A trip to the mainland was a big event and happened maybe once a year, although now you can get across in a speed boat in seven minutes but then it was a long way away.
Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.
Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line.
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
And trust, yes, which is important, but that is what I aim towards. Now that is difficult for some people, and with that desire to get things as good as possible, I would say that I'm probably regarded as quite prickly to work with.
And whenever I'm in a situation where I'm wearing the same as 600 other people and doing the same thing as 600 other people, looking back, I always found ways to make myself different, whether it be having a red lining inside of my jacket, having red shoes, it hasn't changed.
At age 10 or 12 he's going to boarding school in the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is, of course, down at the bottom of England just off South Hampton.
At the age of 12 I was going on to another boarding school in another part of the country. We change schools at 13 in this country.
Because I'm now successful, what I'm being offered as an actor is more and more of the same.
Godspell was a good leap for me, it was a good shop window.
However, I wasn't very good at the sciences, or didn't have a lot of help in the sciences or something but certainly didn't set science for my A level. And when I came to take my A levels I didn't get a good enough result to go to University.
I always wanted to do more plays but I never quite understood how you got asked to do a play. I had done house plays, but they were sort of skits.
I constantly experience failure in that my work is never as good as I want it to be. So I live with failure.
I don't think it's a bad thing, but I've always had a very strong sense of self.
I envy children who know that they're going to become doctors, know they're going to go into the forces or whatever. I think choice is one of the hardest things, but that's what I try to give my children, to say you can do anything.
I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.
I have a 15 year-old, and I think it's too early. I look at his talents and I wonder, but I have always tried to teach my children that the only thing they want in life if they have any sense is to learn how to be happy, and to also give them the awareness that anything is possible for them.
I liked the theater. I liked the people. I liked the time that we worked.
I played the violin in the orchestra and enjoyed that. I had also done one play.
I succeeded on sort of chutzpah and charm. No technique at all, didn't know what I was doing, but it worked and the character suited me.
I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.
I was not naturally intellectual, but somebody whose interest had to be whetted, still the case sadly.
I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years.
I'm sure that Steve Martin would love to be where I am, and I would like to be more where he is as far as the comedy stakes are concerned.
It's always great to play a man who sets himself up to be punctured.
My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.
My next step must be to go to drama school. Well, I get into drama school, so I did that.
No, I don't believe in hard work. If something is hard, leave it. Let it come to you. Let it happen.
Now in my theater training I showed no aptitude at all.
Now the decision to play a role is halfway towards understanding the character, because you empathize with it and that's why you want to play it.
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 don't have the energy I can remember how life used to be.
So I continued through my next school, which takes me up to the age of 17, moving from the bottom stream of one year into the bottom stream of the next year, all the way through. I showed other talents which gave me self-respect, which is fine.
So nevertheless, what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success, and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.
So on the holidays when I was back from my boarding school, I would ride ponies.
So the better my partner or my opposition, however you like to think about it, the better my game.
The sad thing about any business I suppose, but in mine you see it particularly, is that you're always asked to do what you've already done.
We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.
What I try to do as an actor is constantly find that, find ways to risk, find opportunities to fall on my face if it's going to be worth it, and then maybe I'll surprise myself.
Jeremy's favorite poem is "Snake" by D.H. Lawrence.
Jeremy originally wanted to be a veterinarian before he became an actor.
At the 1991 Tony Awards, Jeremy Irons became the first celebrity to wear the red ribbon supporting the fight against AIDS.
Jeremy was once voted "Man of the Match" while playing a charity fundraiser tennis match in 1991.
In 1985, Jeremy directed a music video for Carly Simon and her heavily promoted single of Tired of Being Blonde.
Jeremy Irons played Brom in the movie Eragon.
Jeremy Irons was the voice of the character Scar on Disney's The Lion King.
At the 1990 Oscars, Jeremy concluded his acceptance speech for best actor in Reversal of Fortune (1990) by thanking "David". The "David" was David Cronenberg, who directed Irons the previous year in Dead Ringers (1988).
Jeremy won Broadway's 1984 Tony Award as Best Actor (Play) for Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.
In 1996, Jeremy became the fourteenth performer to win the Triple Crown of acting. Oscar: Best Actor, Reversal of Fortune (1990), Tony: Best Actor-Play, The Real Thing (1984), and Emmy: Best Voice-Over Performance, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (1996) (mini).
Jeremy is very politically active, especially in County Cork, Ireland where he has a home.
Jeremy was ticketed in England for driving 97 mph. on his BMW motorcycle on June 1, 1995. Irons was charged with speeding and fined $225 and had his motorcycle license suspended for three months.
Jeremy is known to be an exceptionally good horseman.
Jeremy is 6' 2?" (1.89 m) tall.
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