An interview with actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers from 2000, unpublished until nowBy bill dawers On December 31, 2012 · in Arts & Culture
This lengthy interview with Jonathan Rhys Meyers in 2000 was intended for a now-defunct magazine. It's being published here for the first time.
In the late 1990s, I was doing a fair bit of work – mostly unpaid – for now-defunct Savannah-based Contents Magazine. It was an extraordinary publication in many respects, with an edgy mix of articles, interviews, fashion, and photos. Tapping into the skills of a variety of artists, writers and talented SCAD student designers, publisher Joseph Alfieris managed to produce a magazine that, at its best, was both slick and substantive in its quest for the new and the beautiful.
Given the magazine’s mission, it seemed a no-brainer to me to run an interview and photo spread with actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers. He wasn’t yet on the radar screen of most American media consumers in 2000, but he seemed destined to be.
When I reached Rhys Meyers’ publicist, she told me that the young Irish actor was in the U.S. at the time, so a phone interview would be easy to set up. But he never called me back, and the publicist – I have long forgotten her name – was obviously irritated when she found out that he had returned to the U.K. without contacting me. At some point, the actor’s friend Christopher Croft joined the conversation, and it became clear that Rhys Meyers just really didn’t want to do a phone interview – but would be willing to talk to me in person.
So I got an early sense of a certain guardedness and fragility – traits that seemed wildly different from JRM’s vigorous, breathtaking on-screen turns. So I proposed to Joseph that I would do the interview in London if I could simply get reimbursed for the flight there and back. Amazingly, the trip worked out, and about a week later – in early December of 2000 – I took an overnight flight to Heathrow and met up with Rhys Meyers late the next morning at The Groucho Club.
But things were a little unpredictable in the Contents office and the magazine was never published on a strict schedule; my interview never ran. We had even had some gorgeous photos taken in London.
Recently, that unpublished interview with Jonathan Rhys Meyers has come up, so I decided to locate the handwritten transcript of our long conversation on that chilly day in London.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers was just 23 when this interview was conducted, but he had already led a remarkable life. After a tough childhood that included a fractured family and permanent expulsion from school, Rhys Meyers had improbably ended up in the movies after being spotted at a pool hall by a casting agent. (There’s more background on his IMDB page.)
At the time of this interview, Rhys Meyers had landed some notable roles, including a small part in A Man of No Importance with Albert Finney, the assassin in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins starring Liam Neeson, an American high school student in Tim Hunter’s The Maker, a passionate and desperate young man in the underrated The Governess with Minnie Driver and Tom Wilkinson, glam rocker Brian Slade alongside Ewan McGregor in Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine, a fairly small role as a psychopathic guerilla in Ang Lee’s Ride with the Devil, and as Chiron in Julie Taymor’s Titus, starring Anthony Hopkins.
That’s obviously an amazing list of directors and projects for such a young actor, especially one without any formal training.
At the time of this interview, Rhys Meyers had just finished playing Steerpike in the mini-series Gormenghast, but it had not aired in the States yet.
So this interview is long before Bend It Like Beckham, Match Point, and The Tudors. JRM’s full filmography is obviously on IMDB.
I remember the two folks at reception at The Groucho Club being a little taken aback when I told them why I was there. Maybe it was the fact that I wore casual clothes and carried a stuffed over-the-shoulder bag — or maybe that I just looked sketchier than usual after my overnight flight.
As I waited, I figured there was at best half a chance that Rhys Meyers would show, but he breezed in a few minutes later, looking pleasantly disheveled and a little wary, wearing a black jacket over a sleeveless t-shirt. Carrying a bag of his own, he likely looked at least as itinerant as I did.
In my notes, I later wrote: “Totally genuine. Easy to engage, hard to interview.”
I’ve edited this to a degree, but far less than I did back in 2000. It’s a blog post now, after all, not a magazine piece. And it’s long — no reason to edit for space — so I’m breaking it into three pages. As a result, it doesn’t have the same flow that a magazine edit would have.
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BD: The first movie I saw you in was The Maker.
JRM: Tim Hunter’s movie. I thought it was a really good script and was going to be a really good movie. I was really glad I did it because I was playing an American kid, and I was given maybe a week to learn an American accent. But it didn’t work unfortunately.
What’s difficult is not doing the American accent but doing the physicality that Americans have – a physicality with the way that they speak, an easiness with their bodies and their lips when they’re speaking that’s not the same with Europeans. Americans are comfortable when they do something.
Actors in the United States have this brilliant talent I can’t quite get my hands on – and not many Europeans can. Like [switching to an American accent] “get me a cup of coffee”. We find this very hard in Europe.
BD: Why do you think that is?
