Jeremy Irons

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2006

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actor Jeremy Irons.

He made his name playing Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited in 1981 and became known for his quintessentially English roles. It was an image he later sought to discard and he certainly did so in the film Lolita, where his portrayal of Humbert Humbert reopened the controversy about the desires of a middle-aged man for a 14-year old girl. In the film The Mission he played a gentle Jesuit missionary and went on to act as his own stuntman, climbing a perilous waterfall. It was his performance in Reversal of Fortune that won him an Oscar for Best Actor as the real-life character Claus Von Bulow, accused and acquitted of the attempted murder of his wife. Later this month, he returns to the West End stage after almost 20 years to star in the play Embers, a story of friendship and betrayal.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: One step at a Time by Clifton Chenier Book: Ashley Books of Knots by Clifford Ashley Luxury: Rizla liquorice papers

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2006, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an actor, he epitomizes Englishness, refined elegance with a touch of coldness.
0:37.0	Curiously enough, the qualities that have made him a success were once identified as
0:40.8	disadvantages.
0:42.3	When he left theatre school school he was told that his
0:43.9	demeanor was all wrong for modern acting. The gloomy prediction seemed to be
0:48.8	coming true during the first long difficult years of his career, but then a part appeared which was made for all the
0:55.0	qualities he possesses.
0:56.8	Charles Ryder in the television series Bride's Head revisited.
1:00.4	Suddenly refined Englishmen and the actor who could play them were all the rage.
1:05.1	He followed up his success in Bride's Head playing opposite Merrill Streep in the French
1:09.0	lieutenant's woman.
1:10.4	He won a Tony Award for his part on Broadway in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, and two years after that, an Oscar for his performance as Klaus von Boulo in reversal of fortune.
1:21.0	He's an actor in constant demand, his effortless style and
1:25.0	adornment to a whole string of films and television dramas, and he's just
1:28.9	started rehearsals for his return to West End Theatre after an absence of 17 years.
1:34.0	What I like, he says, are characters with secrets,
1:38.0	characters who don't give away who they are.
1:41.0	He is Jeremy Irons. It was a director at the Bristol Old Vic
1:44.8	Theatre School I think Jeremy who predicted your your lack of success.
1:48.5	Presumably he thought you were going to end up doing endless Noel Coward roles, did he?
	...

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