Quotes

• “Actors often behave like children, and so we’re taken for children. I want to be grown up.”

• “I still find acting very difficult. That’s probably why I still do it. Maybe I take it too seriously. I don’t think it matters what you choose to do with your life – only that you try to do it very, very well.”

• “My wife likes to describe acting as the shy man’s revenge and I think she’s describing me. I’m not by nature a person who likes to stand up and show off. But acting has allowed me to escape that more retiring part of my character. It liberates me in a way that nothing else can.”

• “I keep thinking that I’ve played enough weirdos, but I can’t seem to help myself. I’m drawn to dark, enigmatic characters with secret lives.”

• “I used to wander around playing my guitar, earning money. I could, I think equally, have joined the circus or joined a fairground. Instead I joined the theatre and liked it and then thought, ‘I’ve got to learn how to do this,’ so then I went to drama school. It suited me very well. It’s given me a fantastic life. It’s given me the ability to do things that a lot of people dream of.”

• On taking his characters home with him: “I used to say I sloughed it off when I got home but I don’t think I do, a bit of it stays. I think I’m like a room in which a cigar isn’t actually being smoked, but you can still smell the cigar. And then I go into work and I light up the cigar again.”

• “To tell you the truth, I’m not good at pretending. That’s why I have to disappear into my character when I act; I have to “be” not “pretend to be.”

• “I’ve never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live. There’s something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy.”

• “I used to be known, strangely enough, for comedy on stage.  And then I started making movies and everyone thinks I’m very serious and very glum.”

• “I don’t know if I’m insecure, I do know I need approval from time to time. I value the appreciation of others for my work, especially colleagues. I want to know if what I’m doing is right and applause helps.”

• “I’ve always been cursed — maybe it’s why I became an actor — with the ability never to be able to walk down a street without seeing myself do it.  In other words, always being conscious of how I look doing what I’m doing, even as a child. One of the things that moves me the most is when I see somebody walking down the street who has no idea that anyone could possibly be interested in looking at him. I envy them that quality.”

• “I certainly play people on the edge quite a lot. I am interested in what makes people odd and what makes them different. In life I try to play the edges. I have a horror of the herd. There are many, many different sorts of people. A lot of people are fairly uninteresting. I want to play the interesting ones. The villains are always more interesting to portray. Shakespeare knew that.”

• “I like roles that explore the dark side of the moon,” says Irons, in his modulated, elegant English. “I’m endlessly fascinated by how people keep up a front in life. How they keep going, when all this other stuff is going on below the surface — things they’re dealing with or things they’re ignoring — the sort of mess that we all turn our backs on.”

• “I like secrets,” he says of the characters he plays. “I like hiddenness. I like enigma. I’m drawn to people who are not what they seem.”

• “I think we all contain seeds of good and evil. Some people get away with it. Some people don’t.  As a rule, the villains are much more interesting to portray and, above all else, I have a deep need to remain interested.”

• “You’ve got to be humble to be an actor. You take your knickers off in front of the crew every time you work – properly. Actors seem very big on the screen, you see them looking glamorous at premieres but really the seed of the work is opening yourself up like a painter, like a writer. At it’s best, you are searching down to an innermost part that most of us wouldn’t show to our nearest and dearest.”

• What does Jeremy love most about his work: “Working with a group of people who are all telling the same story and getting to know them, getting to trust them.”

• “I think I did my best work in Dead Ringers and I’m very proud of Lolita and The Mission. Those are the only ones.”

• “You have to communicate on a much greater scale. With a camera, you can use the flick of an eye. On stage, a lot of other things are happening that can pull focus or energy. You’re always thinking the same way, but you have to amplify your thoughts with the volume of your speech and the ways you use your whole body to communicate what you’re feeling. It’s a little bit different from film.”

• On returning to Broadway in Impressionism: “People say, ‘Why haven’t you gone back to Broadway before?’ and the answer is, I haven’t been offered a new play that makes me buzz.”  I’ve been offered a lot of revivals, but in a way I’m not a jobbing actor in that sense.  I like to go on a journey into the unknown.”

• Regarding Impressionism: “Basically you’re looking to pay the bills, but you’re also looking to find interesting characters to play. I’ve been gravitating toward new plays that I find interesting to see whether they work.”