JRM: I don’t know. Americans can find it very difficult to come here and do intense Shakespeare.
BD: I know you’ve been interviewed a lot about your youthful truancy –
JRM: Yes –
BD: Was it simply truancy that got you expelled?
JRM: No. What’s very difficult to understand as a child is sharing and not having. Not having a lot of things, I couldn’t learn, I couldn’t listen. I was so smothered by poverty and at that point there was no hope of being any other way either. I thought that this was what I would do for the rest of my life, so my truancy was fear more than anything else, fear of the future, fear of living. I know people that are given life, but they’re given life with special circumstances.
As a kid, material things make you feel very safe. If you don’t just have these shoes or this toy or that jacket, you feel very deprived – and I think material things have a huge emotional importance at a certain age. For me that emotional importances was seen as truancy.
Listen, if I’d been a rich kid and I was just fucking around, well that’s pure truancy. But truancy when it’s sparked by an emotion – there must be another word for it. I’m not sure what it is. People would like to call it tuancy – it looks cool: “He wasn’t in school, he must have been fucking. He was kicked out of school, isn’t he hot?”
BD: What about your peers, your friends?
JRM: I was a loner as a child and I was a particularly ugly child.
BD: I find that hard to believe.
JRM: No, I was a particularly ugly child. I was sort of the ugly duckling. There was something about the way that I looked that was slightly off. It made people not like me as much.
BD: When did that image of yourself begin to change?
JRM: It never has really. Other people can tell you what you look like, but no, I always think I look ugly, but there are other people who see differently and that’s very well and good.
BD: When you look in the mirror, you don’t see someone who’s even moderately attractive?
JRM: Not really. When I was in Velvet Goldmine and everyone was like “wow, such a beautiful boy”, I became self-conscious about it. Now I try to take advantage of it as little as possible. The whole thing about acting is keeping your interest all the time. I find it very difficult. You know, when you’re doing a film for 11 weeks, you’re just waiting, you’re sitting around all the time, and I think that’s the most difficult thing.
I’d like acting to completely cover me so that it’s the only thing that I need. But because of living, because of things that I need in my life as well — I ‘d love to eliminate every other want and desire. It would be very difficult to achieve.
BD: It sounds more like a spiritual quest than a professional one.
JRM: Yeah, well, I suppose it is. I’m trying to live a life that’s extraordinary, that’s unique in a way that no other life has been and to retain the intelligence of it, and the understanding of living, the understanding of humanity. Plus it’s an emotional job. I’m using my emotion most of the time in conjunction with my physicality. It’s coming from in here [touching his chest], so it must be spiritual in some way or another. For some section of actors, it’s a professional job. I’d love be able to think of it as a professional job, I’d love to be able to go into the set and come home in the evening and forget I was ever there. I’d quite like that, I just can’t.
BD: When I was preparing for this and looking at things on the internet, I found something you said about acting in a piece about playing Steerpike in Gormenghast:
“There is a space that you can get into sometimes – and you get one or two moments during a job that you do or a script that you do, where the world just disappears and it is nothingness and it is emptiness and it is fantastic. And it is almost like you are elevated off the ground a couple of inches, and you can’t feel the clothes you are wearing, you can’t even feel yourself.” Can you relate any specific moments like that?
JRM: No I can’t. What it basically is is you’re doing something so much at the point in the day it becomes natural. Say you’re a 20 year old boy and it’s your new job right and you’re punching this code into the computer and you do it 20 times and you’re constantly thinking about it and always making one or two mistakes. And then somebody asks you something or you’re having a cup of coffee, and then o yeah, — click, click, click, click, click – that’s it. That’s done. That’s a natural moment. Usually acting is a technical thing, you’ve got to walk here, do this, do that.
Those natural moments are very few and far between.
You have to be able to be strong like water and be able to be weak like water. You’ve got to be able to flow, rush, you’ve got to have rapids, but you also have to have the calm and cool.
BD: What is it about your acting that has drawn so many top directors?
JRM: I suppose physicality has a lot to do with it. When I met Ang Lee [for 1999's Ride with the Devil], I met him for the part that Toby Maguire played – I didn’t have what he was after. You to be an Everyman and he says there’s something “quite poetic” about the way I look. Todd Haynes was definitely interested in that for the Velvet Goldmine. I look the way I look, but nobody looks the way I look, and that’s good and bad. It would probably be a hell of a lot more fun and easier, and get more girls I suppose, if I looked more like a generic mutation of something that’s already there. When you look like nothing else, they have to really get to love you.
BD: I was impressed with your broad American accent in Ride with the Devil.
JRM: I find acting incredibly difficult and I’m sure most of the directors I work with find directing a difficult process, and to have to do the auditioning process between roles can be very damaging and you have so much time taken up with that.
