No More Conquests HARD-partying heart-throb Jonathan Rhys Meyers is apparently giving up the joys of sex for a year. The 26-year-old Dublin born actor -the star of Bend It Like Beckham- has told the producers of his next film that he is 'going celibate'.

He reassured the makers of the low-budget Roman movie To Love and Conquer that he will tone down his behavior at boozed-fuelled celebrity bashes. A source on the film, which will be shot in Canada later this year says: Jonathan told us, in all seriousness, that he'd vowed to go celibate for a year. 'he maintained women were "more trouble than they are worth", and that he'd decide to concentrate on doing his career instead'.

Sadly, those who saw Jonathan -whose old flames including model Lisa Butcher, socialite Lady Victoria Hervey and Austrailian actress Toni Collette -in Cannes says his new leaf had not yet been turned over. 'He managed to snog four girls consecutively at the Vaniey Fair party', a spy says. 'He didn't look like a man abstaining from anything'.

Taken form the Daily Mail paper 31st May 2004

This is from a few years back, I found it in my scrap book when putting the above article in it!

Age:25

Style: Tortured soul

Finest Hour: As the scheming Steerpike in BBC2's Goth fantasy Gormenghast

Don't mention: Velvet Goldmine. The 1998 film about glam rock was supposed to make him a hot property. Instead it flopped

He Says: On his looks: "I was happier about them before I got into the film industry. I loathe them now", who's he kidding?

What Next? He has a clutch of films lined up - and has been touted as the next James Bond

And another thing: A talented singer, he performed his own vocals in Velvet Goldmine

From the Daily Mail Weekend Magazine

Cult Icon Jonathan Rhys Meyers makes bad guys beguiling Dark Angel

Other Actors are always asking me how to break into the business. I've no idea -I never had to do it" says Jonathan Rhys Meyers somewhat sheepishly. Not a lament on the lips of most rising stars, perhaps, but just the sort of thing you might expect from a 27-year-old Irishman who, after becoming discovered in a Dublin pool hall at seventeen, has gone on to a series of enviable roles -all without a single acting lesson.

At nineteen, he put his alabaster-smooth, almost tender beauty and fierce attitude to work as Brian Slade, the omnisexual glam rocker of Todd Haynes's Velvet Goldmine. Besides garnering him a cult following, Goldmine set Rhys Meyers up for a string of similarly sinister roles in films like Ang Lee's Ride With The Devil and Julie Taymor's Titus. With the exception of Joe the dedicated woman's soccer coach he played in Bend It Like Beckham, Rhys Meyers admits, "There's something about me, I guess, some kind of darkness. I end up playing a lot of bastards." Next up, two more major-league ne'er-do-wells: in September, the preening George Osborne in Mira Nair's Vanity Fair and, later this year, Cassander in Oliver Stone's epic Alexander. But Rhys Meyers is continuing to steer clear of Hollywood's star system. He even banished his cell [mobile] phone-the social lifeline of the western world -to the depths of the River Shannon [river in Ireland]. "If someone want me enough, they'll find me," he says.

Dark. Decadent. Difficult. And that was before Jonathan Rhys Meyers became famous. Now as the lead roles and plaudits pile up, can the boy from Cork take the pressure? By Ann McFerran.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers has, he tells me more than one personality. There’s Johnny, the 27 year old Irish actor with a string of glittering credits, who’s highly temperamental but touted by director’s as a stellar talent in the making, the next Johnny Depp. This one lives a slightly unreal life out of a suitcase and on film sets, creating a series of magnetic roles, most recently as George Osborne in Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, and Cassander in Oliver Stone’s Alexander. Then, in contrast, there’s the self-described stupid little imp who’s most at home on a farm in County Cork. This personality goes for long walks in the countryside, talking silage and sick calves with his adoptive family who don’t give a shit about Hollywood. In the week we first met he was offered no fewer than six big roles. Then, when we last met, he was with Woody Allen in London, playing the lead in a typically top-secret Woody film with no title, opposite Scarlett Johannson.

The first time we meet he is crouched in a corner of Soho House’s upstairs bar, a wraith-like figure on his mobile to Christopher Crofts, the Cork farmer who has been a father figure to Rhys Meyers since he was 15. He has spent the afternoon being photographed and looks less like a film star than a fashionably wasted art student. When you take in the fine detail of this male beauty in all its androgynous splendour the full red lips, the wide grey-green eyes, the chiseled features, an insouciant gaze and when Johnny Rhys Meyers starts talking in his husky Cork brogue, you start to understand what all the fuss is about.

