
He has high hopes, though you never know, he says: Take “Reversal of Fortune.” Irons won an Oscar for his ripe, witty portrayal of suspected killer and aristocratic rotter Claus von Bulow. “I never thought that film would work,” he says. “It was difficult to get a feeling of whether or not we were hitting the mark. I remember saying to Glenn [Close] when we were shooting: ‘It’s only because we’re in this, and because we’re hot at the moment, that this won’t end up on television.’ Didn’t seem to be working at all. But Barbet [Schroeder, the director] did a fantastic cut eventually.”
What he’d really like, Irons says, is “Sean Connery’s last 20 years. He played some interesting roles and had a bit of fun in his 60s and 70s. One of my problems is I find the [filmmaking] process incredibly boring. And unless I’m having a lot of fun, I tend to close off a bit. But then the cameras turn.
“I’ve begun relaxing up on my work more. It took me a long time to learn that you can struggle to make something perfect, and be a pain in the ass, and [often] the work’s not very good. Or you can just have a good time, enjoy working with everybody, throw ideas about, and the picture has a sort of life to it.”
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Jeremy Irons at TIFF 2008 on the Stephen Holt Show ____________________________________________________
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Jeremy Irons on the red carpet at the Appaloosa premiere at TIFF 2008
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Interview with Appaloosa Star Jeremy Irons
ReelzChannel sat down recently with Jeremy Irons to talk about his role as the corrupt rancher in Appaloosa.
ReelzChannel: This character, Randall Bragg, it’s all in the name — conceited, he lives by no rules.
Irons: No, his own rules. We all have rules. He was born on the cusp — the earlier Western travelers, there was no rules. There was no law. The gun was the law. But that changed once they had pushed out there, the law and followers some 50, or 40, years later. We see Bragg at the beginning of the film protecting his men against people who want to take him away — in a way, that’s how you behaved then. But then he discovered that actually things were changing and when he managed to get out, he comes back a different man using the new methods.
RC: Would you describe him as a Western version of a mobster?
Irons: No, I think he’s a Western version of a lot of businessmen today. They set their sights on how they’re going to earn their money and then go and get it. They play by the rules. And they play as close to the edge — and over the edge — and they get in trouble. I think the American economy is full of men like Randall Bragg.
RC: Ed Harris directed the film along with starring in it. Did this mean you had to act as a bigger support system than normal?
Irons: No. Obviously you see that your leading actor is very busy, he’s got a lot, and you support him as much as you can to help him get the vision he has in his head. He’s an actor — allows you the latitude to find your character and to do what you think your character would do.
RC: A lot of British actors are attracted to Western roles. Do you think it’s because of the genre or because of the characters?
Irons: I think it must be partly the genre. We were all brought up on Westerns. I’ve always wanted to do a Western. But I have to say, if this was about industrial espionage in 1980…I probably would have come and done it. So it was just nice it was a Western.
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Jeremy Irons interviewed on The Zaz Report with Matt Zaller of www.nationallampoon.com
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Jeremy Irons at UCD
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Jeremy on Ryan Tubridy show on Monday 15 September
Jeremy was at University College Dublin on Wednesday 10 September to receive a Lifetime Membership to the UCD Law Society and RTE radio host Ryan Tubridy interviewed him at the event. The complete interview, which is about 35 minutes long, will air on the Tubridy show on RTE Radio 1 on Monday 15 September. Here are some excerpts from the conversation:
Jeremy mentioned that he’d “just been building a house in Dublin” and Tubridy asked him what brought him to live in Dublin. Jeremy explained that his wife, Sinead Cusack, who read English Literature at UCD thirty years ago “discovered a child, who she’d given away when she was 18, in Catholic Ireland, who also came here [UCD], who is now 39…she discovered him two years ago, and he has a son, so she’s now a grandmother to a Dublin boy, and she wants to be somewhere near her family, so we decided to have a house here.”
When asked by Tubridy what his reaction was to Sinead’s finding and reconnecting with the son she gave up for adoption, Richard Boyd Barrett, Jeremy said that it was a “great surprise”, a “very pleasant surprise… I’d known there was somebody she’d lost touch with at the age of two weeks…It’s magical and wonderful and we’re suddenly one child more and I haven’t had to pay the school fees.”
Jeremy goes on in the interview to talk about his parts in “The Lion King” and “Brideshead Revisited.”
Check back here for more on the interview and the link to where you can listen to it in it’s entirety on Monday 15 September 2008.
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Lion-hearted Irons likes cartoon image
Thursday September 11 2008
JEREMY Irons doesn’t mind being synomynous with a cartoon character.
The English actor has starred in major Hollywood films such as ‘Dead Ringers’, ‘The Mission’ and ‘Reversal of Fortune’, for which he won an Oscar.
But to the younger audience, it seems, he is best known as the voice of a cartoon character.
