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Jeremy Irons won an Academy Award®, a Golden Globe® Award; and numerous other Best Actor awards for his performance as Claus von Bulow in "Reversal of Fortune." He also received two other Golden Globe® nominations, for "The Mission" and "Brideshead Revisited."
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Jeremy Irons as the Earl of Liecester. |
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HBO:
Tell us about your character, Robert Dudley,
the Earl of Leicester.
Jeremy Irons:
Well, he was a lifelong friend to Elizabeth.
Historians say he was her favorite. She had
many favorites, but because we only have
four hours to tell this story, one has to
simplify. And so Leicester represents all the
favorites, really, apart from Essex, who in
the second part becomes her favorite.
And it's interesting to play, because she was
a virgin, and yet they had a pretty close,
physical relationship. And that's very
interesting within this structured court
where everybody has their position and is
very polite to her, to play the guy who she
values for the fact that he speaks the truth
to her, he just talks to her like a friend.
And that's doesn't mean that sometimes she
doesn't take offense against him. At one
point she bars him from court for about
seven years because she discovers that he's
married. And has a child. That upsets her,
and so she kicks him out. But eventually
she wants him back because she wants
somebody who will speak to her without any
bullshit.
HBO:
And how do you think he feels about her?
Jeremy Irons:
He adores her. He knows that she is
changeable, moody, but that at base she is
incredibly strong and incredibly clever
politically. He adores her. Unabashedly.
But he knows he can't marry her because
she uses the fact that she is unmarried for
political ends, for keeping friends with the
French, because there's a French prince who
maybe will marry her, or there is a Spanish
king who maybe will marry her.
And so she uses her unmarried state to keep
the peace in England. And although I think
she probably would quite like to marry
Leicester, she feels that she needs to marry
a prince. And Leicester may be an earl, but
he's not a prince.
HBO:
How does their relationship develop?
Jeremy Irons:
We come to it at a time when their great
passion is sort of over, and they're more like
a married couple in a strange way. I think
Leicester still harbors a desire to marry her
but sort of knows that she'll never marry
him. And so he goes off and marries
somebody else. And as they get older they
become like a sort of married couple, old
friends.
HBO:
What in particular appeals to you about
Leicester?
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Jeremy Irons as the Earl of Leicester. |
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Jeremy Irons:
Well, I think he was a doer. He wasn't very
political. He would say what he thought. I
mean, he was political in that they were all
political; they relied upon their queen for
their financial position, and their position in
court. So there was an element of the
sycophant about all courtiers. But Leicester
I think less so. He was someone who spoke
his mind, who was pretty informal.
He was the master of her horse, so he was a
great rider. He would breed her horses and
take her hunting, and they would go out
riding every morning. And that's very much
to my taste, because all those things I do.
He loved the country, but enjoyed being at
the heart of things in court: enjoyed the
scandal, enjoyed the gossip, the intrigue.
He's a man with a great appetite for life, and
I like playing that. I suppose I have quite an
appetite for life.
HBO:
How was it working with Helen Mirren?
Jeremy Irons:
Well, one of the reasons I wanted to do
this was to get a chance to work with
Helen. I've known her for a long time, as
actors know other actors, but never had
the chance to work with her. And I'm
really enjoying it. She's a wonderful
actress. And it's the best working with
good actors.
HBO:
What was it about the script that appealed
to you?
Jeremy Irons:
Well it's very sparely written in that...each
line really has reverberations, quite difficult
to play quickly because each line refers to
what you could write five pages about. But
because of the medium, one is condensing
necessarily. But he's done a lot of research,
he's written with a great rhythm a language
which is sort of contemporary and yet is not
contemporary. It has a period flavor mostly
in his rhythms, but sometimes in his
construction, sometimes in the words he
uses. Because of course this was the period
when Shakespeare was writing. Now we
can't use Shakespearean language, which is
probably more like what they would, and yet
there is a ghost of that in the dialogue.
I think a lot of writers make the mistake
when writing in period to say we must allow
the modern audience to understand,
therefore we have to write as we speak
nowadays. But it's hard to play these people
speaking as we speak nowadays, because
the way we speak reflects the way we live.
And in those days they lived differently. And
I think Nigel (Williams, the writer) really
found a way of dealing with that.
HBO:
Does that make it difficult for you as an
actor having to weave the two together?
Jeremy Irons:
No. No, because what you do as an actor is
actually very easy. You just learn about the
period, so you create for yourself a life in the
period. You have the dialogue, which
hopefully you lay on top of that, and then
you have your own emotional thoughts
which you put through all that to give it life.
And I don't believe that even though they
may have spoken differently and lived in
different ways that they were any different
than us. Their hearts and their minds and
their instincts and their brains and their
souls were exactly the same as ours. I don't
think that changes with people. You only
have to look at period writing-fifteenth,
sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth century-
to realize that human emotions haven't
changed, we have not evolved in that way. I
think inventions allow us to do different
things, and live in different ways. Tastes
change, architecture changes. But I don't
believe the way people feel has changed.
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