His legs are entwined around each other, drinking alternatively out of a glass of beer and an even larger glass of milk, he pushes two fish cakes around his plate before settling into a pack of Marlboros. At times he seems like a combination of the brilliant, tormented actor Daniel Day-Lewis (who also becomes every character he plays) and the super-shallow Graham Norton, camping it up outrageously, shrilly mimicking his fellow actors and directors and being very funny. Actually, Rhys Meyers doesn’t do comedy. I’ve always played what I know: dark, intense, extreme characters. Besides, I’m not sure if people would get it if I played.He unwinds is legs and goes into a verbal frenzy: a sh1t, bugger, bugger, sh1t, fuck, fuck, terribly twee Hugh Grant sort of guy.

Listening to this colt-like creature embark on a fairly bonkers stream of consciousness, which appears to be fuelled by something other than a desire to emulate Joyce, can make you, if you’re the maternal type, yearn to put your arms around him and say: Johnny, just relax, you don’t have to try so hard. It can be a dazzling but confusing performance. His cheeky charm and self-possession also hint at the crippling insecurities everyone tells you about. Julian Fellowes, who wrote Vanity Fair’s screenplay says: Jonathan so evidently enjoys his own beauty, and boy, do I envy him! If only we could all have walked into parties at the age of twenty-something and know we’re doing the room a favour!

Saying goodbye after our first meeting, Rhys Meyers kisses me elaborately, all the while watching me, watching him, watching me a mother of children his age smile. I also faintly want to slap him as he drifts off, heels barely touching the ground like a centaur, to grace another room. His guardian, Crofts, tells ms: Jonathan is entirely comfortable with his sexuality; he can camp it up openly and even kiss a man in a way which doesn’t bother him at all.

Later that week, in Ireland, Rhys Meyers told me: Sometimes I speak to girls at a bar or party and the question comes up, Are you straight or are you gay?’ They can’t really tell, so I tend not to protest my heterosexuality or my bisexuality. I give a bit of a wry smile and a little wink. It’s more fun for them and for me that way. Has he ever been gay? No he says Never. You seem hetero but I begin. That’s showbiz! he smirks.

Pretending to be someone else is what he loves to do more than anything else. Of course he’s a brilliant actor says Crofts, because he’s acted all his life; it’s the only way he could cope.

Born Jonathan O’Keefe on July 27, 1977 (he changed his name to Rhys Myers in 1992 Meyers was his mother’s surname), he grew up in a tiny council flat in a rough area of Cork. When he was three, his father left home with his two younger brothers. Crofts, and Anglo-Irish farmer, now 64, with a family of his own, knew the family. His mother drank a lot and didn’t seem able to cope with looking after him properly, he recalls. On this subject, Rhys Meyers tells me: I had a lot of rejection in my childhood. And when you’re rejected you can’t accept love and certainly can’t give it. Of course I looked for an industry which has that much rejection, where I’d be rejected.

On playing the lead role of Steerpike in Gormenghast, he says: The evil in that character comes from his loneliness and rejection. All he wants is love and respect. He thinks, ‘If I’m king of the castle, someone will love me.’ It’s about wanting to be cuddled more than anything else. But young Johnny got few cuddles at home and has said that his mother’s unhappiness rubbed off on him. At school he felt isolated. I didn’t get on with the teachers. I felt different to the other kids.

At 10 he was cast as Buttons in the school pantomime, Cinderella. He remembers shaking in the wings until the teacher pushed him on stage. I slid on my arse from one side to the other. When I hit the ground I thought, ‘I’ve two options: I can run away and cry, or I can get up and carry on.’ Everyone was laughing and my mother was saying, ‘He’s not mine; he’s not mine.’ I stood up and said, ‘Terrible icy weather, Cinderella.’ Everyone thought it was part of the play, so I got away with it. After, I thought, ‘Jaysus, that’s not bad. I can do this me and my porky pies.’