If entertainment doesn’t happen, who cares? If bread doesn’t happen, everybody cares.
BD: What new projects do you have going?
JRM: The Magnificent Ambersons. It’s going to be very vibrant and very beautiful.
BD: Tell me a little about dealing with the press?
JRM: You have to. You have to make the press your friends. Sometimes I wasn’t in the proper vein to do interviews. I remember I did one interview in England, and because I was so sad at the time, the interview came out incredibly sad. I know that press determines what people think of you because this what they read – to always keep it fresh, always keep it interesting. I remember I did an interview once and I read almost exactly the same interview a few months later, and I thought, “Wow I must have given the same answers.” I’d like to make it really new and vibrant.
BD: So what would you like to talk about? What’s on your mind that you’re never asked about?
JRM: There are always thousands of things on my mind.
BD: I can tell.
JRM: But whether they’re things that will interest people from the point of view of a magazine is different. I like to write, I like to play music. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to do them because what’s really in my life is work, all the time, traveling from one place to another. I was in North Wales two days ago and it’s an incredibly beautiful and inspirational place because the people are so quiet. This town is like a ghost town, and it was a great comfort to hang around the amusement park on the beach when there’s nobody there. They look like the ugliest things in the world, but in the summer they look so bright and romantic and fabulous. Fairgrounds in the winter with all the rain coming in from the sea – to see the amusement park which is usually alive now all dull and gray. It looked awful, but I found a certain peace in it because there was no one there.
BD: Why North Wales?
JRM: I was shooting there. I had a very small part in a very small low budget film. It’s very difficult to get lead roles.
BD: Like which ones?
JRM: There were a couple of films that I really wanted to do. I’d love to make films in America, because they’re very clever in America. They have a lot of money to make films, so I have to overcome not being an American first of all. Matt, Leo . . .
BD: You also said you like to write -
JRM: I’m writing a short story 1904-05 Russo Japanese War.I want to articulate it in a way that keeps people interested – because there’s a way, there’s a method. In the time I did The Maker, Velvet Goldmine, and The Governess, I’ve become a better actor because I’ve learned tricks and there are tricks with writing. I don’t want the characters to see each other as prey. It’s not about animal instinct. They shatter the illusion of what they’ve been brought up with.
BD: You’ve talked about admiring Daniel Day Lewis and Toshiro Mifune — other actors you admire?
JRM: The one I admire more than anyone else in the world – and who has inspired mas as actor more than any other — is Peter O’Toole. From watching him I’ve learned a lot about my own performance. He was incredibly cinematic.
BD: Do you aspire to do things they way he does them?
JRM: No, I do things the way that I do them, and he’s very inspiring. But I get inspired by Dostoevsky too, or Nijinsky. I can read about Nijinsky dancing, or look at photographs of Nijinsky, and be inspired to act.
BD: Any particularly early moviegoing experiences that stand out?
JRM: No. I remember when I was 9 years old I thought that Johnny Depp was incredibly cool and that was when I was watching 21 Jumpstreet. At 9 years old, I thought that he was the coolest guy in the world.
BD: What was it like being asked to audition the first time? [An agent convinced JRM to audition for the 1994 film War of the Buttons, but he was not cast.]
JRM: “Oh wow somebody wants me to do something.” I thought it was for a play that was going on in Galway, and then I found out that it was a film with Warner Brothers, and I’m like, “No, things like this never happen to kids like me.”
BD: Do you want fame?
JRM: I want to do a performance that’s extraordinary as a route to fame. Maybe that’s the wrong way to go about it. I need a media war on anonymity. I need a general.
I wouldn’t like to get into it too much anyway.
BD: You have a remarkable vulnerability on screen – how do you make those tough characters vulnerable? [Note that in his response JRM refers to a role he didn't get.]
JRM: For one role, what they wanted was a plain bad guy, not a bad guy who is at heart emotional. I would have played a bad guy who would have had all these emtions behind him. That’s not always what Hollywood wants. They don’t always want the vulnerability to come from the character – sometimes I have to understand that. [He lights a cigarette.]
BD: I’m thinking about those vulnerable sex scenes in The Governess.
JRM: I hate people who go “I won’t go naked.” You think there’s something so special abut your body that we can’t see it? What is so fantastic that you’re hiding? I hate that shite. If a character needs to naked, I’ll insist that he be naked.
BD: What kind of roles do you hope to get from here?
JRM: I’d rather be a small part in a good film than a big part in a bad one. All the films I’ve looked at they want older boys. I wanted to do Ridley Scott’s Blackhawk Down. Holden Caulfield.
But I’m shit in the movies I make. Maybe I’d think different if I made a film that was a huge hit, a performance where everyone goes wow.
