The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
| Posted: 14 Feb 2013 02:21 AM PST With a body of work spanning more than four decades, Jeremy Irons is always pleased to be involved in something new. THERE is no doubting the voice coming through the phone at 5am – it is Jeremy Irons. He is calling from Los Angeles to talk about the film Beautiful Creatures, which stars both relative newcomers (Alice Englert and Alden Ehrenreich) and established names (Irons, Emma Thompson, and Viola Davis from The Help). On the phone, the Oscar winner sounds no different than he has in his numerous film roles, the documentaries he has narrated, and the audiobooks he has read out: you know, commanding. He takes his time to enunciate every word clearly, as if making sure we don't forget this Englishman's theatrical roots. Irons is also very polite, pleasant and quite easy to talk to – not at all like the larger-than-life characters we associate him with (among them, Simon Gruber of Die Hard: With A Vengeance and Scar of The Lion King). Although one would never have imagined him participating in a film based in the young adult genre, he says simply that he was attracted to the character's wit, style and elegance. Also, a different genre is, to Irons, just a different format of storytelling. He shares: "Macon Ravenwood is an enigmatic character, and I thought it would be a good option to reintroduce myself to a different audience, a younger audience who are not aware of me." It also happens that Beautiful Creatures authors Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia envisioned Irons when they were writing the character of Macon. In the book, he is described as someone with dark and gleaming eyes, and who dresses up like he is from the 1940s. Macon is the uncle of the new girl in town, whose arrival stirs all kinds of changes in the small southern town, which has plenty of history and mysticism attached to it. Macon Ravenwood makes it his job to take care of his niece, while she counts down to her impending 16th birthday – the moment when she discovers whether the power she has inherited from her family is meant for dark purposes or for light. Macon has powers of his own, starting out on the dark side but soon put to use on the side of good. "I think we're all good guys who could easily be bad guys," he says. "This grey area is something I have always been interested in." In a career that has spanned more than 40 years, the 64-year-old has accumulated a rich variety of characters. When he started out as an actor, he gave himself 12 years to make it in the industry. There were many smaller roles at first before his "international boost into the arena" came with the TV series Brideshead Revisited in 1981. That very same year, which was quite close to his self-appointed deadline, he nabbed a leading role alongside Meryl Streep in the 1981 film The French Lieutenant's Woman. Irons followed that with other noteworthy films including Moonlighting, The Mission and Dead Ringers. In 1990, he won the Oscar for his role as Claus von Bulow in the film Reversal Of Fortune. Over the years, he has had both hits and misses critically and financially: among them are M Butterfly, The Lion King, Die Hard: With A Vengeance, Stealing Beauty, Chinese Box, Dungeons & Dragons, The Man In The Iron Mask, The Time Machine, Being Julia, Kingdom Of Heaven, Eragon, Appaloosa and Margin Call. Films aren't his only domain – he starred in the 2005 miniseries Elizabeth I, guest-starred on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and The Simpsons, and headlined The Borgias for two seasons. After Beautiful Creatures, he has one more film waiting to be released, and another one he is attached to. Does he ever take a break? "I am about to," he says. "I hope to do just that at the end of February. I will have some free time to relax and build my appetite. I have been working continuously for two years – doing films, The Borgias and documentaries – so I have been very busy." Then there is theatre, which he goes back to quite regularly. "The last one I did was two years ago. Theatre is something that is always there and something that I always look forward to doing. It's something I would never turn my back on." What does he plan to do on this well-deserved break? "I have horses I like to ride, boats I'd like to sail, dogs and my motorcycles. I have a lot of things that I like to do. I have no difficulty finding things to do ... gardening, being with my family, travelling." Irons is married to actress Sinead Cusack, with whom he has two sons. His younger son, 25-year-old son Max Irons, is also an actor who is appearing in another young adult film this year, The Host. According to Irons, his son has it very different: "He has to do a lot more blogging and other things (on the Internet), and I don't do any of that. But as the world becomes more global, I suppose it is inevitable that their lives be on the screen and not in the open air." Irons reveals that his younger son does come to him sometimes for advice. At the same time, however, Irons says: "But because business is very different now than when I was his age, he's probably right not to come to me too often. He has to forge his own way. It's a different business now." One thing that hasn't changed is Irons finds every new role challenging, every time he steps into a new character. This, he explains, is because he wants to portray the character as well as he can. "Never gets any easier." Has there been a dream role that has eluded him so far? "No," he answers. "I'd like to think if there was, I would be doing something about it. I always say, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans', so I just sort of gently move from one thing to another. I don't know what the future holds and one of the nice things about this is you are always surprised." Beautiful Creatures opens in cinemas nationwide on Feb 21. |
| Actor Steve Martin is first-time dad at age 67 Posted: 13 Feb 2013 06:43 PM PST LOS ANGELES: Actor, writer and comedian Steve Martin has become a dad for the first time at age 67 - and managed to keep it secret from the media for more than a month. Martin and his second wife, Anne Stringfield, 41, "are new parents and recently welcomed a child," a spokeswoman for the actor said on Wednesday. The spokeswoman gave no details, including the sex of the child or the date of birth. But the New York Post cited unidentified sources as saying the baby arrived in December. The multi-talented Martin, whose career as a writer and performer dates back more than 45 years, has played a father in movies such as "Parenthood," Cheaper by the Dozen," and "Father of the Bride." Martin, who has hosted the Oscars ceremony three times, married Stringfield, a former writer at the New Yorker magazine, in 2007. His eight-year marriage to British actress Victoria Tennant ended in divorce in 1994.-Reuters |
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