Jeremy Irons

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is an actor. He epitomises Englishness, refined elegance with a touch of coldness. Curiously enough, the qualities that have made him a success were once identified as disadvantages. When he left theatre school he was told that his demeanour was all wrong for modern acting.

Presenter0:47

The gloomy prediction seemed to be coming true during the first long, difficult years of his career, but then a part appeared which was made for all the qualities he possesses Charles Ryder in the television series Brideshead Revisited. Suddenly, refined Englishmen and the actor who could play them were all the rage. He followed up his success in Brideshead playing opposite Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant's Woman. 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 Bulo in Reversal of Fortune.

Presenter1:21

He's an actor in constant demand, his effortless style an adornment to a whole string of films and television dramas, and he's just started rehearsals for his return to West End Theatre after an absence of seventeen years. What I like, he says, are characters with secrets, characters who don't give away who they are. He is Jeremy Irons. It was a director at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, I think, Jeremy, who predicted your lack of success. Presumably he thought you were going to end up doing endless Noel Coward roles, did he?

Jeremy Irons1:52

Yes, he said, you know, if only you'd been born in the thirties you would have had a fantastic career, but you've got your sha face is the wrong shape.

Presenter1:58

And your diction was too good.

Jeremy Irons1:59

But yeah.

Presenter2:00

And then along came Bride's Head. Did you actually tout for the job? You discovered, didn't you, that Granada were going to dramatize it for Devon? George Howard.

Jeremy Irons2:06

George Howard, who who who owned Castle Howard, was a friend of Sinaire and mine. And he came to see a play I was doing in Greenwich, and he said to me before the show, when we were talking, Have you read Bright's Head? and I said, I haven't. He said, Well, read it'cause Granada are going to do it. They're using my house.

Jeremy Irons2:22

And I read it.

Jeremy Irons2:25

and fell in love with Charles, I thought fantastic role, and then I wrote to them and said.

Jeremy Irons2:29

Would you consider me?

Presenter2:30

But he's

Presenter2:31

Cold, and he's quite closed. He's

Jeremy Irons2:34

He asked.

Presenter2:35

You know you've said, haven't you, that that's why you felt you could play him.

Jeremy Irons2:38

Yeah, he was the he was the Englishman I think I was educated to be.

Jeremy Irons2:42

which hopefully I'd been slowly sort of sloughing that skin.

Presenter2:46

But what do you mean when you say that?

Jeremy Irons2:48

Well, I I I went to private school, well public schools we call it. I've always believed that public school w at the time I went was designed to create people who would cope in the colonies, keeping their emotions to themselves, hanging on to their wives, behaving well and keeping everything buttoned down. Of course nothing in that is useful as far as being an actor's concern.

Presenter3:08

And this is the sort of person you've been trying to escape from being ever since, is it?

Jeremy Irons3:11

That's right, and as soon as I got to drama school, I started getting rid of all of that, and I remember.

Jeremy Irons3:16

Coming back when I was at drama school to have a weekend with my father and stepmother, and I remember embracing my father.

Jeremy Irons3:24

and I remember that a slight look of surprise from

Jeremy Irons3:28

And ever since then I did it always did it and we used to lump but it was the first time I ever had.

Presenter3:32

'Cause you'd been away at school since you were seven, yes. So you haven't sent your own boys away?

Jeremy Irons3:33

So you have

Jeremy Irons3:37

No, they they asked to leave, actually, when they were eleven.

Jeremy Irons3:41

They said, can we get out of this household and go and have a fairly civilized existence at school?

Presenter3:45

Well, obviously this is all part of why you like secrets and why you like characters who are kind of enigmatic. It's all in there. So I want to explore it some more, but let's pause and have your first record. Tell me about that.

Jeremy Irons3:56

Well, when I made Lolita, we we shot in New Orleans, and I remember being introduced to Cajun music.

Jeremy Irons4:02

And I remember having a tea dance one day when I wasn't working in this big hall and there was a Cajun band and we danced and we drank. Now one of the great Cajun players is Clifton Shanier.

