Jeremy Irons revisited in Julia

Celebrated British actor plays philandering husband in Istvan Szabo's Canadian movie

At age 56, British actor Jeremy Irons is as handsome and elegant as he was when he was first introduced to North American audiences in the famed 1981 mini-series Brideshead Revisited.
One of the best actors alive, Irons depicted the slow mental breakdown of twin gynecologists in David Cronenberg's thriller Dead Ringers; and delivered an ironic, witty, and self-aware performance as accused wife murderer Klaus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune which won him a Best Actor Academy Award. He also won a Tony Award on Broadway for The Real Thing, in which he costarred with Glenn Close. Since then, he's starred in Kafka, Louis Malle's Damage; Waterland in which he played opposite wife Sinead Cusack; provided the sinister voice of Scar in The Lion King; and proved a worthy foe to Bruce Willis in Die Hard With a Vengeance.
This year he stars in two movies, Michael Radford's The Merchant of Venice opposite Al Pacino, and Istvan Szabo's Being Julia, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival recently.
Adapted by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) from W. Somerset Maugham's novel Theatre, Being Julia focuses on the reluctantly dimming star of Julia Lambert (Annette Bening), a flamboyant theatrical diva in 1930s London who feels the shadows of the wings reaching out to pull her into darkness: She's past prime, and her leading days are numbered.
Terrified at the prospect of being bumped from centre stage, Julia - who has a teenaged son, a dead mentor (Michael Gambon), a best friend "who plays for the other side" (Bruce Greenwood) and a producer-husband, Michael (Irons), who indulges her hungry ego - goes a little middle-aged crazy. Under the endearingly tolerant nose of her show-must-go-on spouse, she has an affair with a hopelessly smitten, pudding-faced young American (Shaun Evans), indulges in several diva-scale snits, and generally starts providing a considerably more smashing dramatic spectacle of her offstage life than on. After being told by Michael that audiences are being made to suffer along with her work, Julia takes an extended - and for her painfully unnatural - vacation. When it occurs to her that her worst dreams are being brought to life in the vacuum of her absence (i.e., that she's being replaced by an ambitious but untalented bimbo who happens to be boffing Mr. Pudding Face and hubby), Julia begins to plot her revenge.
Tandem talked to Jeremy Irons about Being Julia when he was in Toronto recently.

Was chemistry between you and Annette Bening important while making this film?
"Chemistry is a very strange thing. I made a picture with Juliette Binoche once [Damage]. She and I didn't get along at all well, but put us side by side just standing and [snaps his fingers] voila, chemistry. I admire Annette, hugely hard-working and so professional, and it was a huge leap for her. The only thing I would like - because I look at Michael Gambon with such admiration - I think I'd love a face like that, I'd like my face to line up really quickly like that. Have good bags, sweep up bags..."

You said that you based your character on British actor John Du Maurier...
"That was as close as I could get, that John Du Maurier was a better actor than I could hope to be. My big impresario in London was (Bickie Bono) but Bickie was gay so I couldn't use him. I didn't want to do it [Being Julia] when I read it, to be truthful, I didn't think it had enough meat for me. But Annette's people pretty much bullied me into it. The older I get the more I just enjoy working, enjoy the fun of it all. When I was younger I was very focused, I had to get it right. I stopped six years ago for two years, I didn't do any films for two years because I wanted to build a castle."

How big is the castle?
"It's about a hundred foot high, it's on a little islet. The sea is the mote when the tide comes up. It's the most glorious feeling. I remember when I first spent an evening there alone, the glorious feeling of being completely un-get-at-able."

You play a cuckold in this film...
"Cuckold is such a funny word these days. I think they have a relationship where they both give each other space and respect each other's individuality. I think it's very interesting that at the end you realize they actually have a very deep bond that holds them together, which allows for apparently aberrant behaviour."
You just finished filming Ridley Scott's The Kingdom of Heaven about the Crusades. I understand there's been a few death threats about that.
"I was there when these death threats were apparently happening. They said, 'you're being guarded by 400 Moroccan soldiers' dressed in helmets with lances. Indeed there was a bomb, there was an explosion in the prop department or something blew up, but I suspect it was Special Effects. But in Morocco, you know, there are extremists there and I suppose they hope to blow it up into something."

You're still being cast as a leading man in romantic films. Do you feel you can pull it off much longer?
"I feel 22 and I have to keep being reminded, 'cause I can no longer play that age. People see you getting older, you don't see yourself getting older. So you have to realize that I love getting old, I find each decade better than the last. It gets better all the time, so I actually feel comfortable about that. I'm not sure if I've been through my midlife crisis. There's been several times when it's been brought to my attention that I might be going through it."

You're a rare phenomenon in the business for having been married to the same woman for more than 10 years.
"We've been together for over 30 years, and however used to each other that we might be, I think just sauntering on is a great thing, and also adapting. I think we have to adapt to survive. I love living in the castle, but she prefers living in London, and sometimes in Oxfordshire. But that's all part of life, I think."

So what's the secret behind your marriage?
"Deal with the relationship. Therapists will always say, 'you're not entirely happy, this must be because of your relationship.' I think that's absolute rubbish. I met her first when she was playing Juliet in London at the youth theatre and I went round to see her and I thought she was awful. But then I saw her at the after party and couldn't keep my eyes off her. Later that evening I drove her and my girlfriend home, but I made sure I dropped my girlfriend off first. We've had our problems, but separating was never an option, also because we love our two children. So we never walked away from each other. I think that's the secret. Working it out."
Being Julia opens in local cinemas on October 15.

Publication Date: 2004-10-03
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4460