The actor came into Guardian HQ to answer readers' questions about Beautiful Creatures, mastering accents, Samuel Beckett and being a struggling actor
Jeremy Irons hardly needs an introduction. Star of films as diverse as Damage, Reversal of Fortune, Danny Champion of the World and Die Hard with a Vengeance, he'll be here tomorrow lunchtime to answer your questions ahead of the release of Beautiful Creatures.
Based on a series of bestselling young-adult novels, Beautiful Creatures is a supernatural romance in which Irons plays Macon Ravenwood, uncle of lead character Lena Duchannes, a young witch struggling with the conflicting demands of possessing both occult powers and a boyfriend.
Whether you'd like to ask about Beautiful Creatures, playing twins in Dead Ringers, taking on Bruce Willis, appearing in the Simpsons, his charity work or voicing one of Disney's most despicable villains, leave your questions in the comment thread below.
Update
Here are...
Jeremy Irons hardly needs an introduction. Star of films as diverse as Damage, Reversal of Fortune, Danny Champion of the World and Die Hard with a Vengeance, he'll be here tomorrow lunchtime to answer your questions ahead of the release of Beautiful Creatures.
Based on a series of bestselling young-adult novels, Beautiful Creatures is a supernatural romance in which Irons plays Macon Ravenwood, uncle of lead character Lena Duchannes, a young witch struggling with the conflicting demands of possessing both occult powers and a boyfriend.
Whether you'd like to ask about Beautiful Creatures, playing twins in Dead Ringers, taking on Bruce Willis, appearing in the Simpsons, his charity work or voicing one of Disney's most despicable villains, leave your questions in the comment thread below.
Update
Here are...
- 1/25/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 28, 2012
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
Alan Bates (l.) and George De La Pena star in Nijinsky.
The lives, the loves and the madness of the legendary and mercurial Russian ballet star Vaslav Nijinsky are chronicled in Herbert Ross’s 1980 film Nijinksy.
Portrayed in the film by George De La Pena (One Last Dance), Nijinsky was the most celebrated dancer of the early 20th century. But offstage, he was in turmoil, torn between the beautiful ballerina he married and the domineering mentor he loved.
Alan Bates (The Sum of All Fears) plays Sergei Diaghilev, Nijinsky’s mentor and lover who’s the impresario and founder of Ballets Russes. The increasing tension between these powerful egos, exacerbated by homosexual desire and jealousy, becomes triangular when the young ballerina Romola de Pulsky (Leslie Browne, The Turning Point) tries to draw the mentally unstable Nijinsky away from Diaghilev.
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
Alan Bates (l.) and George De La Pena star in Nijinsky.
The lives, the loves and the madness of the legendary and mercurial Russian ballet star Vaslav Nijinsky are chronicled in Herbert Ross’s 1980 film Nijinksy.
Portrayed in the film by George De La Pena (One Last Dance), Nijinsky was the most celebrated dancer of the early 20th century. But offstage, he was in turmoil, torn between the beautiful ballerina he married and the domineering mentor he loved.
Alan Bates (The Sum of All Fears) plays Sergei Diaghilev, Nijinsky’s mentor and lover who’s the impresario and founder of Ballets Russes. The increasing tension between these powerful egos, exacerbated by homosexual desire and jealousy, becomes triangular when the young ballerina Romola de Pulsky (Leslie Browne, The Turning Point) tries to draw the mentally unstable Nijinsky away from Diaghilev.
- 12/1/2011
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
This is a polished but unmoving account of the affair between two 20th-century greats
There's a wonderful moment in Clint Eastwood's Bird, when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie make an expedition one night to the Los Angeles home of their idol, Igor Stravinsky. They ring the bell at the front garden gate and stand in the shadows, afraid to approach the great man when he appears in the doorway in that famous hook-nosed silhouette. You sense their awe in the presence of a God‑like figure who still answers his own doorbell.
Adapted by the British writer Chris Greenhalgh from his speculative novel, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky takes us back to the second decade of the 20th century, when the basis of the Stravinsky legend was being laid and more or less to the point where last year's Coco Before Chanel ends. The movie begins with one of the epic moments of cultural modernism,...
There's a wonderful moment in Clint Eastwood's Bird, when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie make an expedition one night to the Los Angeles home of their idol, Igor Stravinsky. They ring the bell at the front garden gate and stand in the shadows, afraid to approach the great man when he appears in the doorway in that famous hook-nosed silhouette. You sense their awe in the presence of a God‑like figure who still answers his own doorbell.
Adapted by the British writer Chris Greenhalgh from his speculative novel, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky takes us back to the second decade of the 20th century, when the basis of the Stravinsky legend was being laid and more or less to the point where last year's Coco Before Chanel ends. The movie begins with one of the epic moments of cultural modernism,...