Jeremy Irons4:13

And one of the things I think I'm going to have to do on my island

Jeremy Irons4:16

Because it's something I love doing, is dancing. But because I'm known and because I

Jeremy Irons4:22

I'm sort of older than

Jeremy Irons4:25

Than you should be when you dance. I I rarely dance in public, but on my island I will be on my own, and listening to Clifton Chenier I will dance.

Speaker 34:34

Was done at the time.

Speaker 34:38

That's all I want from you.

Speaker 34:44

One step at a time That's all I want from you

Speaker 34:53

I want your love, baby.

Speaker 34:57

Oh, that's okay.

Presenter5:02

Lift and Chenier and One Step at a Time. Music you came across when you were filming Lolita, you say, Now there's an enigma, Humbert Humbert. But we'll we'll come back to him. Let's let's go to um the Isle of Wight and Cowes, where you were born, late forties. What sort of family, what did your father do?

Speaker 15:09

Yeah.

Jeremy Irons5:16

My father was a chartered accountant. He worked for Saunders Rowe, who developed the hovercraft, but at that point they were making motor torpedo boats to attack German submarines. And so he never actually fought in the war, but he was in cows making the equipment. My mum

Jeremy Irons5:33

During the war driven an ambulance around there and by the time I was born in'forty eight, the war was over. I remember we had those tins in the in the larder with brown paper round them, the rationing tin.

Presenter5:44

And you were called Smiler and Parch. So you were fat.

Jeremy Irons5:48

I was, apparently. I was a podgy little baby.

Presenter5:50

And you smiled a lot.

Jeremy Irons5:52

Apparently I did.

Presenter5:53

Which you went on not you've said you stopped smiling aged eight.

Presenter5:56

Is this when you were sent away?

Jeremy Irons5:56

Was this when you were sent away? Probably. Um I certainly stopped getting podgy then. I I started worrying and of course kept thin and and it was only a few years later that I started smoking which helped me keep thin.

Presenter6:07

Have you been smoking ever since? Have you ever tried to stop?

Jeremy Irons6:08

I was

Jeremy Irons6:09

Oh, I stopped once and once or twice, yeah, for a couple of years, missed it hugely.

Presenter6:13

Tell me about school, because as I read about it there's a kind of contradiction there, because there's a suggestion that you were unhappy and you turned into this rather repressed, buttoned up person that you you mentioned just now. But at the same time you seem to have been achieving all of the things you're supposed to achieve. So you've got a prefect and you've got the silk lining and the blazer and you've got a rugger blue or whatever.

Jeremy Irons6:34

Yeah, um I I was very happy at school.

Jeremy Irons6:37

I mean, I think it oh

Jeremy Irons6:39

What it taught me was how to play the system.

Jeremy Irons6:43

Because it gives you a very specific system.

Jeremy Irons6:46

And you look at that and you think, Can I deal with this or can I not?

Jeremy Irons6:49

And it's a bit like life.

Jeremy Irons6:51

And you think, that is what is. How am I going to make the way of life I want around that?

Jeremy Irons6:57

And uh and that's what I did.

Presenter6:59

You rose to the top in the Cadet Forces EC.

Jeremy Irons7:01

Yeah, because this is the only place to be. It's a it's a terrible place to be if you have these idiots telling you what to do. Place to be is to be the idiot who's telling the others what to do.

Presenter7:09

So it's a sort of cynical ambition, you're completely cynical. But you must have been in the school plays, you must have shone in the.

Jeremy Irons7:15

Only in the last year. I never knew how to get in them. I always thought this is the English gentleman. I always thought somebody came up to you and asked you, because they saw an innate talent. And finally somebody did say, would you

Presenter7:25

Did you know you had an innate talent?

Jeremy Irons7:27

No, of course I don't.

Jeremy Irons7:29

My last year when I was taking my A-levels, this they came along and they said, Would you play Mr. Puffin, the critic?

Jeremy Irons7:34

And that's it, by the way.

Jeremy Irons7:36

You know, no one's asked me before to do this. They said, what do you mean no one's asked you? I said, they said, well, you don't, no one does ask. You put your name on a list at the beginning of the year. I said, where's the list?

Jeremy Irons7:45

It's it's in the cloisters, it's round that corner on the wall there. So anyway, I did I did the play and I enjoyed it. I played it not on no talent but just personality.

