Ath mati cian
J e r e m y I r o n s ’ p l a y s C a m b r I d g e p r o f e s s o r g H H a r d y I n T h e M a n W h o K n e W I n f I n I T y , b u t t H e v e t e r a n a C t o r I s t H a n K f u l H e d I d n ’ t H a v e t o d o a n y m a t H b e C a u s e H e ’ s
“What attracts me is one word: fascination,” Jeremy Irons said. “I’ll read something and ask myself the question, ‘ Am I fascinated by it?’ If I’m fascinated, then I hope the audience will be too.”
That’s how the 67- year- old Oscar winner picks his roles and, after 45 years as an actor and 35 years on the big screen, he’s entitled to think that his formula is a winning one.
The British actor has rarely been busier than he is now. Already this year he’s been seen in supporting roles in the Jesse Owens biopic Race and the blockbuster Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which he plays Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler and Batman’s chief aide.
He’s also currently on multiplex screens in the new drama High- Rise. And, he steps up to a lead role in Matt Brown’s The Man Who Knew Infinity, opening this weekend.
The based- on- fact film recounts the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar ( Dev Patel), a mathematical prodigy who grew up poor in Madras, India, in the early 1900s. His brilliance caught the eye of mathematician GH Hardy ( Irons), a Cambridge University professor known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. He got Ramanujan admitted to Cambridge and became his mentor and friend.
Irons realises that not everybody will flock to a film about advanced mathematics. “It’s actually an extraordinary film about passion that uses math as a background,” the actor said. “Math is the oil to the story. It’s really a story about two men following a dream. I play a man who is faced with a passionate Indian man who dreamt a lot of his theories that are still being worked on today.
“It was such an interesting relationship, which is why I found it compelling,” Irons continued. “You have a man from India and another from Cambridge who is quite stubborn, but loyal. One is a math genius, and I play someone very good at math, but not as good as the other man. Somehow they have to form a very human friendship because they both have the same passion.”
Hardy’s teachings helped Ramanujan contribute
to the areas of number theory, continued fractions and different branches of mathematics, achieving far more than Hardy himself ever could.
“It’s fascinating that it began so simply,” Irons said. “Ramanujan wrote Hardy a letter and sent along one of his notebooks. Hardy recognised that this young man was absolutely brilliant. But, like most gifted people, Ramanujan paid a price. He had to part with his new bride and mother in India to travel to England, where he faced a new world and prejudice.”
In case you were wondering, no: actors don’t usually do their own stunts, and Irons didn’t do his own math. “My math skills are horrendous,” he said with a laugh, “and I know Dev will say the same thing about his own. Math always felt so dry to me.
“What helped me was that Hardy wrote a wonderful essay called A Mathematician’s Apology, which was quite informative,” the actor added. “He wrote that pure math is not logical all of the time. It’s really like an art. That’s what I grasped, because art is art.”
The rarified air of 1910 Cambridge is a world away from the crimeridden streets of Gotham City, where Irons plays Alfred to Ben Affleck’s Batman in Batman v. Superman.
“This is not your father’s Alfred,” he said, laughing. “We’re creating a new Alfred who is even a bit physical. I wanted to make him different and not rely on the earlier interpretations of the character.”
Irons grew up on the Isle of Wight, a small island off the southern coast of England, as the son of an accountant. After initially planning to become a veterinarian, hecaughttheacting bugandtrainedat the Bristol Oldvic School. Soon he joined the Bristol Old Vic repertory company, before getting his first big break when he was cast as John the Baptist in the London production of Godspell ( 1971).
A decade later, Irons attained stardom, first in England and then abroad, when he was cast as the dapper- but- troubled Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited ( 1981). The same year, he starred opposite Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman ( 1981).
I r ons quickly became one of Britain’s most respected actors and also a Hollywood favourite in both leadi ng and supporting roles. He won an Oscar as Best Actor for his performance as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune. A generation of children got to know him as the sardonic voice of Scar in The Lion King ( 1994). American audiences savoured his work as the Machiavellian Rodrigo Borgia in The Borgias ( 2011- 2013).
He’s often cast i n period films and/ or as a member of the upper class, which he said isn’t by choice. “I can’t help that I sound this way,” Irons said, speaking with his customary casual elegance. “As an actor, you’re reliant on what people ask you to do. I do push a few projects of my own forward, but mostly it’s the job of an actor to say yes or no.”
Next up is Assassin’s Creed, coming film co- starring Michael Fassbender as a man who, exploring his ancestry, discovers that he’s a member of a secret society of assassins.
When he’s not working, Irons said, he leads a quiet life. He and his wife, actress Sinead Cusack, are the parents of two grown sons, Samuel and Max. Max Irons is an actor, known for The White Queen ( 2013), The Riot Club ( 2014) and Woman in Gold ( 2015).
Irons and Cusack divide their time between London and Ireland, where they own Kilcoe Castle. “In Ireland, I have a very deep and intrinsic feeling of being at home,” he said. “It also allows me to live a grounded life.”
Irons added that he gets great joy out of watching his son work. “I’m proud that he has done several films,” he said. “At his age, I had just been working in theatre. Now there isn’t that much theatre for young actors, but there is very good cable TV and these big movies.
“If you’re young, good- looking and can act, you can work all the time, which is very different from my day of being young.”
Does he offer Max advice on the business or the craft? “I don’t offer much advice,” Irons said, laughing. “He doesn’t need it.”
For his part, the actor added, he’d hate to be starting out today. “Not on your life,” he said firmly. “I remember when I was in my early 30s and acting in theatre for 12 years. The success wasn’t the same. I was the lucky one, because I could work but not face the harsh glare of the spotlight.
“Some young actors have lives that are so extreme,” Irons continued. “I couldn’t stand the idea of having no privacy and hundreds of people waiting to j ust get a gl ance of me. That didn’t happen in my day, not even to Brando. I think all I ever had was one or two Brideshead groupies, but they never hung out around my door. They didn’t even know where to find that door.”
It comes as no surprise that Irons isn’t a fan of modern i nformation technology. “Everything is so fast now,” he said. “I hope we come to a tipping point and realise that things can’t go any faster. We must design lives that are slower and allow us to reflect and truly communicate. Why not throw away the toys that are supposed to make our lives easier and simpler, but they just keep us further apart from each other as humans?” In short, don’t look for him on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
“Write about my every move and send it out to the world?,” Irons asked. “I’d rather go out and walk the dog.”