Creatively improvising his porky pies to protect himself is still a strong temptation for him. We human beings are fantastic creatures, because we’re so very adaptable, he says. Acting is so near to the edge and precarious, competitive and vulnerable. But vulnerable to me is very dangerous, because vulnerable is someone who feels an awful lot. You have to be a very powerful person to realize your vulnerability.

At 14 he was expelled from his Christian Brothers school and began hanging around Cork’s pool halls. While playing the arcade game Quasar, he met Crofts, a devotee of the game. Quasar involves a lot of hanging round chatting, waiting to play, Crofts tells me. Johnny and I were often on the same team. I bought him a cup of tea. I was very struck by him. I’ll never forget the reaction of a deaf-and-dumb man to him. He wasn’t fancying him but he couldn’t take his eyes off him. Rhys Meyers asked Crofts if he could stay on his farm for a few days. It wasn’t particularly kind of me to agree, says Crofts. Remember, a farm has plenty of space and there’s always food on the table. I’m not a psychiatrist but I could see he had terrible insecurities. Everyone needs to live on a farm because it brings you down to earth. Was he struck by the boy’s plight? No replies Crofts, I always felt he chose me. I, personally, am gay, but I’ve never fancied him. We’ve always had a father-son relationship. I could see he needed stability and structure in his life and a phone.

Rhys Meyers is slightly younger than Crofts’s eldest son, Alex, who has recently taken over the running of the farm. (Crofts also has an older son and younger daughter.) Johnny is exactly the same age as the son I lost, when he was 5 months old. That son is buried on my land and Johnny often visits his grave.

Crofts can legally sign documents when Rhys Meyers is away, but he isn’t his legal guardian. Our relationship has grown into a friendship. Nothing more, nothing less. After the intensity of filming coming home to a farm is very important to him. Eyebrows were raised in certain film circles about their relationship, but I believe it is as they described a good friendship and a much needed secure home base. They really know me well on the farm, Rhys Meyers says. They’ve seen me with the worst bed-hair every, lounging around the house smoking cigarettes.

Shortly after Rhys Meyers moved into Croft’s farm, David Puttnam’s casting agents came into Cork looking for extras for War of the Buttons. They saw Rhys Meyers and gave him a screen test. The camera loves you, Puttnam told him. And I love the camera came his reply. Briefly he was considered for the leading role in the film, but was later dismissed for being too knowing for the part of a 13 year old. He was terribly disappointed. I thought I never wanted to put myself through the process of being rejected again. Then I thought, ‘If I got that far, I might as well chance my arm again.’ I spent months traveling to Dublin for auditions. Soon after, Neil Jordan took a chance on him in the film Michael Collins, casting him as the assassin who killed Collins. Just before filming started, Rhys Meyers went with friends on holiday to Thailand. The trip turned into a series of mishaps and misadventures, climaxing with our would-be star passing out at Bangkok’s departure gate after smoking too many cigarettes and eating too many chocolates. But somehow he made it to his first day’s filming, alongside Alan Rickman. Michael Collins was a doddle, he says now. Roles began to pour in. When I started making films I grew up very quickly,” he says, “but in certain ways I didn’t grow up at all. Film-making is Peter Pan time. As actors we’re slightly immature and very looked after, so lots of big stars end up not being able to take care of themselves. I can’t stand the thought of being like Dirk Bogarde, who couldn’t even write a cheque.

For the boy who once stole to survive, the world of film location was the family life he’d never had. Even as we talk at Soho House, the tab for the fish cakes and Marlboros is invisibly paid for. He tells me that he’ll make his own way to his hotel, but as he’s staying at the Groucho Club, 100 yards up the street, it’s hardly the ultimate challenge.

The daily life of an in-demand actor can be a series of surreal impossibilities, he tells me. One night, when I was making I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, I was drinking with [the director] Mike Hodges and Malcolm McDowell. The next morning I was in Brixton having a cup of tea, then I’m dragged off by two men in tuxedos and Malcolm is raping me over a tyre iron. How can you share that with family and friends? How can you tell them, ‘I was raped at 8.30am, then I had chips and peas for lunch, then I killed someone’? With no formal acting training, he becomes every part he plays. This, he says, means I take and give away parts of my own character that I’ve never shaken off. To Brian Slade, the ruthless 1970’s bisexual rock star he played in 1998’s Velvet Goldmine, he says he gave vulnerability. He was 19 when he took this role – the youngest on the film’s set by six years. He also had an affair with the leading lady, Toni Muriel’s Wedding” Collette, which lasted a year. “She’s a good woman but I wasn’t mature enough, he says. For the Cannes premier of Velvet Goldmine, he flew in from the Missouri set of Ang Lee’s Ride With The Devil, where he was playing the “cold, unforgiving killer” Pitt Mackeson. “I was being paid shite, so when I had to go to Cannes I thought, ‘Bollocks!’ I turned up in a civil-war suit, weighing eight stone [normally he weighs 10½] and talking with a Missouri accent. I was so unrecognizable they wouldn’t let me into the premiere. At the after-party I sat in front of a poster of myself, talking to two girls who didn’t even know I was in the film.

