The Man Behind the Irons Mask
by Winnie Chung, South China Morning Post
May 8, 1998
The British actor brings a breath of fresh air to the promotion of his latest film, writes Winnie Chung
Jeremy Irons sweeps into the room like an invigorating breeze. His friendly greeting and casual demeanour come as a balm after a long afternoon of Gabriel Byrne looking sulky, Gerard Depardieu telling toilet jokes, Randall Wallace going on like a runaway train and Judith Godreche trying to play mysterious.
"We can make it interesting; we can have a good conversation," Irons promises sympathetically after some good-natured whingeing from the assembled reporters. This offer is deeply appreciated because of all the cast of The Man In The Iron Mask, Irons probably has the heaviest promotion schedule. He is also promoting Lolita and Chinese Box, and has admitted he "gets confused" sometimes.
Being in a film like The Man In An Iron Mask has been a source of less consternation for the proper Englishman with a penchant for rather improper roles than Lolita. Based on the book by Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita had major problems finding a US distributor because of its paedophilia theme, and the release of Wayne Wang's Chinese Box - filmed in Hong Kong in the run-up to the handover last year - has been held up for almost a year. It is certainly good to be in a film that does not have the same problems, he admits.
"Promoting a film like Iron Mask, where you feel a major studio is 100 per cent behind you . . . I wish we could find a studio which would stand 100 per cent behind Lolita," Irons says in his strong British accent.
He has been disappointed by the response to Lolita because he feels it was timely and among his and director Adrian Lyne's best work. "Lolita is a morality tale. It shows what happens when you go against the mores of society, and I think, as a result, it is a very ethical film to make; a very moral film to make, which should join the debate because paedophilia is very much in the news, and I think an informed judgment can be wrought by such a film."
Moralists would probably find a problem with Irons' reasoning, just as they may have had difficulty approving some of most of Irons' other roles: the British MP Stephen Fleming who becomes obsessed with his son's girlfriend in Damage or the French diplomat who has a 20-year love affair with a male Chinese opera singer in M Butterfly. And let's not forget the weird Claus Von Bulow in Reversal Of Fortune, for which he won an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
As financial journalist John Spencer in the Chinese Box, his character is caught in a love triangle between karaoke bar owner Vivian (Gong Li) and a streetwise Hong Kong woman (Maggie Cheung). Irons, who has yet to see the final cut of the Chinese Box, says diplomatically: "It is not a movie that I think will go wide. It is a very particular movie . . . it is more a collage within which there are various disparate stories. It's a very good film - not a terribly commercial film - but a film which (will appeal to) people who like Wayne Wang's work and who like movies that are not run-of-the-mill."
Playing the musketeer Aramis-turned-religious man in good old-fashioned, swashbuckling The Man In The Iron Mask is probably one of his more honourable film roles, even though he jokes that he and the boys "behaved appallingly" on the set.
Irons would love to be as funny as Robin Williams or Steve Martin - and thinks he can be - but feels his ability as an "introspective" actor has limited his choices somewhat.
"Directors like to use me to create an internal landscape in a character. I tend to have concentrated in that area," he says simply.
One lesser known role the actor has taken has been in a documentary, Mirad, The Boy From Bosnia, in which he co-stars with his wife, actress Sinead Cusack. Irons also took over the directing helm.
The hour-long film tells the story of Mirad, a Bosnian boy who escapes from the war with the help of the Red Cross and ends up with his relatives in Holland. His tale is told by his aunt and uncle through their recollections and excerpts from his diary.
The script was given to Cusack during a train journey with a Dutch director and Irons was drawn to its simple tale because he was frustrated with the way in which the Bosnian war had been "filtered" by television.
"England has been filled with documentaries and live footage from Bosnia, but the television screen has acted as a kind of filter. I felt it wasn't getting through to us as an audience. This piece was emotionally very highly charged - (which) I thought was everything that drama should be and theatre should be," he explains.
His faith was justified because not long after they had done it, it was decided it would be used as a schools text, and Irons and his wife were approached to film it so that it could be used as a teaching aid in schools.
"I didn't want to see it on video screens; I thought once again there was going to be a filter over it. But they persuaded me. I said I would do it only if I could direct it. So we shot it on 35mm film over nine days," he says.
"I've always been one of those actors more interested in storytelling in theatre or film than in the acting. To me it was not such a big step to step behind the cameras. I'm more comfortable doing that than acting."
However, despite his accomplishments, Irons admits that he lacks the confidence to go out and find a feature film to direct. Also, for the present, he does not wish to take on any more responsibility. One of the reasons he enjoyed The Man In The Iron Mask so much, he says, is because he did not have to carry the film.
"It is much harder directing. It takes years to get the film up and running, and it can collapse at any time. I've seen it happen. But if you do get it going and it's a disaster, it's down to you. If you're an actor, you walk in, do your work, leave. If a film doesn't work you say, "That didn't work, well, there you go,' and then you find something else to work on," adds the former stage actor who won a Tony for his role in the Tom Stoppard play The Real Thing.
"With directing, it has to be something I really care about enough to want to hand my reputation on it," he says.
Irons says his work is beginning to bore him a little, and that is why he is taking time off until October to work on a pet project: rebuilding an old ruin in Scotland.
"I need to (do this). I feel after Lolita I have reached the end of a series of roles which explore passion and following that passion to the nth degree. I think I have to find a change of direction, and I think you have to stop a while for that to happen.
"There are a lot of things I like doing in life, and I'm using this time to do those other things. I must be regenerative. You only bring to your work what you are and I cannot just keep working, because that's just giving out. I have to take in a little bit of life."
Chinese Box is scheduled for release in Hong Kong later this summer