Thank you to Shiloh Fernandez Source for the video links:
Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack attended the Cause Celebre press night at The Old Vic Theatre – Arrivals London, England – 29 March 2011
Thank you to http://community.livejournal.com/chardwickefans/39360.html for these fantastic scans!
Max Irons is featured in the February/March 2011 issue of Wonderland magazine, interviewed about Red Riding Hood:
Click on any image for a larger view:
from The Observer and guardian.co.uk
Sunday 13 March 2011
The return from cultural investment is huge. If we want to rebuild our economy, the arts should not be an easy target.
Before the last election the government promised to usher in a “golden age” for the arts. The reality couldn’t be further from this. With the reductions announced in last year’s Spending Review, the withdrawal of huge amounts of local authority support, the abolition of the UK Film Council and the financial pressures faced by the Arts Councils and the BBC, we are currently facing the biggest threat to funding the arts and culture have experienced in decades.
These cuts are deep and will affect not just those working and training in regional theatre, independent arts, the BBC, UK film, festivals, dance or theatre in education, but also those who access the arts through outreach and education programmes, community and youth groups and social care.
Nationally, the return from cultural investment is staggering. The performing arts and the film industry contribute more than £7bn to the economy each year. If we are serious about rebuilding our economy, culture should not be an easy target for cuts.
We must remember that many of our most internationally recognised artists and creative workers lauded at the Baftas, Oscars and Emmys started in regional theatres and small arts venues.
All those who have a role in taking decisions on cuts must think hard about the potential damage that could be caused to our economy and society.
Lynda Bellingham, Brenda Blethyn, Samantha Bond, Kenneth Branagh, Jo Brand, Rory Bremner, Rob Brydon, Saffron Burrows, Simon Callow, Peter Capaldi, Oliver Ford Davies, Robert Glenister, Sheila Hancock, Miranda Hart, Jeremy Irons, Mike Leigh, Adrian Lester, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Matthew Macfadyen, Patrick Malahide, Miriam Margolyes, Ian McDiarmid, Ian McShane, Dame Helen Mirren, Bill Paterson, Maxine Peake, Timothy Pigott-Smith, Diana Quick, Tony Robinson, Prunella Scales, Martin Shaw, Michael Sheen, Malcolm Sinclair, Imelda Staunton, Alison Steadman, Clive Swift, David Tennant, David Threlfall, Sandi Toksvig, Ricky Tomlinson, Johnny Vegas, Julie Walters, Samuel West, Timothy West, Penelope Wilton, Victoria Wood
Max Irons is featured in the London Evening Standard in an article from 11 March 2011, by Richard Godwin. Photographs by Hamish Brown.
Max Irons walks into a West London café dressed in a slim black overcoat, smelling slightly of tobacco. You can tell he’s a bit of a rebel as he is brazenly drinking from a carton of Ribena. For some reason – his regally handsome looks? family connections? – the waitresses don’t seem to mind.
I had been warned that Irons – 25-year-old model, actor and son of Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack – would be rather shy, but, on the contrary, he’s wholly self-assured. He talks about his dyslexia, which was so bad he couldn’t write his name at eight; his expulsion from boarding school for getting caught in flagrante with his girlfriend just before his A levels; what it was like watching his dad have sex with a minor on screen in Lolita (‘weird’, but it’s one of Max’s favourite films); and the family’s controversial holiday castle in Kilcoe, Ireland, the colour of which has become an obsession of the tabloid press. ‘Listen: pink was the undercoat, it’s now a nice rusty orange,’he says.
And if his CV is still looking a little sparse given the hype that surrounds him, Max ought to put that right with his latest projects. After training at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and appearing in a couple of plays on the London fringe, he is about to appear as a drug-addicted pornographer in the Sky mini-series The Runaway and, before that, in a big-budget reimagining of Red Riding Hood by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke. ‘You’ve got to forget about what you know about Little Red Riding Hood and inject a bit of sexuality,’he explains. I thought Little Red Riding Hood was all about sexuality? ‘Well, yes, it’s about rape. But it’s very subconscious…’
At any rate, this version has a sexuality that’s precision-tooled to set young female audiences’hormones raging, with Amanda Seyfried as the hooded heroine and Irons as her rich suitor. Clearly, there’s an invitation to follow the Robert Pattinson route to teen idol (Hardwicke describes Max by saying, ‘He’s 6ft 3in, drop-dead gorgeous, and has this crazy magnetism’), but Max is wary of being typecast as a heart-throb. He recently ‘found’ himself talking to Disney about Snow and the Seven, a similarly racy reboot of the Snow White tale. ‘I was thinking, if I get this, they would probably pay a bit, there would be a lot of exposure – but I could pretty much bank on not having the kind of career I want.’He talks admiringly of Andrew Garfield and Tom Hardy, two young British actors who have made interesting career choices, and speaks of his love for Pinter and Stoppard: ‘I want to have a career that lasts 60 years, not six.’
