Distinguished actor Jeremy Irons talks on his life at Burgh House
Jeremy Irons has amassed a huge CV with constant work in film and sometimes theatre in his career so far. Renowned for aggressive villains as well as romantic parts, he is known for his calm performance on stage and set. He was raised partly on the Isle of Wight and schooled mainly in Dorset. At school he was in a band – The Four Pillars of Wisdom and played the drums at parties and for friends. At the start of his career after training in Bristol Theatre School he had to do cleaning jobs on moving to London before he luckily got two parts in Godspell (John the Baptist and Judas Escariot).
His love of Ireland meant after buying a holiday cottage there, he went on to buy a ruined castle on an Island and once gave up several years in acting to employ up to forty men to help to restore it to its former glory so that he could live there comfortably from time to time with friends and family.
Jeremy has always loved motorbikes and taken his dog and even his wife and a small baby on a bike in the past. His current dog, Smudge came and sat with him for the interview at Burgh House. But what of all the famous parts he has played? He has just finished the film Justice Leap a Batman Film and Assassin’s Creek and another film, Monumental where he plays a former US Marine, he is soon to play in An Actor Prepares. In the past he played a villain in Die Hard 3, he played a Kingly Pope in The Borgias which was filmed in Hungary, and he was in the re-make of Lolita which had limited circulation due to its controversial subject matter. In Brideshead Re-visited Jeremy played a sex symbol, and he has acted both with Meryl Streep (twice) and Helen Mirren – Elizabeth 1 and also with Glenn Close. Jeremy was asked to record the entire works of T S Elliott for the BBC and it is available on CD. He has also done a “voice under” for The Lion King. In the last two years he has made “around seven films”.
Jeremy has won more than one Golden Globe and more than One Primetime Emmy.