The elegant Jeremy Irons has had a charmed life. An Oscar, riches, a happy marriage. So why did he see a shrink? Lesley White asks him
11mar06
THE fabulously attractive Jeremy Irons arrives at London's Langham hotel on his motorbike, a BMW 100 RT tourer, a big, dangerous love god of a bike.
He is shrouded in a Palestinian scarf and wearing biker boots. I know he is fabulously attractive because his publicist, who has spent all day watching him dress and undress for photo shoots, has told me so at least 10 times as we await his arrival, thin and elegant, moistened with evening rain.
There had been a thought that we might have dinner, but then he had changed his mind and decided that spending more than one hour with a journalist may lead to his saying things he would regret, as if he were suffering from a chronic confessional compulsion.
I suppose he meant about his 27-year-marriage to Irish actor Sinead Cusack, which he once called "dysfunctional", and on another occasion, doubting that he would be capable of monogamy, he scattered hints suggesting an open relationship.
Or maybe he was still smarting from the censorious reception to Adrian Lyne's 1997 film version of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and his remarks in its defence, which had him pilloried as a danger far worse than Humbert Humbert: an actor challenging our moral panic about pedophiles.
Irons has manipulated even more interviews than menopausal hearts and is expert in the false intimacy required; as we settle in a dark corner of the bar, having embraced me warmly on meeting - a kiss on both cheeks, a hug - he endearingly proceeds to be interested in me.
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Casanova is screening nationally; Embers is at London's Duke of York's Theatre until May 27.
The Sunday Times Magazine