“I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him.That was unavoidable for,from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seemed to know no bounds. My first sight of him was in the door of Germer's,and on that occasion, I was struck less by his looks and more by the fact he was carrying a large teddy-bear".
Oh lovely, lovely, lovely. Bring me champagne, strawberries and the finest chocolates in the house and take me back 30 years to the early, post-riots autumn of 1981 when I, a still slender youth, set my heart on Oxford’s dreaming spires and Brideshead Revisited ruled on ITV. The prose came from Evelyn Waugh via John Mortimer. The pitch perfect voice-over, steeped in regret and nostalgia, came from dearly beloved Jeremy Irons, already 33, but immaculate as an Oxford undergraduate. There were those who hated it from the start, deeming it to be smug, vacuous, upper-class tosh, Downton Abbey with popery and teddy bears. But even a one-off episode, a charity shop pick-up from a newspaper giveaway, still works a little magic. The recent cinema version, despite stout performances from Emma Thompson and others, was already doomed for oblivion before the cameras rolled.
Oh, what became of that youthful duo, strutting through the quads and struggling to stay out of each other’s pants in Italy? Anthony Andrews, despite a fair-to-middling West End, rep and TV career, is still best known for dipso Sebastian, although in real life it was a nasty bout of water intoxication that could have done for him. And Jeremy…..Well he has just turned 63. Having been both charmed and repelled by Catholicism and its impact on the Brideshead mob as young Ryder, Jeremy is currently El Papa himself, the legendarily corrupt Alexander VI, main man in The Borgias. It is, if truth be told, a singularly lazy, if cheerfully cynical turn, but possibly what Jeremy wants (and deserves?) at this time of life.
Lynn Barber once admitted to wanting to boil Irons in oil in the face of interview bolshiness and rank bad manners. Others have found his dalliance with the Countryside Alliance at best off-putting, suggesting he has always been a tad tweedy and weedy. I recall the discomfort of fellow studio guests on Radio Four when Jeremy inexplicably announced he had always wanted to break wind on air. More recently, there were hearty suggestions from the aging actor that patting a lady’s bottom was a friendly gesture to be treated with good humour (and gratitude?) by the recipient?
This may all leave Jeremy on at least the outer fringes of supreme pratdom. But what of the work?
In Hollywood, Irons is best remembered for his Oscar-winning turn as insulin man Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune, keeping a none-too-kindly eye on Glenn Close. Whisper it quietly, but this was mainly tinned ham. “Sunny had a sundae”, intoned von Bulow, a cartoon baddie of lugubrious charm and European wiles, although nothing like as sinister as Simon Gruber in Die Hard with a Vengeance. I have never got all the way through David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, where you get two Jeremies for the price of one, sparring gynaecologist twins, no less, but it is not for the faint-hearted.
At the other end of the spectrum, our man was righteously wet opposite de Niro in The Misssion, bringing the word of Christ to the forests of South America. Father Gabriel was mercifully dispatched by brutal colonial raiders. I had the pleasure of seeing him murdered in the flesh as Richard II at Stratford, but reserved the greatest exultation for his death bed departure in Bertolucci’s shamefully awful Stealing Beauty, having failed to cop off with Liv Tyler in Tuscany. Heartless, but Jeremy in extremis tends to have that effect.
Jeremy mid-coitus is also not a pretty prospect. Who can forget the look of horror on is his face, or indeed his naked frame, in the David Hare on a very bad day Damage as son Rupert Graves goes over the banister, his last view on earth that of father pumping away at Juliette Binoche? No wonder Miranda Richardson gave him his marching orders.
But the Irons CV is impressive in its diversity: lecherous literatus Jerry, cuckolding Ben Kingsley in Pinter’s Betrayal; off in pursuit of Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman; acting the rueful roué and aged musketeer in The Man with the Iron Mask; hitting the sword and sorcery trail in Eragon and (gulp) Dungeons and Dragons. Much of this (including The Borgias ) is bill-paying hackwork (Jeremy has quite a few cars to maintain). I certainly hope he got a decent cheque for the little-seen The Fourth Angel , Jeremy as an Economist journalist (no less), hunting down the Serbian terrorists who took out half his family, helped on his way by Timothy West, Forest Whitaker and Charlotte Rampling as MI6's most glamorous ex-agent.
But Mr Irons can still raise his game. He was seriously good as Dudley Earl of Leicester opposite Helen Mirren in the excellent Queen Elizabeth I, which showed historical drama could be more than serial shagging, beheading and scenery mastication.
Oh to have seen him in his busking days, or as a posh Judas betraying David Essex in Godspell. But if you want to see the child inside the man, check out those YouTube Playaway clips from the 1970s. Who needs Lord Sebastian’s flights of fancy or the stately majesty of Castle Howard when you can act the fool with Brian Cant?
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