Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many West End theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Godspell, Richard II and Embers. In 1984, he made his Broadway debut in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and received a Tony Award for Best Actor...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth19 September 1948
CityCowes, England
Because I'm now successful, what I'm being offered as an actor is more and more of the same.
Godspell was a good leap for me, it was a good shop window.
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
Mine is an actor's voice, not a singer's voice, but the part was written for an actor (Richard Burton), not a singer.
You have to communicate on a much greater scale. With a camera, you can use the flick of an eye. On stage, a lot of other things are happening that can pull focus or energy. You're always thinking the same way, but you have to amplify your thoughts with the volume of your speech and the ways you use your whole body to communicate what you're feeling. It's a little bit different from film.
I've never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live. There's something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy.
Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line.
I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.
I get bored very easily, so I love doing different things, changing, doing a job for a month and then doing another one for six months and then moving into a different group of people. I love being able to stop. That's one of the greatest benefits we have in our profession.
The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you're always asked to do what you've already done.
So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.
I'm a complete libertarian. I think it's very, very dangerous. I really mean that. I think the smoking ban is a tip of an iceberg of society-the leaders of society telling us how to be. I think it's not their business....It's an attitude where the governors think, 'We know what's best for people, and they're so stupid that they would only not do it if we ban it.'
I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.
Could a father not marry his son?