JEREMY IRONS PROFILE: My Real-Life Role On High Seas Fills Me With Terror
by Marcus Dunk, Sunday Express
February 18, 2001
Jeremy Irons is breaking away from his tortured Englishman persona by joining a round-the-world race (and being a top clothes' horse)
Acting may be portrayed as an intensely glamorous profession but there are times when it becomes just another job. Hard as it is to believe, there are some actors who actually tire of donning the make-up, doing the parties and smiling for the camera.
So once the buzz has worn off, what is it that thespians do when all that pretending just becomes too much of a drag?
Some, such as Keanu Reeves and Russell Crowe, decide - quite unwisely - to try their hands slumming it as rock stars. Others, including Ronald Reagan, suddenly feel the high and noble call of political office. Then there are a few, such as Jeremy Irons, who decide to risk their lives.
"I've been asked to take part in the fourth leg of a round-the- world yacht race," rumbles 52-year-old Irons. "I'll be joining the crew of the LG Flatron in New Zealand and, from there, we'll be racing across the Tasman Sea to Sydney.
"It's going to be an extraordinary experience and I think a lot of fun. And yes, I'm both terrified and very excited."
Setting off today, Irons and the 17-strong crew face a precarious journey during which 40ft waves and winds of 35 knots will batter the yacht that has won two of the three legs sailed so far in the BT Global Challenge.
"I've been sailing since I was five and I own a boat," explains Irons, who is looking slim and fit, "but I've never sailed on a machine like this, with a crew of this size before or in weather this violent. It is going to be such a steep learning curve for me.
"The sea is a dangerous place, but any sport which has danger attached to it hones your appetite and makes you watch and think more carefully. We have a captain who wants to win, so I don't think we'll be sitting on our bottoms. We will be doing a lot of sail changes and coping with whatever the weather sends at us. But I have always been attracted to situations which test me. For me, this is the unknown."
In the past few years, it seems that Irons has been venturing further and further into the unknown. His acting appearances have been few and far between and compared with the sort of profile he had in the Eighties and early Nineties, he has been keeping a relatively low profile. By design, as it turns out.
"The thing is that sometimes, yes, I've been bored with acting," he admits. "That's partly to do with my age, and partly to do with the fact that although I've done work in the past that has given me tremendous fulfilment and pleasure, roles like that are becoming harder to find.
"I think it's safe to say that the film business is in a sort of decline - certainly for independent films, and it's those films that provide the most interesting work. I think the feeling of not being stretched as much as I'd like is one of the reasons I took some time out to pursue other interests. To do other things like the castle."
Ah yes, the castle. For the past two years, Irons has been hard at work restoring a 15th-century pile in West Cork, Ireland, which he eventually plans to live in with his wife, actress Sinead Cusack. There have been numerous setbacks along the way and a few minor disasters, all of which have forced him to intermittently go back to work to raise some cash.
Playing a wicked wizard in the dire new film Dungeons and Dragons may do nothing for his acting credentials but it will probably pay a few renovation bills. "They made it easy for me to do that film," laughs Irons. "I liked the director and we were shooting in Prague, so I decided to do it."
Sailing and part-time building, however, are not Irons's only newly-adopted extracurricular activities. Recognising his suave and crumpled style, the American designer Donna Karan asked Irons if he would be willing to become a model for her new spring/summer advertising campaign. He agreed, and now features - leaning back louchely on a sofa alongside the actress Mila Jovovich - in a series of ads.
"That was enormous fun to do," smiles Irons. "Mila was fantastic. We shot it in Saigon, which was very interesting indeed. I've said before that it was like playing jazz. You build a character and then just improvise around the clothes and the situation. I was very pleased to be asked, since I'm hardly the thick-lipped, big-shouldered type."
Although Irons plays down his involvement in a host of other hobbies, including sailing, modelling, building, horseriding and motorbike riding - "What are the options? Sitting in front of the telly, I suppose" - it's easy to assume that part of all this is an attempt to escape the straitjacket of his image, something he's been trying to do since the beginning.
Ever since he first emerged in the public's consciousness in the early Eighties, Irons has consistently been an actor who seems determined to rebel against type. With the two roles that made him a household name, Charles in Brideshead Revisited, and the dual role in The French Lieutenant's Woman, it seemed as if the die was cast. Here was an actor who could effortlessly portray a type of suave aristocratic Englishness that seemed to represent a lost era.
With his dark looks, floppy hair, casual style and rich voice, it seemed inevitable that he would be forever typecast as the public schoolboy gone to seed. Defined as the "thinking woman's sex symbol", a career of period drama and one-note performances seemed certain. Whether through wilful perversion or plain accident, the roles that followed seemed an attempt to break out of this mould. There was the gentle priest in 1986's The Mission, the gynaecologically-fixated twins in Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, the aged Claus von Bulow in Reversal Of Fortune, the paedophile Humbert in Lolita. And then there were more villains.
Through it all, however, for many it was still hard to see him as anything other than the Jeremy Irons of Brideshead. "Physically, I think I'm built like an Englishman," admits Irons. "I'm tall and relatively slim and I sound like I do and I've got floppy hair, and all that immediately categorises you.
"But I've never liked to be associated with any classification or group. I've always fought away from that. I just don't quite know how that English image or style of Englishman fits into modern England. I don't think it has a relevance at all, but if that's how people see me, well I guess they see everybody in certain ways, whether you're Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger or me."
With a full-on return to acting ("I'm slowly turning it up and increasing the workload") and a diverse range of roles coming up, including the lead in a remake of HG Wells's classic, The Time Machine, and a major part in Franco Zefferelli's new Maria Callas biopic, the next few years will see whether Irons will succeed in reshaping his career. Whatever happens, though, it seems Jeremy Irons will remain unfazed.
"The thing is, I've always been pretty happy," he smiles. "I know I look glum sometimes but I'm pretty happy. I've got a fantastic family, a great wife, and two great kids. I think I have an extraordinarily lucky life and a good life. If I'm not happy, then I really have no excuse." Al