- 8/7/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
A glossily enjoyable two-for-one biopic of Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. By Steve Rose
What? Chanel and Stravinsky? They didn't, did they? No one really knows, but as the basis for a two-for-one biopic, or at least some highbrow slash-fiction offshoot, why the hell not? And if we do have to watch the coupling of these 20th-century greats, why not cast some fetching actors? Anna Mouglalis (also to be seen as Juliette Gréco in Gainsbourg) looks less like Coco Chanel than one of her models, and Mads Mikkelsen looks awfully gym-pumped for an impoverished Russian who's spent most of his time sitting at a piano, but then the whole movie has the immaculate visual gloss of a Chanel advert, which is no bad thing. The story goes one further, though, and suggests Chanel and Stravinsky's liaison, in the summer of 1920, was a sort of alchemical reaction, which inspired both of them to greater artistic heights.
What? Chanel and Stravinsky? They didn't, did they? No one really knows, but as the basis for a two-for-one biopic, or at least some highbrow slash-fiction offshoot, why the hell not? And if we do have to watch the coupling of these 20th-century greats, why not cast some fetching actors? Anna Mouglalis (also to be seen as Juliette Gréco in Gainsbourg) looks less like Coco Chanel than one of her models, and Mads Mikkelsen looks awfully gym-pumped for an impoverished Russian who's spent most of his time sitting at a piano, but then the whole movie has the immaculate visual gloss of a Chanel advert, which is no bad thing. The story goes one further, though, and suggests Chanel and Stravinsky's liaison, in the summer of 1920, was a sort of alchemical reaction, which inspired both of them to greater artistic heights.
- 8/5/2010
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
From ballet to contemporary, dance is enjoying a real upsurge. But for poise, power and poignancy, who has the best moves?
Vaslav Nijinsky
Born in 1890, Nijinsky trained at the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg, where his amazing virtuosity swiftly became apparent. As the star of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes,his intense characterisations in new-wave ballets like Scheherazade, Carnaval and Petrouchka won him a huge European following. "Nijinsky never once touched the ground, but laughed at our sorrows and passions in mid-air," wrote one spectator. His reputation grew with the choreography of several modernist works, but by his mid-20s he was displaying signs of the schizophrenia which, with brutal prematurity, would end his career.
Josephine Baker
Three-quarters of a century before Beyoncé, there was Josephine Baker, the "Black Pearl" of the Folies Bergères. Born into poverty in 1906, Baker became a chorus dancer in the jazzy vaudeville shows of the Harlem Renaissance before,...
Vaslav Nijinsky
Born in 1890, Nijinsky trained at the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg, where his amazing virtuosity swiftly became apparent. As the star of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes,his intense characterisations in new-wave ballets like Scheherazade, Carnaval and Petrouchka won him a huge European following. "Nijinsky never once touched the ground, but laughed at our sorrows and passions in mid-air," wrote one spectator. His reputation grew with the choreography of several modernist works, but by his mid-20s he was displaying signs of the schizophrenia which, with brutal prematurity, would end his career.
Josephine Baker
Three-quarters of a century before Beyoncé, there was Josephine Baker, the "Black Pearl" of the Folies Bergères. Born into poverty in 1906, Baker became a chorus dancer in the jazzy vaudeville shows of the Harlem Renaissance before,...
- 7/31/2010
- by Luke Jennings
- The Guardian - Film News
Jan Kounen’s double-barreled biopic Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky doesn’t start well. For one thing, there’s its book-report title, which seems to promise a rote rehash of its protagonists’ lives without shape or insight. It certainly doesn’t help that the film begins in the most obvious place, with the riotous 1913 première of Stravinsky’s dissonant Rite Of Spring, or that one hapless member of the Ballets Russes is stuck with the line, “Stop it, Nijinsky! Tell him, Diaghilev.” By that point, viewers should be expecting further noteworthy personages to turn up bearing little signs: “Hello ...
- 6/17/2010
- avclub.com
Whatever you think of Milk, there’s no denying that the Oscar-nominated biopic is putting a long-overdue spotlight on the life of Harvey Milk, allowing much of the mainstream audience to learn about his singular achievements for the very first time.
But why stop there? Now that Milk has proven that stirring gay life stories can appeal to more than just a gay audience, Hollywood should think about making movies about the following legends. We’ll even help them decide which to make first by throwing in a rating of 1-5 Harveys for each story’s eventual Oscar bait-ability. That should help land some big name stars.
Montgomery Clift
Who he was: Gorgeous leading man of the 1950s (From Here to Eternity [1953], A Place in the Sun [1951]) who led a torturously closeted existence in Hollywood. Survived a somewhat disfiguring car accident during the filming of Raintree County (1957) opposite Elizabeth Taylor,...
But why stop there? Now that Milk has proven that stirring gay life stories can appeal to more than just a gay audience, Hollywood should think about making movies about the following legends. We’ll even help them decide which to make first by throwing in a rating of 1-5 Harveys for each story’s eventual Oscar bait-ability. That should help land some big name stars.
Montgomery Clift
Who he was: Gorgeous leading man of the 1950s (From Here to Eternity [1953], A Place in the Sun [1951]) who led a torturously closeted existence in Hollywood. Survived a somewhat disfiguring car accident during the filming of Raintree County (1957) opposite Elizabeth Taylor,...
- 2/5/2009
- by dennis
- The Backlot
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