Velvet Goldmine primed to be a huge hit bombed. Ride With The Devil, and Titus, followed suit. In 2001, Rhys Meyers auditioned for The Loss Of Sexual Innocence. Its director, Mike Figgis recalls: He marched in and talked nonstop about his hair. After three minutes I offered him the part. He’s extraordinarily talented, but his terrible insecurity means you’ve got to consider the effect on the other actors. He’s like Robert Downey Jr with his ability to extract sympathy and protectiveness from everyone around him.

After Figgis’s film, he appeared in Gormenghast. He’s one of those fabulous creatures, says its director, Andy Wilson. He acts like a rock star, because if he’s not satisfied with what he’s done, he goes and beats up the dressing room.

Directors may speak fondly of Rhys Meyers, but his fellow actors often find him difficult. Mad and maddening, say some, but don’t quote me. Very talented, they all add.

In Bend It Like Beckham, he played the hunky football coach, Joe, opposite Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra. Rhys Meyers says: Joe is the most normal and challenging character I’ve played. I wanted to make him a regular guy who goes to the cinema once a week, then has a bag of chips. Knightley remains very fond of her co-star. “He’s a completely beautiful, vulnerable human being, she enthuses. And his vulnerability makes him absolutely mesmerizing to watch on screen. Last year when Knightley was in LA doing publicity for Pirates of the Caribbean with her mother, Sharman MacDonald, whom she travels with (Knightley has no PA or PR), she had tea with Rhys Meyers at LA’s Four Seasons hotel. When MacDonald joined the couple, Rhys Meyers suggested they go for a cigarette. “We sat shivering and smoking and talked for ages,” recalls MacDonald. I thought he was a sweetheart, but I worry about him in this business.

Crofts shares her concern, He has his agents and PR people, but he needs someone to keep an eye on things for him. Jonathan has a huge hunger to succeed but he also has these huge insecurities. I went to see him in Rome when he was making Titus, with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. We went to dinner with Anthony Hopkins. Halfway through, Anthony broke down crying, saying he’d never work again. Most actors are screwed up, and there’s no use telling them how wonderful they are because they don’t believe it, but they need to hear it every minute.

Might a steady relationship help? Johnny loves beautiful girls, says Crofts, and beautiful girls throw themselves at him all the time. But he breaks their hearts, because how can he have a relationship when he’s not happy with himself?

Rhys Meyers says he’s been in therapy, and then adds: But life is therapy. He says he’s fallen in love only once, with a Dublin girl called Chacha. He describes in mock Shakespeare how they met: “In St Stephen’s Green, where we set our scene. She was beautiful, with eyes like a kitten and a gap between her teeth. Gorgeous. I was so absolutely besottedly in love with her that I couldn’t speak to her.” Eventually, Chacha took the initiative and turned up at Crofts’s farm. Rhys Meyers sums up his first love story in Mills and Boone mode: Together we were dynamite, but I was away a lot. We needed different things in our lives, but she’ll always be my first true love.” He sounds much more himself describing his portrayal of George Osborne in Vanity Fair, due for a September release. “I looked like something out of Quality Street” he cackles. George is the ultimate bastard. It was daunting how naturally it came!

Far more demanding was his most recent role in Oliver Stone’s Alexander, in which he plays Cassander, the rival to Colin Farrell’s Alexander. Crofts says: The set of that film was a heavy scene – pretty decadent. Johnny’s part had a lot to do with jealousy, which wasn’t great for him because he does go into his part so he was angry, jealous and upset for most of the six months shoot.