Jeremy Irons7:53

I didn't know what I was doing.

Presenter7:55

And it felt right.

Jeremy Irons7:55

It felt fine, felt fine, and I failed my A levels as a result because I didn't do any work, I was rehearsing all the time.

Jeremy Irons8:02

Um

Jeremy Irons8:04

And I loved it.

Jeremy Irons8:05

But I didn't then leave wanting to be an actor.

Jeremy Irons8:08

'Cause that sea is too far away from my sort of consciousness about what one did with one's life. My dad was an accountant, a trusted accountant. So I left and I did some uh social work in South London, in Peckham.

Jeremy Irons8:21

And I had some of the bullshit kicked out of me. I used to run a youth club on a Sunday night where we'd have a bit of dancing. And I remember I'd been keeping a rival gang out because they were going to come in to make trouble. And as I was lying outside under these kicking boots, I thought, now I have to find another way to deal with people. This is not working.

Presenter8:42

Ha ha ha ha.

Presenter8:43

Record number two.

Jeremy Irons8:45

Now I live in Ireland and I have an Irish wife and one of the great things is that I've been introduced to Irish music and one of the great voices in Ireland is Dolores Keene and this is a song, the Beatles song she's singing which I think says an awful lot about how we deal with all the things that are wrong. We just.

Jeremy Irons9:05

Let what comes come, let it be.

Speaker 39:09

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me.

Speaker 39:17

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Speaker 39:25

And in my outer darkness She is standing right in front of me, Speaking words of wisdom

Presenter9:38

Deloy is keen and let it be. So it was a very conventional background, Jeremy. Your parents, though, divorced when you were at school. That must have been quite a shock, therefore. It was.

Jeremy Irons9:48

Oz

Presenter9:49

So

Jeremy Irons9:49

I suppose, although they did it very well, and strangely enough,

Jeremy Irons9:55

I think the week or the two weeks before they did.

Jeremy Irons9:59

My dog was run over and I remember

Jeremy Irons10:03

Huge emotional crisis about that, and very little when my parents.

Jeremy Irons10:08

So it's very interesting how um different things get you in different ways.

Presenter10:13

Yes. Perhaps the one prepared you for the other. Maybe. So your father then did he react uh as the stereotype might when you said you wanted to be an actor? Did he say, Look, I've, you know, paid good money for this education?

Jeremy Irons10:15

Or maybe

Jeremy Irons10:24

He was wonderful. I'm the second son, and so by the time I went to him on a walk on Hampstead Heath, I remember, and I said, I think I want to.

Jeremy Irons10:35

Try working in the theatre and he said, Well, he said, I wouldn't recommend it, it doesn't look a very secure profession.

Jeremy Irons10:43

He said, but look, if you don't try it.

Jeremy Irons10:45

And I don't support you.

Jeremy Irons10:47

You'll you'll never know, you'll always regret it, and you'll always resent me for not helping you.

Jeremy Irons10:53

So, see if you can get a job.

Jeremy Irons10:55

and I went out and got a job on off the back of the stage newspaper.

Jeremy Irons10:59

The Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.

Presenter11:01

Doing what?

Jeremy Irons11:01

As a as a uh a sort of walking ASM, they call it.

Presenter11:04

But you were busking as well, weren't you, round London theatre queues?

Jeremy Irons11:08

I'd been doing that when I was working doing social work in Peckham, where I was getting paid practically nothing. I get I got my bed and board and about two pounds a week.

Jeremy Irons11:17

And I'd cycle up to Leicester Square with my guitar strapped to the back of my bike and I could get five pounds on one cinema queue.

Jeremy Irons11:25

Um

Presenter11:26

Singing Mua Tun

Jeremy Irons11:27

Singing Bob Dylan, uh Peter Paul and Mary, um Donovan.

Presenter11:33

With a guitar.

Jeremy Irons11:33

Yeah.

Presenter11:35

Record number three.

Jeremy Irons11:36

I've always felt very close to Eric Clapton. We are a similar age.

Jeremy Irons11:40

Whenever we meet, we like each other. And he sings one particular song, which I think when I'm on my desert island will be very apt.

Jeremy Irons11:48

And it's something when you have success, you have to remember what comes to you through the success and how it will be different without that success. And this is what this song's about. It's Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out.