He has a wariness of Hollywood and laughs at the ridiculous diets and the punishing vanity. ‘At the end of a really, really, really horrible workout, the only thing I want to do is… have a smoke,’he laughs. (He started smoking at 13, liquorice roll-ups, same as his father.) He remains a Londoner, commuting back and forth to LA, where he met his girlfriend, the Australian actress Emily Browning, 22, who has just starred in a sexy Australian take on the Sleeping Beauty story and is shortly to hit our screens in the big-budget teen flick Sucker Punch (no relation to the recent Royal Court play). For the moment Max continues to live with his parents in a cottage on a cobbled mews in West London, to which we retire halfway through the interview, when the din at the café becomes overwhelming. The Irons residence is cosy and bohemian, with an overflowing ashtray, a warm red colour scheme and battered leather sofas. A note pinned to the front door, on Sinead Cusack-headed notepaper, addresses itself to the family cyclists with the word ‘HELMET!’.
Max is touching when talking about his parents, whose marriage is the subject of endless tabloid speculation, though it has lasted more than three decades. The gossip doesn’t bother him, he says. ‘I remember there was a story – I must have been about ten – and it was about him reportedly kissing a co-star. And they said to me, ”Look, there’s going to be a story in the papers tomorrow. It’s not true.” And that was fine. You learn very quickly not to Google yourself.’
He grew up between the family’s Oxfordshire estate, where the novelist Ian McEwan was a neighbour, and London. He was sent to a state boarding school, where, funny to think now, he was mercilessly bullied for his pudding-bowl haircut and the ‘fucking medieval’ inverted yellow glasses he wore to correct his reading. Otherwise, he describes his childhood as happy and stable. One parent, usually Cusack, would try to stay at home while the other was away filming.
He lights up when I mention how much I loved the 1989 film of Roald Dahl’s Danny, the Champion of the World, which starred Jeremy Irons as an unconventional widower trying to raise his son (played by Max’s older brother Samuel, now a photographer). ‘I was two when the film came out, but I watched it so much as a kid, and it made me cry terribly.’Is there a parallel with his own father-son relationship? ‘I would like to say yes,’he says mysteriously, before deciding, ‘Actually I would say there is. My dad’s not lawless but he’s got his own set of morals and ethics which don’t always agree with other people’s – like in the movie. It’s not unjust what they do, or unfair, but it’s unconventional. I kind of respect that, especially these days.’
That unconventional streak emerged in Max when he was sent to Bryanston, a mixed boarding school in Dorset. He was always getting suspended. ‘Nothing serious, only girls, booze, cigarettes. My parents always said,”You’re really bad at getting caught.” I replied,”No, I was just doing it a lot.” That way, statistically, you’re more likely to get caught.’His parents once sent him to observe a school in Zimbabwe, just after Robert Mugabe had come to power, to remind him of his privilege – with mixed results. He was kicked out of Bryanston prior to his A levels, after a teacher caught him having sex.
His parents also exercised caution when he announced that he, too, wanted a career in acting, pointing out that they were in the ‘zero point one’per cent who were successful. They are not overly involved now, though ‘every now and then, there’s a bit of fatherly advice but it’s mainly to do with what to expect from Los Angeles, not how to actually do the acting’.
In fact, he tells me, the dyslexia was the bigger factor in his career choice. ‘The teacher would come along and say, ”Are you finding it all right?” and I would say, ”Yeah, it’s brilliant, I’m loving it, easy,” and that was a bit of acting in itself. You have to rely on charm a lot.’
At first, scripts terrified him, as he was unable to read them, but now he studies his lines beforehand. ‘When I applied to drama school, they had this sheet you had to fill in saying whether you had any disabilities and I called up and asked,”Does dyslexia count?” and they said,”It’s practically a qualification.” ’
I ask him if he’s scared of not being taken seriously. ‘No. I know I have to combat the fact that my parents are actors at least for the next ten years. It’s tied up with dyslexia. You want to give the impression you’re successful. That you’re well, often when you’re not.’He pauses. ‘When you’ve got parents who’ve done what you want to do, as much as they’re proud of you, they can’t be as amazed by it, because they’ve done it themselves. The only person I can amaze is me. I’ve got to do it for me. So… fuck the world, to an extent.’It’s an attitude that has served other members of his family rather well.
Red Riding Hood will be out in cinemas in the US from 11 March and in the UK from 15 April.
Click on the thumbnails for larger images:
Boys’ Night Out: Max Irons – EyeScoop – Celebrity Photos, Fashion and Lifestyle News – WWD.com.