Stone was determined to instill his actors with mistrust and competitiveness. So I focused on that, says Rhys Meyers. 'Why aren’t I Colin Farrell? Why aren’t I king?’ As bad as Cassander feels in the film, Johnny has to feel just as bad. I upset myself quite a bit and gave my ego a battering, which made me sad; Oliver knew that.

To help his actors become brutal warriors, Stone had them attend, in character, a boot camp in the Moroccan desert with 200 Moroccan and American soldiers. Rhys Meyers tells me: On the first day of battle, Stone said, ‘I’m sick of seeing people being heroes in this war. I need a coward.’ So everyone else is being a he-man, going, ‘Hey, look at me, wanna shag?’ And I have to ride into battle, cut my own arm and let myself down. As he rode away, Rhys Meyers fell off his horse, which reared and kicked him in the face. There was blood all over my face. Colin rode over and said, ‘Jaysus! Your lip’s a bit swollen, but don’t worry, you’ll be grand’ People thought I’d be off home, and it caused me a loss of confidence, but it was part of who Cassander was. What do you have in common with Cassander? Cassander had to fight every inch to get what he wanted, sometimes using methods that weren’t kosher. Like Cassander, my success is totally down to me.

Later in Ireland, Crofts reveals that Rhys Meyers after my first interview with him went to a party hosted by Val Kilmer, who also starred in Alexander, at London’s Dorchester Hotel. I wouldn’t have been happy at him going, because those parties can be wild. But he knows he must keep himself together, because it’s leaving scars.

Recently Rhys Meyers brought his mother a house in a nice bit of Cork. Her great delight is decorating it. She’s got her life and she’s happy. I’ve got mine and I’m struggling to be content.

Rhys Meyers was on Crofts’s Cork farm the last time we spoke. That morning, he claimed he’d got up with the milking and cooked lunch. Its such a relief to be back, he said. With a voice an octave lower, he sounded much calmer.

And in the immediate future? He groans. I’m going to tidy my bloody room. I might do a bit of hovering! Very sexy! I might even hoover wearing a pair of gold-lamé Calvin Kleins!

**************************************************************************************************

With special thanks to Gail (Gadhelic) for typing up the interview, and Jolien for editing the Sunday Times Picture 2 (it had the join of page down the middle!)

Taken from the Sunday Times Magazine, Sunday 8th August 2004

Please do not take these pics without asking me first (especially as it cost me £4.00). To E-mail click the e-mail box in the Bottom frame.

He's famous for being an angst-ridden workaholic who never steps outside his beloved New York. But in this exclusive interview, Woody Allen talks about spending this summer filming in London - and how he's never been so happy

Simon Garfield
Sunday August 8, 2004
The Observer

'You have such beautiful skies,' Woody Allen said last week at the completion of another scene in another film, 'when they're overcast.' Allen and his crew had been looking up at the skies above West Kensington all morning, hoping for cloud. They were at Queen's Club, surrounded by the lush tennis courts and white-cottoned members trying not to appear too interested as a small 68-year-old man in a frayed green baseball cap moved among them. 'I never shoot in the sun if I can help it because everything looks much better without it,' the director continued. 'The sun has been the bane of my existence.'

Allen's crew wear laminated passes bearing the letters WASP 04 - the Woody Allen Summer Project, the 36th such project in his career. They have filmed in Belgravia and the Fulham Road, in St James's Park and Tate Modern, and everywhere they've been people are thrilled to see them. Passers-by ring up friends on their mobiles: Woody Allen filming in our street! Scarlett Johansson looking beautiful! Woody much smaller in real life! 'Occasionally people ask me for autographs and I give them,' the recipient of this adulation says. 'People are so nice to me. If only everyone who is so keen to see me would go to see my movies!'

* WASP 04 is still a mystery, even to those on set. Allen will only say who's in it (Johansson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode) and what it's vaguely about, which turns out to be the same as almost all his other movies - human relationships and their consequences. In his famous style, the actors only get to see their own scenes, and the producers even less. As the only person who knows quite what film he is trying to make, Allen says he is happy with progress, 'but I hope it's not just that the English voices are so beautiful to my ear that they cover a multitude of my sins.'

* He fears that the same speeches read by an American cast would be pedestrian. 'To hear Jonathan Rhys-Meyers do them or Brian Cox or Penelope Wilton - they sound like what we've grown up in America to consider as acting and theatre at its highest. And Scarlett is of course just a natural great actress. She can do no wrong, incapable of a bad moment. Very sexy, very pretty. She was just touched by God.'