Last night he picked up another award when he was made an honorary lifetime member of the UCD Law Society.
In front of a packed lecture theatre in Belfield, Irons was questioned by students and host Ryan Tubridy on his life and career.
He accepted the accolade, saying it was convenient as he was in the area.
“I’m building a house in Dublin and just moved in two days ago so it was no problem,” he said.
But without doubt it was his performance as Scar in ‘The Lion King’ that interested most of the audience.
“How does it feel to have a generation associate you with the voice of a cartoon character?” Ryan Tubridy asked Irons.
“I’ve faced up to that. I am known as the voice of Scar. It was very hurtful at my first screening of the film in Radio City, New York.
“My character was hanging from a cliff and fell to his death. All the audience stood up and cheered,” Irons replied.
- Colin Bartley
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Jeremy interviewed on eTalk eXtended:
from CTV Canada
http://watch.ctv.ca/etalk/movies/extened—appaloosa/#clip94826_________________________________________________________________________________
Jeremy Irons introduced by Ed Harris on stage at TIFF premiere of “Appaloosa”
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Exclusive Interview: Jeremy Irons for “Appaloosa”
from www.darkhorizons.com
Oscar winning Brit Jeremy Irons is very picky when it comes to leaving one of his many British homes [and Irish castle] to take on a Hollywood role, but the idea of playing the antagonistic cattle baron in the Ed Harris-directed western, “Appaloosa”, was clearly too good to pass up.
In a Toronto hotel room, in between puffs of a cigarette, Irons chatted exclusively to PAUL FISCHER.
Question: Was it irresistible to do something that kind of reminded you of why you might have become an actor in the first place?
Irons: Yeah. I’ve always ridden horses and like most people, I was sort of brought up on Westerns, and Westerns were movies., but I never thought I’d ever be in one. They don’t make many now and although Clint Eastwood had asked me to do Unforgiven–
Question: Which, the Richard Harris part?
Irons: Yeah. And I said, “No.” I think – I’d read the script, and I thought, “I think I’m too young for this. I don’t think I’m right for this. You should ask Richard Harris,” which he did. Of course, Richard made a great success of it and I think was a lot better than I would have been. So, I had another opportunity to do one. But, you know, when Ed asked me to do this, I’d just finished doing a play in London, and was feeling like doing a movie. I thought it would be a lot of fun. I could see that he had this dream to make this picture and Viggo was on board, and Renee was on board. And I thought, “Oh, we’ll have fun. It’s a nice bunch of actors, nice script.” And it was a real pleasure to be able to say yes to it.
Question: How do you humanize a character like this?
Irons: I mean, you give him his back story. We know that he worked with Chester Arthur in the New York Customs House, which you know was pretty rife with venality. You know, import-exports, and people creaming off everywhere you could look. I see him as a man who didn’t like the city that much, although he had been a city boy. And he thought, “I’m going out West. I’ve heard about this copper mind.” So he comes out to this little hick town. And discovers that they have given away the rights to a company out of Chicago to do it. So he thinks, “I’m just going to have to bully them.” So he lets his men run riot on the place, waiting for the time when he can go to the mayor, and say – and the council, and say, “Listen. If you want me to pull them off, let me have the mine.” And this is upset by the lawmakers coming to town.
You know, this was at a time when the law was just coming out to the Far West. The railroads had come. As soon as the railroad came, then the law followed. But for the original guys who went out there, they ruled by the gun. And if someone walked onto your land, which you’d staked, and said they want to take some of your men, you say, “No.” And then if they insist on doing so, you’d shoot them. I mean, you know, that was the way of it. But he’s caught on the cusp. Things are changing. So he gets – he gets out of it using influence, using people he’s used before. Gets back to New York. Says to Chester Arthur, “Jesus, it’s bloody terrible out there. I mean, there’s these guys going around making the law, and there are no witnesses to this, and they say I did this.”
So Chester Arthur, who was an old mate, said, “Well, I’ll give you a pardon.” He then gets backers, goes back out there and buys it. He says, “I’ll do it with cash.” And starts behaving in exactly the same way that I reckon 75 of the CEOs in America behave now. You know, you buy out the competition. But of course, in our story, he oversteps the mark. He starts courting a lady who is not his, and gets killed for personal reasons. But had he not done that, had he not put his hand on the back of that girl’s neck, and had Hitch not seen that, and Hitch not realized that Cole, now injured, so not able to be a lawman, really, wants to settle down, and that his life will be ruined because the girl will go with the stud stallion. Who is going to be Bragg. So Hitch, out of friendship, gets rid of him.
Question: Could you identify with Bragg at all?
Irons: Yes. I try and identify with everyone – I mean, there is an element of the rogue in me.
Question: Really?
Irons: In all of us, I think. And – playing a hard game, I can identify with anyone who does that, plays by the apparent rules. I don’t say he’s a great guy, but I can identify with him.