• Jeremy explains why he loves his Impressionism dressing room (which he also used for The Real Thing back in 1984):   What I love is that I can open that door and everybody going up to their dressing rooms, or coming down, I can talk to, I see on the stairs, so I am not cut off. I am really in the middle of things, I love that. I have a window, I can see the street. I like that. It is not too big. It is just big enough, because I like boat-sized things, and it is a good size in that way. And I have a shower and a loo, which is all you need. I have a window that opens so that I can keep it cool. It just has a nice feel and it also has a memory.”

• On why he wanted to do a new play (Embers) rather than a revival:  “My instinct is that of a test pilot rather than a commercial pilot; I like to see if something will fly rather than fly something that’s been flown many times before.”

• “It’s a musical I’ve never seen, but I’ve loved the music for some time. This is a great, wonderful contrast from making movies.”

• “I’m getting my singing voice back, cutting back on the cigarettes a fraction, and I’ve been rehearsing like mad.”

• “Mine is an actor’s voice, not a singer’s voice, but the part was written for an actor (Richard Burton), not a singer.”

“That kind of thing isn’t hard to take. Of course, it’s better than people going, ‘Jeremy Irons – yuck!”’

• “They’re very useful. They’re good gardeners. They’re good workmen. They play a bit of piano, a bit of guitar. I have one thumb that I damaged while skiing, but apart from that, I’m glad they’re appreciated.”

• “Personally, I am unconvinced that smoking kills you. I think genetics takes a more important role.”

• “I love smoking. It gives me such pleasure. I’ve been smoking since I was 15.”

• “I’ve always suspected these statistics people put out about cancer and smoking. And now that people are stopping, they still get cancer. The male side of my family has always smoked. My mother has a friend who grew and smoked her own tobacco in Greece and died at the age of 101. I think it’s the additives that are harmful.”

• “There are a few things that I quite like, but there’s nothing that I can’t do without. I could even cope without cigarettes. There are things that make me happy: for instance, I feel better when I have a dog in my life but I could live without one.”

• “I’m very, very ashamed to be a smoker. I gave it up for two years and was pleased with myself. Then I went back on about two months ago, and bang, I’m up to 40 a day. However, there is a side of me which is very anarchic. I think our job as actors, as artists, is to constantly make people question, to not fit into the status quo. So I particularly enjoy smoking in America because I have a great dislike for political correctness – which I suppose goes back to the sneakers.”

• Regarding the smoking ban in England: “I don’t think anything should be banned. I think we should all just be polite and thoughtful towards each other. It’s like banning farting – it’s something you’re not meant to do, but we don’t ban it.”

• “[The countryside] is in modern parlance a balanced ecosystem, and our presence here today is like being a signal; a signal not to meddle for politically correct reasons with that balance. A signal that the voice of rural England will be heard. A signal to leave our countryside alone.”

• “What’s true is that I do love women, and I have a habit of affectionately touching them. You saw the way I am on the set. I’m constantly going up to people and touching them. That’s just the way I am when I’m working. I’m not this nightclubbing playboy chasing women all over the world.”

• “I wanted to be a veterinarian, like a childhood friend. He had a practice in London in the week and at the weekend he would come down to look after cows and horses. It seemed perfect, but I wasn’t strong on science.”

• “I was a Labour Party voter, wanted to get them in and, indeed, have given them money, but I am fed up with Tony Blair’s Government and in the interests of democracy am voting Conservative.”

• “Paris Hilton, that’s very interesting what she did. I’ve never done that. I haven’t really sort of ever got into that. As time passes, maybe I should record it and put it in a vault so that when I get a little old and don’t have the energy I can remember how life used to be.”

• Jeremy’s Emmy acceptance speech for Elizabeth I (2006): ”All we ask for is great writing and great roles, and to work with great people. And to get a great prize at the end of it is the icing on the cake.”

• Post Emmy Interview (2006): “I should have mentioned Helen Mirren. She was the star of the show.”

• During the post Emmy interview on E! News, Jeremy looks into the camera and says to his dogs, Dottie and Dora, “And if they’re watching, Dad’s fine, and get off the sofa!”

• Thoughts on not being nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Dead Ringers: ‘That morning, I was very depressed because I thought, “If you can’t get it for that, what can you get it for?” But I sort of knew why I wasn’t nominated – it wasn’t a particularly life-enhancing film.’

• Jeremy’s thoughts on winning the Oscar for Best Actor: “I knew this was my time for winning the Oscar.”

• ”I never get too nervous, but you sit there and think, I must practice the face.”

• “I’ve been sailing since I was five and I own a boat, but I’ve never sailed on a machine like this, with a crew of this size before or in weather this violent. It is going to be such a steep learning curve for me.”