Speaker 312:03

That one's ready.

Speaker 312:06

And as for friends, you don't have any

Speaker 312:11

When you get back on your feet again

Speaker 312:16

Everybody wants to be your long best friend.

Speaker 312:22

I sit at street when I'm in your town.

Speaker 312:27

Nobody knows you

Presenter12:30

Eric Clapton, and nobody knows you when you're down and out. So Bride's Head was the big break, Jeremy Irons, but the French lieutenant's woman starring opposite Meryl Streep, you were, came hard on its heels. Was it as a result of it?

Jeremy Irons12:43

No, I'd been asked to do both at the same time, but Brideshead was supposed to be over by the time we made Friendship Dennis Woman.

Presenter12:50

But the difficulty for you, presumably, was not to get typecast into into being playing these very English people and really romantic lead Hollywood would immediately spot you as a good looking romantic lead. Did you think I'm going to avoid this at all?

Jeremy Irons13:06

I did. I saw it as a highway to nowhere. Um, as at that time I saw Noel Cowd and all those sort of very English dramatists, uh West End West End career as being a highway to nowhere for me.

Jeremy Irons13:18

I knew I was dirtier inside than that, I was messier, and I wanted to explore that area.

Presenter13:24

So after the French Lieutenant's Woman, you won the Tony on on Broadway in Stoppard's The Real Thing. So so your name then really meant something, didn't it?

Jeremy Irons13:32

It was a part that I felt had been written for me, the real thing. I I thought I didn't know Tom Stoppel that he's now a dear friend, but I thought he knows me. We're obviously very similar.

Presenter13:42

And then after that came The Mission, produced by David Putnam, we're in the mid eighties by now, directed by Roland Joffe.

Presenter13:50

Playing opposite Robert De Niro. I mean, this is big time now, really very big time. This is no cold repressed Englishman, this is a kind of eighteenth century Jesuit priest. How much research did you do to be able to play that part? It's a part full of passion.

Jeremy Irons14:03

I got to know a wonderful American Jesuit piece called Daniel Berrigan, one of the Berrigan brothers, and he came out with us and we went into retreat together. And he described me as a leaky balloon that he was trying to fill full of the air of faith. But I would sit and I remember one scene, it was a tough scene, and I remember I fasted the day before because it clears the mind wonderfully, and I remember praying before the scene.

Presenter14:26

There was another breathtaking scene as well, which you also did for real, which was the climbing of this sheer cliff alongside the waterfall to get up.

Jeremy Irons14:33

Falong side

Presenter14:35

Beyond the waterfall where the tribesmen were that this Jesuit priest was going to visit, You were your own stuntman. You did this yourself.

Jeremy Irons14:40

Maybe this

Jeremy Irons14:41

Yeah, they shot it on a sound

Presenter14:43

Foolhardy or what?

Jeremy Irons14:45

No, it was a Sunday and I said to Roland, What are you doing tomorrow? You've got a day off. He said, No, no, we've got to film the climb.

Jeremy Irons14:51

I said, well I'm not called. He said, no, no, we'll do it with stunts. I said, no, for goodness sake, use me. He said, we can't, insurance. I said, where is our producer?

Jeremy Irons14:59

He said, Well, he's in London. I said, Absolutely.

Presenter15:01

This is Mr. Putnam.

Jeremy Irons15:02

Mr. Putnam. So uh anyway I I did it. I had a lot of support. I had climbers hidden sort of round the bluff and I was roped on and

Jeremy Irons15:11

Um but it

Presenter15:12

Dangerous, then?

Jeremy Irons15:13

Exhilarating. Exhilarating. I remember at the end of the day being helicoptered back to the hotel.

Jeremy Irons15:19

I'm getting into a hot bath, eating a steak, and going to sleep for fourteen hours.

Presenter15:24

More music, number four.

Jeremy Irons15:25

I just think everybody should listen to Madeleine Peru. I think she's a fantastic singer and Careless Love is one of the songs I used to sing when I was a busker.

Jeremy Irons15:34

Um her version is

Jeremy Irons15:37

I think even better than mine.

Speaker 315:39

Oh, careless love

Speaker 315:46

All my happiness I've left.

