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Jeremy Irons

NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON directed by Bille August, written by Greg Latter and Ulrich Herrmann from the novel by Pascal Mercier, with Jeremy Irons, Mélanie Laurent, Jack Huston and Martina Gedeck. A Pacific Northwest Pictures release. 111 minutes. Opens Friday (December 6). For venues and times, see Movies.


Jeremy Irons looks exactly the way you expect him to, only slightly taller.

In Toronto for a few appearances at the Lightbox’s David Cronenberg retrospective – he starred in Dead Ringers and M. Butterfly – Irons is squeezing in a few hours of press for his new movie, Night Train To Lisbon, which reunites him with Bille August, who last directed him in 1993’s The House Of The Spirits.

Irons is the audience’s guide through Night Train’s elaborate flashbacks, playing a Swiss professor who impulsively winds up playing detective when he stumbles across a love triangle that dates back to Portugal’s years under a military junta decades earlier.

It’s a role of pleasant serenity for Irons, and as it turns out, one he was uniquely suited to play.

“In a way, he has a very similar function to Charles Ryder in Brideshead,” the actor explains, name-checking the 1981 miniseries that made him an international star. (Its full title, of course, is Brideshead Revisited.)

“I remember when I was making that, I thought, ‘I have to think of myself as a really good host to a really great party. I want to get people together I want to let them shine. I don’t want to [conduct them], I want to sit there and bring them out.'”

This is something he’s worked at over the years, he says, in films and onstage. His magnificent dual performance in Dead Ringers is a master class in responding naturalistically to his own recorded responses.

“Acting is listening, at its best, you know. I always tell actors that – that acting is listening, and allowing what is said to you to have an effect,” he says. “And in order to do that, you have to be relaxed and you have to be open. Otherwise, it’ll be a pretended reaction to that effect. So I sort of know about that area, and that’s what I was doing in the movie. I hope it holds the audience’s interest, because in a way, you know, they have to stay with him on this journey.”

Given that Irons has spent most of the last three years being sinister on the TV series The Borgias, I ask whether his other acting choices are designed to remind people he’s more than just a sneering villain.

“You choose on your gut, and part of you is conscious of your career,” he says. “I was doing The Borgias and I thought, ‘Well, this is going to remind people I’m still alive. In between [seasons] I’ll do some interesting movies.’ Because you have to keep your career floating. And if you think of Margin Call and The Words and Night Train To Lisbon – you know, those are three really difficult movies to sell.”

Is that really how it works? Are actors’ decisions quite so mercenary?

“As you get older, you actually don’t want to work quite as much,” he allows.

“I did three and a half years sort of solid doing The Borgias and the other films and then selling the films, [so] I was very relieved this July when finally I had two months of summer. I began to build up my appetite again. And now I think I’ll go to work in the beginning of next year and be very busy for about nine months.”

Interview Clips

Jeremy Irons on the attraction of working with Bille August on a film of ideas:

Download associated audio clip.

Irons on acting to live, rather than living to act:

Download associated audio clip.

Irons on how his career has enabled his other interests:

Download associated audio clip.

Irons on his relationship to the film industry:

Download associated audio clip.

normw@nowtoronto.com | @wilnervision

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