BD: Is there ever a performance where everyone goes wow?
JRM: Haley Joel Osment did it, and he’s only 11.
BD: Are you interested in stage work?
JRM: I prefer movies. I like making films. Maybe it’s an ego thing.
The further I’ve gone making films the more competitive it gets – money is the status symbol within the industry.
BD: Were you religious growing up?
JRM: I was Catholic for a really long time, and I really loved God and then I stopped when other things started to become more important, like girls. When I was 10 and 11 years old, I used to sit there praying, praying for change. And now I don’t pray as much. Do I have a religion? I wouldn’t say I have a particular religion. That’s a really easy way of getting out of the question. I mean, no, I don’t have a religion but I think about religion a lot. Religion is about belief. I want that kind of belief you have in yourself. I find it very hard to believe in myself, so how can I have a belief in a fundamental way of thinking? I find it hard to believe in myself because I’m constantly in a fight. If I were truly religious I’d be like, “No, you take the part if it makes you feel better.”
I’d really like to play Jesus [he laughs] – “Come on Roman boy, nail me.”
BD: I could see you playing Jesus.
JRM: In my mind, he was this beautiful suffering man with this long beautiful drooping hair falling down over his shoulders – there was just something so giving about him that made me think that this person has done this for me – and that’s the power of the crucifix and Christianity I suppose. The idea that he died for me and no one else, not even your neighbor, not even your sister, not even that guy that got the job ahead of you. That’s what I thought as a kid anyway.
I’d love to be impregnable. I’d love to have no temptation. I’d love to desire nothing, but I do desire everything.
I want to be there for the right reasons, but the right reasons aren’t necessarily the ones that make money.
BD: You travel a lot, film in a lot of different locations. You like it?
JRM: The adventure. Sure, pure adventure. I’m far away from home and anything can happen to me at any time. I’d love be stolen and kidnapped and held hostage somewhere. I’d love to have been an explorere, but in some sense that’s what filmmakers are, this is what actors and directors are — the world’s explorers, exploring the internal thing, the internal universe.
BD: Are you making friends in these travels in the film world?
JRM: I don’t have any friends. I have a girlfriend. I’ve never had friends in the film industry because I’ve never been part of those celebrity circles. The funniest thing is that when people become famous they only hang out with famous people. I’ve wanted to hang out with famous people, but it’s never been my trip – I’d like for my trip to be wow and huge parties and I’d be dressed by some designers. That would be fabulous. I’d like that, but it’s just never been my trip.
BD: What do you do to relax?
JRM: This is as relaxed as I get. It gets boring sitting around boozing, and I’ve never been into that sort of gratification. It’s sort of like stealing divinity, don’t you think? Any sort of drinking or taking drugs is stealing divinty because it’s reaching enlightenment. But they don’t nourish you, they don’t feed you, they don’t quench your thirst. That’s what I like about acting. Acting is as close as you can get to divinity.
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Reading back over this now, I’m struck by how often Rhys Meyers disagreed with my questions – “no”, “not really”, and so forth. And I’m struck by his pervasive ambivalence – about his looks, about the prospect of fame, about God, even about intoxication.
After the interview, we briefly wandered around the corner onto Old Compton Street, in the heart of gay London. As nervous and rushed as Jonathan seemed when he arrived at The Groucho Club, he now seemed happy just to hang out for a few minutes. As we walked by the window of a fairly busy café, I noted a handful of stares – was it the actor’s nascent fame, or just his arresting look?
If he noticed the stares, he didn’t let on.
“How tall are you?” he asked me. “I wish I were a tall boy.”
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, London, December 2000
When we stopped to admire some Elvis clothes in a storefront – t-shirts, underwear – I asked him if I could take a quick photo. He was happy to do so, but first wanted to make sure that I didn’t plan to publish it (a promise I am now breaking 12 years later). Of course, in 2005 he starred in the made-for-TV Elvis, for which he won a Golden Globe.
A couple of moments after this photo, he gave me a kiss on the cheek in the middle of the street and we went our separate ways.
I ended up having a remarkable weekend in London from there. I stayed at a hostel on Montague Street, attended an avant garde performance that night in a warehouse space on the other side of the Thames after a visit to the Tate Modern, met up with a local politician, attended Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man the next night at The Old Vic and used my Bobby Zarem connection to meet up with lead dancer Will Kemp and much of the rest of the cast for a few pints at a nearby pub afterward, and even attended a lovely service of carols at Westminster Abbey. But the highlight was the interview, of course.
My best to Jonathan Rhys Meyers as he continues to craft his extraordinary career.
Savannah Unplugged
grazie per averla condivisa!la voglia di incontrarlo cresce sempre più 