Speaker 315:52

Because you fill my heart with them white old balloons And I'm walking and talking to myself

Presenter16:08

Madeleine Peru and Careless Love. You don't like acting that shows, you said, Jeremy. What does that mean?

Jeremy Irons16:15

English actors, I think, have probably the best technique as actors of any nationality.

Jeremy Irons16:22

And there is a danger always that one's str you rely on your strengths.

Jeremy Irons16:27

If you have strong technique, you tend to

Jeremy Irons16:31

Use that and and it shows.

Presenter16:33

You want it to look effortless, but having said that, it isn't effortless, is it? So much goes into it. And and as I understand reading about how you work, you like to be involved at every point as well. You're not just going to do the acting. You want to discuss the lighting. You want to discuss the camera.

Jeremy Irons16:38

No.

Jeremy Irons16:51

Well, it's all part of of how you do it.

Jeremy Irons16:54

You see, in in film as a collaboration, you are part of this vast patchwork of talent which finally

Jeremy Irons17:03

creates the story.

Presenter17:05

But I would imagine if if it's detail that concerns you, making Damage, the film Damage, which you did uh directed by Louis Mao with Juliette Binoche, I mean those incredibly electric sex scenes and there were it seemed to have been a dozen of them, or a lot of them seven, eight.

Jeremy Irons17:20

There's seven or is it eight?

Presenter17:23

But anyway, I mean it was pretty inventive stuff. It was

Presenter17:27

electric, as I say, was abandoned and it had to look abandoned. Nobody else could do that. I mean, could Mal direct you in that, or did you have to do it yourselves?

Jeremy Irons17:36

Well, it was very different. I had a great argument with David Hare because he wrote the adaptation and he wrote seven times during the script, they make love. And I said that's like Leonard Lowe saying they sing. You know, what do they sing? Their relationship happens when they make love. And that's the you know, they were lovers and they met only to make love and that was when their relationship grew and changed.

Jeremy Irons17:58

And he said, Oh, you can work that out with Louis and Juliet.

Presenter18:04

But it was down to you two as actors in the end. That's really my question. Isn't there a point when you have got to

Presenter18:10

enact something like that as

Presenter18:13

seemingly spontaneous as that, that it comes down to the two actors themselves. What are you going to do with each other as you roll across the floor or bang her head on the table or whatever it is?

Jeremy Irons18:19

Roll up

Jeremy Irons18:21

Mm.

Jeremy Irons18:23

You have to talk it through technically. I mean, it's interesting that everybody al always talks about the sex scenes as being the hardest, but in a way, what you're doing in those scenes is showing physically the nakedness which hopefully

Jeremy Irons18:38

In other stories you show emotional nakedness. You're trying to allow the audience in and say, That's right, I feel that and you felt that, haven't you? And it's a sort of sharing of humanity. I mean, that's when drama works at its best, I think. And I worry hugely.

Jeremy Irons18:56

That with the modern generation and modern youngsters, they're not getting that.

Jeremy Irons19:02

They're getting these awful violent computer games and easy movies of special effects and they're not sharing in that ritual of realizing that we're all the same, we're all frightened at the same things, we're all excited by the same things, we are a common humanity and we need to support each other and kids are not getting that, and I worry about that.

Presenter19:24

From number five.

Jeremy Irons19:26

Well, we've had American and Irishman, Englishman, Canadian, and now Barb Younger, who is is a fantastic English singer, and I was just amazed by her voice and and particularly by this song, a song called I Want You. And

Jeremy Irons19:42

Maybe on my desert island I can focus that towards an approaching ship.

Speaker 319:49

How are

Speaker 319:55

I want you so bad I want

Speaker 320:06

Now all my father's grave gone down True love they'd been without it But all their daughters put me down Cause I don't think

Presenter20:18

That was Barb Younger and I Want You. Let's um talk about your Oscar winning performance, Jeremy Irons, um, in Reversal of Fortune, the true story of Klaus von Bulo, who was accused of the attempted murder with insulin of his rich society wife. He was acquitted on appeal, of course. Not difficult to research that case to start with, I suppose, because the trial was broadcast, wasn't it, from coast to coast in America, and the lawyer Derschwitz had written a whole book about it. So you could get a hold of it pretty easily.