• On sailing in The Global Challenge in 2001: “The sea is a dangerous place, but any sport which has danger attached to it hones your appetite and makes you watch and think more carefully. We have a captain who wants to win, so I don’t think we’ll be sitting on our bottoms. We will be doing a lot of sail changes and coping with whatever the weather sends at us. But I have always been attracted to situations which test me. For me, this is the unknown.”

• More on sailing in The Global Challenge in 2001: “It will be my biggest challenge to date and I am looking forward to it with some trepidation. Usually I do not suffer from seasickness, but who knows what the weather has in store.”

• “I used to think that in my fifties I’d buy a big boat and do a slow trip with my friends around the world over three years, coming back now and again to replenish the funds.”

• “I get very nervous at sea when I’m sailing alone. I know how many things can go wrong. The sea makes you feel humble.”

• “I’m a lover of contrasts. I like contrast because change makes you see more clearly. If you know that something’s going to come to an end, I think it makes you value it more than if you think it’s going to go on forever.”

• Charlie Rose: “Are you going to run for mayor of London?”  Jeremy Irons: “I’m not going to run for mayor of London. I don’t know where that story came from. I’m interested in politics only that I’m interested in the place I live in. And I’m interested in England.”

• Regarding his renovation of Kilcoe Castle in Ireland:  “I have various plans what I want to do with it. Basically, I want to climb the mountain. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get to the top. I just want to get it back again, because that part of Ireland, it is the part of Ireland I live, has given me a huge amount. It’s a place I feel my soul resides, and I always believe that in somewhere or somebody gives you a lot, you give back. You know, try to keep the balance.”  “In my life I try to find projects that I think I’m not capable of. Projects that would frighten me, that seem a risk, so that I can really have a feeling of achieving if I surmount those problems.”

• On career choices and his family:  Charlie Rose: “Would you have done anything different?”  Jeremy Irons: “No. Professionally I would have done nothing differently.  I never believed in regrets anyway.  I think, you know, we just do what we think is right at the time.  I think I may have had more children.  That’s possibly the one thing I would have liked to have done.”  Charlie Rose: “You have two?”  Jeremy Irons: “I have two and I would have liked five.”  Charlie Rose: “Why five?”  Jeremy Irons: “Well, six just seems a little bit over the top, and I think maybe I can get away with five.  But I shouldn’t really say that, because I have two glorious boys and I’m blessed with them.  But because they bring my wife and I such joy, I suppose I’m just greedy, I would have liked more.”

• On why Jeremy chooses to live in England and Ireland rather than the United States: “I feel that you can be unsuccessful and still be wonderful, and I’m not sure that that is taught in quite the same here as it is in England, where success is not such a final statement about somebody’s worth.”

• Lotte Verbeek on working with Jeremy Irons on The Borgias:  “Most of my scenes were with Jeremy, so we spoke about the dialogue and preparation. I’m his mistress, so I got to work with him a lot. He really knows what he wants. He’s very much into language as well, which I love. I love to be precise with language. It was a great experience.”

• An Interview with David Cronenberg (director for Dead Ringers):  Interviewer: ” I was always surprised that Jeremy Irons never received an Oscar nomination for playing the psychotic twin gynecologists in Dead Ringers, especially since he won awards from critics’ groups.”  David Cronenberg: “Well, that is why I still retain a healthy skepticism when it comes to awards.  So many people felt sure he would get a nomination at least for that role.  I think there were a lot of people who had trouble with that concept of gynecologists.  If he had been playing twin lawyers he would have won an Oscar for it!  He did thank me when he got his Oscar for Reversal of Fortune, which was an extraordinary thing for him to do.”

• Friend and co-star Glenn Close: “You think he’s so refined, but he’s actually very macho! He’s a real man, who happens to have very good manners.”

• Ethan Hawke: “I worked with Jeremy Irons when I was younger, and he told me once, ‘I have an insight into a certain kind of human being. I don’t have an insight into every kind of human being.’ And I think that’s probably true for me, too.”

• Ed Harris on working with Jeremy in Appaloosa: “He’s sexy, smart and very confident in his own skin.”

• Donna Karan’s thoughts of Jeremy when he was featured as a young model’s dark seducer in magazine ads for her fashions: “What woman wouldn’t want to be seduced by Jeremy Irons?”

• Alan Dershowitz, observed, “He does Claus von Bulow better than Claus von Bulow.”