What is it with actors wanting to fly planes? There was a list a few weeks ago in some weekly tabloid that rounded up all the celebrities with pilot’s licenses. Maybe mastering the sky is a way to reclaim the control they’re constantly giving up to movie directors, film studios, publicists, etc. In any case, Max Irons would like to get in on that one day. “I’ve always wanted to be a fighter pilot,” says Irons, 25. “But I don’t want to kill people. I’d hate to.”
So acting it is. Irons, the youngest son of Jeremy Irons and Sinéad Cusack, will appear in “Red Riding Hood” (March 11), the dark, lusty thriller/fairy tale directed by Catherine Hardwicke, best known for turning Robert Pattinson into a demigod overnight with the original “Twilight” film. Irons plays Henry, one part of a very pretty love triangle, which also includes Amanda Seyfried, in the title role, and Shiloh Fernandez.
So he’s a heartthrob?
“Your words, not mine,” says Irons, on the line from Los Angeles, where he has just flown in from his home in London for an open-ended stint of press, press, meetings, press and meetings.
The thing about a phone interview is that, while immensely convenient for all involved, with it you forfeit your ability to observe and, most important, judge your subject up close and personal. By the sound of his voice, Irons is just lovely, all upbeat English charm, saying things like, “What’s that, love?” From the photos I’ve seen, he is gorgeous, or at least extremely photogenic, which is essential for a movie career. Even better, he tells me that he’s 6 feet 3 inches. And since everyone knows that Hollywood is the place where short guys go to thrive, things are looking good. He has his father to thank for the height.
At this point, you really can’t talk to Max Irons without much of the conversation winding up about Jeremy Irons. Not yet, anyway. But Max is prepared for those questions. He’s in the unique position of being a relative newcomer professionally but has spent his entire life around the business. He says he can’t quite pinpoint when he knew his parents were actors; it was more like “one of them was always absent, and they were always doing strange things in foreign countries.” As for when he realized they were famous, it was one summer spent in Portugal when his father was filming “The House of the Spirits” with Meryl Streep, and seven-year-old Max spotted a long lens in the bushes. “I told my dad, and he went out and threw a shovel at them, which I quite liked,” he says.
Doesn’t he find the whole thing bizarre? People in bushes, putting on makeup and pretending for a living?
“It is a really weird thing to do,” says Irons. “But it’s also a really fun thing to do. I mean, it’s fine when you’re a kid and someone runs into the playground and goes, ‘I’ve got this great game of pretend,’ and you play.…As an actor, getting to play, getting to use your imagination and be childish — it is weird but it’s wonderful.”
If he has to say, Irons classifies himself as a mama’s boy who has inherited his mother’s Irish sensibility, hopefully her work ethic, and what looks like her bone structure.
But fathers are always role models for their sons, even more so when the offspring chooses to follow in the family business. The list of sons of celebrities who have gone on to great acting careers (Michael Douglas, Ben Stiller, um, Charlie Sheen) is even shorter than the list of celebrity pilots, a fact of which Max is acutely aware. His father told him so. “In England, nepotism as a concept is kind of despised,” says Irons. “Less so here, I’ve noticed. I can see why there’s a misconception that it’s easier when your parents are actors, but it doesn’t work out at all. In fact, it’s the reverse.”
The elder Irons has mostly imparted his wisdom with regard to the business side of the industry, leaving the technical for his son to learn on his own. “Acting advice is a bit like your parents teaching you how to drive a car,” says Max Irons. “You know they’re right, but you still kind of want them to shut up a bit.”
But if Max ever finds himself charged with nuancing the sexy side of a creepy character, he has several examples to look to from his father’s body of work, none of which have been off limits. “There is one I wish had been — it was called ‘Damage.’ Lots of sex scenes, which is quite hard,” says Irons.
I have not seen “Damage,” the 1992 Louis Malle film about a father (Irons) who falls for his son’s fiancée (Juliette Binoche), but a quick scan of IMDB.com turns up an image of Irons and Binoche sitting naked and intertwined Indian-style.
So this was a family screening?
“No…thank God,” says Irons. “I would have run out of the room screaming.”
Max Factor: Max Irons
The new film ‘Red Riding Hood’ is based on a fairy tale, so it makes sense that its breakout star looks like *this*.
Meet Max Irons, Hollywood’s next Prince Charming
By Nicole Berrie | February 09, 2011
Max Irons
Who: Max Irons
Age: 25
Pedigree: The youngest son of Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons (famously dubbed the “thinking woman’s sex symbol”) and Irish actress Sinéad Cusack, Irons was beseeched by both parents to avoid a career in Hollywood. “They immediately said, ‘You will most likely have a life of unhappiness, financial turmoil, jealousy, and paranoia,’ ” says Irons, who studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (Daniel Craig and Ewan McGregor are alums). “But when your parents give advice, your brain goes into a certain mode.”