Jeremy Irons20:46

Yeah, and I watched all those recordings of him in court.

Jeremy Irons20:50

I had initially not wanted to do it because I felt there was something.

Jeremy Irons20:55

Something rather tasteless about

Jeremy Irons20:58

dragging all that up when he was alive and his children were alive.

Jeremy Irons21:02

For the kids, I just thought it was rather tasteless. But anyway, they asked Glenn Close to play Sonny Von Bulo. And.

Jeremy Irons21:10

She was a a great mate of mine and

Jeremy Irons21:13

And and, you know, she said, listen, Lab, if

Jeremy Irons21:15

If you don't play it, someone else is going to. And I said, But I can't get inside him somehow and then and then I I I found a way of getting in into him, which is I thought, Well, if my father had really messed up and had got into a difficult situation and was found himself in court, how would he have dealt with it? And I thought he would have dealt with it with

Jeremy Irons21:32

Charm and elegance and

Jeremy Irons21:35

Maybe a bit of enigma.

Presenter21:37

Well, enigma is the word, really, isn't it? Because of course, the piece of information that's missing in all of that research, and as you say, there was plenty of stuff you could look at and get into and read your way into.

Jeremy Irons21:38

Yeah.

Presenter21:47

whether he was guilty or not.

Presenter21:49

Now, what makes your performance notable in that film is that you manage in a way not to dispel.

Presenter21:56

That feeling of not quite knowing, but in order to do that you must have taken a view.

Jeremy Irons22:01

Yeah, I did. I took a view that

Jeremy Irons22:06

That this man was not a murderer, but that he he lived with a woman.

Jeremy Irons22:11

who wanted out. She'd already gone into overdose once and he'd brought her back and she was not grateful for that.

Jeremy Irons22:18

So, uh I thought, well

Jeremy Irons22:21

I think I know what happened. I think maybe

Jeremy Irons22:24

I will play it, certainly. I don't want to judge Klaus,'cause he may be listening.

Jeremy Irons22:28

But I will play.

Jeremy Irons22:30

that perhaps he left his wife on the floor for a little bit too long when she was unconscious.

Jeremy Irons22:35

in the hope that she would slip away as she clearly wanted to do. Now is that a murder or not? I dunno.

Presenter22:40

So you never talked to him about it, you never met him.

Jeremy Irons22:43

No, I didn't want to meet him, because I felt you know, he's not going to tell me, is he?

Jeremy Irons22:47

I met him afterwards.

Jeremy Irons22:49

Metamart was a poor guess.

Presenter22:51

Have you seen the film?

Jeremy Irons22:52

He said, of course he's seen the film. He used to write me postcards. He would read interviews. And it's very difficult because when you're playing a character, you feel you are that character. And you then give interviews to the press, and it comes out, you know, you find you're putting words into his mouth. And he would send me these postcards, which I still have closely written, saying, no, no, I didn't say that, and I'm not that sort of person, etc. But I met him at Getty's about two years after the movie, three years after the movie, and he, I had this voice behind me in the pavilion. I was looking out at the crickets, and he said, You see, I'm not fat. And I said, No, no, no. I turned, I said, I never said you were fat. I said, You were bigger than me, and you are. You're a bigger man than me.

Jeremy Irons23:26

No.

Jeremy Irons23:27

He said, um do you ever see Alan Dushowitz these days, who was the lawyer?

Jeremy Irons23:32

Class and Alam were very close.

Jeremy Irons23:35

I said no, I haven't seen him since the movie.

Jeremy Irons23:37

He said, oh. He said, I understand he's representing Leona Helmsley and Michael Tyson at the moment.

Jeremy Irons23:43

I said uh yes, I'd heard that.

Jeremy Irons23:46

He said, You haven't been asked to play either of them, have you?

Speaker 323:48

Ha ha

Jeremy Irons23:51

I said that I thought Mike Tyson was slightly beyond my range, but that I'd have a crack at Leona Helmsley.

Presenter23:56

Record number six.

Jeremy Irons23:58

Bob Dylan has always been a great part of my life and um

Jeremy Irons24:02

I came across a song about five years ago that I never knew he'd written, and I learned to play it on the piano. Strange enough, I've just recorded it in America and.