We talk while the sun is out - 10 minutes here, 15 there - on a sequence of benches, director's chairs and catering buses. Allen walks slowly between each spot, and speaks gently and with great conviction. When he is filming, he occasionally crouches down to peer through a lens, but otherwise watches over the cameraman's shoulder with the day's script tightly rolled in his hand, as if he is about to swat flies. He does not bellow 'And... action !' at any point; the working day progresses organically, merging from set-up to camera-roll in smooth order, with hushed conversations among his technicians between scenes. On this day in West London, precisely halfway through a seven-week schedule, it is as if nothing is riding on the film at all.

If only this were so. The paying public and large parts of the film business have fallen out of love with Woody Allen's art, if not his person. With each new film they see a diminishing of talents. Allen peps up his work with the leading young actors of the day, and he injects the usual one-liners and angsty philosophies, but he is regularly regarded as a lost cause, a man who has spent the last decade grimly failing to reproduce the great achievements of his career - Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanours, Husbands and Wives - some of which defined an era, some of which just defined the best imaginable way to spend a Saturday night.

It's not that Small Time Crooks or Sweet and Lowdown or Mighty Aphrodite are bad films - how much more entertaining they are than most teen and disaster movies - it's just that they don't fill us with the joy that they used to, and we don't tend to quote from them. Every year a hopeful critic jumps out from the page to proclaim The Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Hollywood Ending 'a magnificent return to form', but theirs is a minority voice. It may be his age, it may be exhaustion, it may be the lack of someone around him to say, 'Whoa, one movie every two years is enough for anyone!' Or it may be that he no longer has the power to grasp and ridicule the concerns of our times. But what if most people are wrong? What if his best work is still to come?

I have met Allen twice before, but have never seen him with such an assured outlook on life. He says he loves being in London, his wife and two children are either out at the sights or in the pool of his rented house, and he is serious when he says that he finds the on-set catering to be better than in New York. His own opinion of his current standing in the film world is instructive.

'In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now,' he says. 'There was a time in the 1950s when I wanted to be a playwright, because until that time movies, which mostly came out of Hollywood, were stupid and not interesting. Then we started to get wonderful European films, and American films started to grow up a little bit, and the industry became more fun to work in than the theatre. I loved it. But now it's taken a turn in the other direction and studios are back in command and are not that interested in pictures that make only a little bit of money. When I was younger, every week we'd get a Fellini or a Bergman or a Godard or Truffaut, but now you almost never get any of that. Filmmakers like myself have a hard time. The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films - if they get a good film they're twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m.

'That's why I'm happy to work in London, because I'm right back in the same kind of liberal creative attitude that I'm used to.'

I wonder if there was a time recently when he found the situation he describes too painful to endure? 'Yes. In the last couple of years I've thought about if I do really want to function in the film business the way I did when I started. When I started, there was a great joy in wanting to make a film and knowing there was a huge audience out there - not huge, but a special audience, and I would try to appeal to that audience if I could.

'You felt part of something. Now, you know, I don't really care that much. There's no real prestigious film industry, there's no real cultivated film industry. All new young directors are smitten by what they see, and they are smitten by special effects and blockbusters and they all want to make those kind of pictures. OK, not all - 98 per cent. Maybe if I can get a situation in the United States where someone will work the way I want to work I'll do it. If not, I'll make another film in Europe... or I'll work in the theatre.'

In October he will direct his own play, Second-Hand Memory in New York. 'It doesn't have to be films,' he says of his future career. 'There's no film community I really care to be a part of.'

For the time being he perseveres, often to the consternation of his greatest fans. Why does he work so hard? 'Why not?' he replies with some bewilderment. 'What does one do in the world? I read books, listen to music, I watch sports, and there's plenty of time to work. What else would I do? When my grandmother was old she used to just sit by the window all day and look out at people. That seems to me boring. Life is a meaningless grind, so... you know... One film a year really isn't a big deal. There's plenty of time to do all this stuff, and plenty of time for my family and to go to the basketball game and take walks and go to dinner every night. Tonight I'll go see the dailies, yesterday's work, and hopefully it will be good. I'll go home, play with the kids, my wife and I will go out to a nice restaurant for dinner, go to sleep...'