Model beginnings: In 2006, photographer Mario Testino spotted Irons on the street and booked him in a Burberry campaign alongside Kate Moss. “This big black SUV pulled up and a man got out and said, ‘Hello…I’m Mario, and I’d like you to come meet me for a chat,’ ” Irons recalls, quickly adding, “Listen, I know what it sounds like, but don’t go there.”
The next Edward Cullen? Handpicked by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke, who launched the careers of brooding heartthrobs Rob Pattinson and Emile Hirsch, Irons nabbed the role of Amanda Seyfried’s wealthy suitor in this month’s Red Riding Hood, a darkly sexy reboot of the beloved fairy tale. “When Max walked in to audition, I remember thinking, Oh, no,” Hardwicke says. “He’s 6’3″, drop-dead gorgeous, and has this crazy magnetism.” As for his acting ability? “Like Rob, Max is fearless and physically throws himself into a character. [But] is he capable of evil? Max has a soulful quality where he’s able to channel that.” Just don’t expect any bleary-eyed vamp sulking. “If you try to bring ‘teen drama,’ ” Irons says, “you end up doing nothing but pouting.”
True Brit: Even with impending It Boy status, the London native won’t be decamping to L.A. anytime soon. “I think it’s better to add an element of unavailability,” he says. He counts Johnny Depp as his role model—“because he’s bold and unpredictable and you never see actors like him in the gossip columns”—but has no plans to go Method. “I like to think that at the end of a show,” he says, “you can just take your costume off and go to the pub.”
Scroll down for photos and the text of what Jeremy read at the event…
Actor Jeremy Irons attended a royal charity gala dinner on Tuesday evening (01Feb11) as part of a campaign to encourage children to take an interest in the arts.
The Oscar winner is a supporter of The Prince’s Trust Foundation for Children and the Arts, which aims to give youths more opportunity to develop life skills by participating in poetry, painting and music. And Irons will be mixing with royalty at a gala dinner at Buckingham Palace to raise awareness of the cause.
Irons tells Britain’s The One Show, “We’re having an evening celebrating a charity of the Prince of Wales, a children and the arts charity which encourages and gives opportunity to children who are – either because of geographical… or because of financial reasons – they don’t have any access during their education to do anything artistic. Whether it be painting or theater or poetry or whatever…I was very lucky, I was at school and we had art classes, we had poetry classes, we had music classes, I learnt to do all those things naturally… What this charity does is to bring together local arts organizations and local schools and allow children to learn to paint, to write poetry, to stand on stage and be in a play… I’ve always argued that arts are terribly important for education and we’re foolish to cut them… you’re training them for life.”
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(UKPA) – 2 February 2011
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall have been given a preview of new West End musical The Wizard of Oz.
Star of the show Danielle Hope, who landed the role of Dorothy after winning a BBC talent contest last year, sang Somewhere Over The Rainbow for the Prince and the Duchess.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical starts preview shows at the London Palladium next week.
Hope, who performed for the royal couple at a gala for The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts on Tuesday night, said: “It was just magical to perform tonight, it was like the preview of the preview.
“I am really excited about the start of the show.”
The gala dinner, which was held at Buckingham Palace, was attended by supporters of the charity which helps disadvantaged children in the UK to gain access to the arts.
Charles and Camilla also heard a reading by comedian Rowan Atkinson.
Atkinson, who recited Roald Dahl’s “witty and wicked” critique of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, said: “Going to the theatre is a communal experience rather than the singular experience you get on a computer. Self serving content is good but you do not get to share the joy that you do in a theatre.”
Other performers at the black-tie event, which was held in the ballroom of the Palace, included tenor Alfie Boe and actor Jeremy Irons who read Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 128” and DH Lawrence’s “Piano”.
After the performance, Charles met the performers including Alex Jennings – famed for his role as the Prince of Wales in the 2006 drama The Queen. The Prince, who is the foundation’s president, told those gathered for the gala that the charity did an excellent job to encourage young people to experience the arts.
Copyright © 2011 The Press Association. All rights reserved.
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How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
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Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
1918
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A blast from the past! Newly discovered photos:
Legendary British actor Jeremy Irons pictured with his dog (Speed) at the Globe Theatre in London in 1978 . Irons was a relatively unknown actor at this time and was performing in a play called ‘The Rear Column’ by Simon Gray.
Max Irons attended the Moet British Independent Film Awards at Old Billingsgate Market Dec 5, 2010 in London.
Other celebrities in attendance included Colin Firth, Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham-Carter, Augustus Prew (Jeremy’s Borgias co-star), Jason Isaacs, Benedict Cumberbatch, Matthew Goode and many more.
Max Irons, Daniel Mulloy, Amanda Berryman, ? Backstage at Moet Awards
jeremyirons.net
jeremyirons.net 
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