Jeremy Irons24:12

This is Bob singing.

Jeremy Irons24:14

Make you feel my love.

Speaker 324:18

The rain is blowing in your face

Speaker 324:24

And the whole world is on your case.

Speaker 324:31

I could offer you a warm embrace.

Speaker 324:38

To make you feel my love

Presenter24:44

Bob Dylan and Make You Feel My Love. We talked about you liking characters with secrets, liking a a a bit of danger. The role that that brought you

Presenter24:54

Most trouble, really, in the public arena was that of Humbert Humbert, the man who falls under the spell of his stepdaughter, the eponymous Lolita. The more you've i attempted to discuss the nature of relationships between the middle-aged and the young, the more you you've brought opprobrium down on your head. You must regret or do you regret ever making that film, or ever talking about the analysis of what went on in it.

Jeremy Irons25:18

No, I I don't regret making it because I think it's a wonderful film. I think it's a classic book.

Jeremy Irons25:23

And I had originally and I I said to the the the makers, I said, Listen, I'm not going to do any publicity on this movie because the film fit speaks for itself and I don't want to get myself into a corner.

Jeremy Irons25:34

And then there was such a sort of puritanical

Jeremy Irons25:38

outcry against it that I got cross and I thought I'm going to bat for that movie.

Presenter25:43

But what you always trying to say, it seemed to me,

Presenter25:46

Perhaps was was to try to make a a more subtle point about the nature of a middle-aged man falling in love w with an undergraduate.

Jeremy Irons25:52

Oh yes, but I don't want to get into it now.

Presenter25:54

No, I know you don't. No, no, I'm not trying to lure you into it. I'm I'm I'm trying to suggest that that you entered into a debate that that the debate could not allow of, that they won't that it's it really is a completely black and white debate. And you were trying to point out the grey areas. That was that was really

Presenter26:14

What you did wrong, wasn't it?

Jeremy Irons26:17

I suppose I think it's what I did right.

Jeremy Irons26:19

I think it's a subject I think every taboo we have to talk about.

Jeremy Irons26:23

You know, face of why Taboos are no use to us, we need to deal with problems and be adult about it.

Presenter26:30

I'm sure that's right. That the danger, as you know, in that particular area is that people feel that

Presenter26:35

A potential paedophile listening is going to feel he's been given licence by people even discussing the possibility that

Presenter26:43

The idea might just be have an explanation.

Jeremy Irons26:47

No,'cause I think what you say is it is not allowed, it is not on, it is wrong.

Jeremy Irons26:52

And it ruins people. It ruins children. I mean, absolutely ruins them.

Presenter26:58

And yet you say people are puritanical when they come out against it, you said just now.

Jeremy Irons27:02

They won't discuss around it. I don't think anger and Puritanism is the same. I think you can see why something happens, or understand why something happens, try and stop it, deal with it, deal with the victims of it, see why it happens. If you understand why something happens, then maybe you have a chance to stop it.

Presenter27:22

I couldn't know some

Jeremy Irons27:23

When I rebuilt the castle in Ireland, one of the things I would do when people came down,'cause I I was the main contractor, I mean I hired people and paid them and whatever and whatever.

Presenter27:28

Uh

Jeremy Irons27:32

Uh w one of the things I would do is to ask them what they could play.

Jeremy Irons27:36

Because I found that people who played instruments were better to have around.

Jeremy Irons27:41

And the man who made the windows in the castle, Chris, I remember him sitting in the bar one night and playing this song.

Jeremy Irons27:48

And I said, where's that song from? And he said, it's by a guy called John Martin.

Jeremy Irons27:53

I'd never heard of John Martin, and he introduced me to that, and so

Jeremy Irons27:56

I think it's Chris now.

Jeremy Irons27:58

When we hear Drum Martin play, May You Never

Speaker 328:02

Maya never lay a head down.

Speaker 328:07

Without a hand or hole

Speaker 328:10

Be a new I'll make your

Speaker 328:14

Out in the cold

Speaker 328:18

I you remain like a sleeping crazy brother to me You know I love you like I should never talk Dirty behind my m

Presenter28:30

Bye.