Question: What do you look for in a project? I remember a couple years ago, there was a time when you would do something like – and I dare not mention it – the last time I mentioned the movie’s name, you kind of scoffed at me. But, you said you did Dungeons and Dragons because it represented yet another brick in your Irish castle. Do you have such pragmatic attitudes now, or do you really have to be passionate about something?
Irons: No, I need to earn my wages. I try not to – I mean, Dungeons and Dragons was a sort of anomaly for me, in that I was spending a lot of money on the castle, and they offered me a lot of money to do the picture. And I thought, “Yeah, come on.” What I hadn’t realized was that the director of that picture was very inexperienced, and therefore it wasn’t going to really work. But I’m afraid I had my palm crossed with silver. And so there’s an element of pragmatism. But I’ve always tried to – I’ve never wanted to work to support my lifestyle. But I do find that your lifestyle just tends to grow without you realizing. I have a lot of properties. None of which I rent, which surround the place in Ireland.
Question: Throughout Great Britain? Throughout the UK?
Irons: Well, I have two in England. And five in Ireland. So it’s sort of crazy, you know?
Question: What do you do with them all? You can’t live in them all.
Irons: Well, sometimes.
Question: Really?
Irons: We have a place in Dublin, because my wife has a Dublin son, grandson, she likes to get over and see, and wants to have a home there. I have the castle down in West Cork, which I did up over six years, which I adore. I have a little cottage where we used toil before, which at the moment I have a brother-in-law living in while we do up a farmhouse that he’s going to live in, that’s also half mine. You know, I love property. I love doing up property. And that’s tended to be where I put my money. But, of course, property -
Question: You don’t sell it. You just hold it.
Irons: Yeah. Because it’s – I find these wonderful places, and can’t bear to get rid of them.
Question: How do you have time to act?
Irons: Well, you mean get there and act.
Question: Right. And do all of that.
Irons: Well, the great thing about filming is that – you know, you have these gaps. You go off and you work for four months, and then you can afford to – you know, do nothing the next four months.
Question: But it’s important to you to still do theatre.
Irons: I’ve gone back to do theatre. But actually, that’s – really, that’s over the last two years. And I’ve been looking for a new play. In the last three years, rather, I’ve done two new plays. But really, that’s because I haven’t found the compelling work in film.
Question: Why is that?
Irons: I think – I don’t know. I think it’s something to do with getting older. You know, there are a lot of us chasing the roles. If you think of people like Bill Hurt, Kevin Kline, Dustin Hoffman. They don’t work that often, because there aren’t that many roles around, which they really, really want. You know, in your 30s and your 40s, that’s when you’re really powering it. That’s when the roles come. Now, I think also it’s because I live in England. And I’m not a – when I’m not working, I’m not part of the community. Film community. I think that is a slight disadvantage, because out of sight, out of mind, a little bit. But I don’t know. I’m going off to do another play in New York, on Broadway, in January.
Question: Oh, really? Which one?
Irons: It’s a new play. It’s called Impressionism.
Question: And who else is in it with you?
Irons: Joan Allen is the leading lady.
Question: Ah. Well, that’s a pretty formidable -
Irons: It’ll be nice, yeah. I’m looking forward to it. And Jack O’Brien is directing it, who’s a good director. I mean, we’ll see. I like doing new plays, because you want to see how – if you can make them work.
Question: And nobody has any preconceptions of character, either.
Irons: That’s right. Yeah.
Question: Did they offer you cameo to do the Brideshead movie?
Irons: They asked me originally to play Lord Marchmain and I couldn’t get Larry out of my head. I thought, “No, it’s not a good idea.” And I said to them I’d play Charles’ father, because I think that’s quite wishy. Now, that script, the one they asked me – it was about two years ago. And I don’t think it’s the script they actually filmed. I think it metamorphosized, and maybe they got another writer in. I think it was Andrew – the guy who does all the British adaptations, who I’m not very keen on. Anyway. I think his script was the one that eventually was made. But they said, “No, we feel you’re too upper-class for Charles’ father. We think he should be – we’re making a bigger class difference between Sebastian and Charles, and we want to see that in their parents as well.” And I thought, “Well, that’s a bit odd. But, anyway.”
Question: Have you seen the film?
Irons: I haven’t.
Question: Have you finished any other films since you’ve done this?
Irons: No, I haven’t. I went back from this to do a play at the National Theatre. Never So Good, playing Harold McMillan, which we had a great success with. And I finished that in August so I hope to film this autumn, although the two or three projects – I don’t know which one is going to go, and which one isn’t?
Question: British or American?
Irons: They’re all American. I think people are very nervous about whether the strike’s going to happen, and all of that.
Question: Wouldn’t it have happened by now, if it was going to happen? You would think.
Irons: They say it will be – they’ll know by the end of September. I think it’s the worst time for actors to strike. I think it’s a terrible time. You know, the whole business is changing so much.