Presenter28:31

John Martin and May You Never A Peace Learned While Restoring Your Castle. Kilco Castle in West Cork, a property I read that only a fool with money would buy. Is that accurate or unfair?

Jeremy Irons28:43

Well, that's who did buy it.

Presenter28:45

But you project managed the whole thing yourself. Is this'cause you you mentioned earlier on you were bored with acting? Did you just stop acting and go and?

Jeremy Irons28:52

Yeah. I I found I was getting bored with it with the process of film acting and being boring as a result, giving not very good performances. And uh and I wanted something which terrified me and which really absorbed me, which is what filming used to do.

Jeremy Irons29:06

And so we went into it without a budget. We just thought we'll start and we'll keep going as long as we can.

Presenter29:11

You're you're now back or going back into the theater, you're going back to work.

Jeremy Irons29:15

Mm.

Presenter29:15

As it were. Um what what is it? It's embers.

Jeremy Irons29:18

It's embers about the friendship, betrayals, loyalty between two men at the end of their lives, and apart from the fact that, of course, I'm massively too young to play it.

Presenter29:28

Oh, that is the other part. I mean, I you played didn't you, the part of an elder statesman in to Orlando Bloom's hero in Kingdom of Heaven. Yeah.

Jeremy Irons29:29

Yeah.

Jeremy Irons29:35

Yeah.

Presenter29:36

I mean, do you have a sense of regret that you're no longer being cast as the sort of?

Presenter29:42

No. Your main man.

Jeremy Irons29:43

Your main man. No, it's one of those things that happens. I mean, it happens to women and it happens to men in movies. I think it's tough.

Presenter29:47

I think it's tough.

Jeremy Irons29:50

I sort of don't. The only thing I do mind is that what I really loved early on in my movie making was that I would play the central character who'd be there all the way through and one was totally focused and absorbed by it. Now, you know, I go in, I work maybe for two weeks, three weeks, and then I leave and I go back two weeks later.

Presenter30:08

Not so much satisfaction in that, I presume.

Jeremy Irons30:09

No, no.

Presenter30:11

Last choice of music was it to be?

Jeremy Irons30:14

Music's always been a huge part of my life and singers I get very close to emotionally. Leonard Cohen I think is one of the greatest

Jeremy Irons30:21

Poets. And this is a song, it's a poem really. It starts as a poem and then it goes into a song. And I think it's a very wonderfully rousing.

Jeremy Irons30:30

poem and it's it'd be great to have Leonard growling in my ear on the desert island.

Speaker 130:36

From bitter searching of the heart

Speaker 130:39

Quickened with passion and with pain we rise

Speaker 130:43

to play a greater part.

Speaker 130:46

This is the faith from which we start.

Speaker 130:50

Men shall know commonwealth the gain

Speaker 130:53

From bitter searching of the heart.

Speaker 130:57

We love the easy and the smart

Speaker 131:00

But now with keener hand and brain

Presenter31:04

Leonard Cohen and Villanelle for our time. Now, Jeremy, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you?

Presenter31:12

Hominon.

Jeremy Irons31:13

I think I do need to I do need to dance and I feel even sillier dancing without music, so I think it's probably got to be Clifton Chenier.

Presenter31:21

And one step at a time. That's the New Orleans.

Presenter31:24

piece of music, and your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

Jeremy Irons31:28

I'm quite good at

Jeremy Irons31:29

doing things, but one of the things I don't know enough about is rope work.

Jeremy Irons31:34

And if I can take a little bit of rope with me, or maybe some gets washed up, if I take the Ashley Book of Knots, then.

Jeremy Irons31:40

That will help me bind together whatever driftwood, branches, whatever, into something which will not fall apart while I'm a hundred yards from land.

Presenter31:48

The Ashley Book of Knots is yours and your luxury.

Jeremy Irons31:53

I think probably it has to be a large box of packets of Rizla licorice papers, because I shall be able to grow something on the island which I will be able to dry and smoke. But to wrap it and to give it that really smooth taste, I think my Rizla licorice papers would be necessary.

Presenter32:08

Jeremy Islands, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Jeremy Irons32:12

Pleasure, sir.

Speaker 332:20

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.