Allen says he has all but given up on his ambitions to make a masterpiece, something that may be ranked against Kurosawa and his dead European idols. 'I've resigned myself,' he says. 'I'm functioning within the parameters of my mediocrity.' He maintains that he never sees any of his films after they leave the editing room, and that he remains vaguely unhappy with all of them; they never turn out the way he had hoped when he first sketched out his ideas in his bedroom. Surely not Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters ?

'You know, I tried to buy Manhattan back, because I was disappointed with it and I wished I could get them not to release it and I'd do a free film for them, which is what I offered them. But other people loved it, so I can't really tell myself.'

We walk towards some lunch. I tell him there is lamb today, and swordfish steaks. He says he may go for something more spartan. As he constructs a tiny mixed salad in a polystyrene bowl I wonder if he is glad that Manhattan appeared after all. 'Yes, because it was such a big success. I always think with films like that that I got away with something. I think, "It's interesting, they really don't see what the problem is..."'

Allen says he feels the same when people pay to hear him play New Orleans jazz on his clarinet. Last weekend he travelled with his band to perform three concerts in Germany, and this weekend he's in Spain and Monaco for a Red Cross gala in the presence of Prince Albert. 'I have improved, but I've improved within the parameters of no talent. I don't say this with false modesty. I'm a strict amateur, with no ear, but people come to see me because I'm a celebrity from the movies. I would starve to death in a week if I had to do it without being a celebrity. I go into these 2,000- or 3,000-seat venues and I sell them out. Jazz musicians who are truly miraculous go in and don't have anything near that kind of thing, so obviously it's got nothing to do with the quality of my playing.'

He fears that his fame may also work against him. 'I tried to write a novel,' he says. 'And I finished it. But I didn't want to have a novel out there that would be regarded as the work of a celebrity. I didn't want it looked down upon or embraced because it had a celebrity name. I wanted to write a novel that could hold its own with professional novels, and I didn't think that this could, so I have it in my drawer. I just didn't think it was good enough.'

His assistant joins us at the back of the catering bus, asking whether it's OK if a driver can bring someone to the set. 'That is OK,' Allen says, 'but I need something more to eat.' He holds up his bowl. 'These turned out to be cucumbers but I thought they were something else. Can I get a piece of bread, a nice dry piece of brown bread, a few more tomatoes?'

'A candy bar?' his assistant asks.

'No, I don't want a candy bar. If there's anything else in the vegetable family...'

I wondered about the title for his London film. He said that when he writes in his bedroom he too refers to his new movie as the Woody Allen Spring / Summer / Fall Project. 'It's never that I'm hiding the titles. When I have them, I always give them out. But when a film is over then I want to see what title feels best, and what title best leads the audience to that material. I've had all the people working for me trying to think of titles. Sometimes it comes right to the wire and we panic.' On one film he came up with the title Anhedonia. 'They thought it was too obscure a word; it means the inability to experience pleasure. People said, it's a lovely movie, but if they see the title Anhedonia they won't be interested at all. So finally, not even two weeks before we were ready to make the ads we thought, OK: Annie Hall.'

The appearance of one Woody Allen title each year has remained the only constant in a decade of flux. The last 10 years have been one of dramatic personal and professional upheaval for Allen: he split from his partner Mia Farrow and married her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. They adopted two children. Both his parents died. He endured a painful legal battle with his long-time producer Jean Doumanian. He even changed his jazz musicians.

He talks of these events with protective nonchalance, but once there was a period when his career, or at least his reputation, seemed over, those months when Mia Farrow accused him of child neglect and people assumed he was sleeping with his daughter. One thing was clear even before the courts ruled on custody: Woody could never really play Woody again.

'I never give it any thought,' he claims. 'It never meant anything to me. I just function, and the tabloids do their work, and it never had any direct bearing on my life. It didn't make my pictures do better or worse. It didn't make me happy or unhappy. As a newspaper reader you could read about it every day, but there was nothing really happening. If you were in it, it was kind of boring.

'I consider myself incredibly lucky,' he continues. 'I have an ideal marriage and great kids. My parents both died peacefully. I was disappointed that I had a falling-out with my former producer because she was a friend, but it's not a brain tumour - that's the worst thing that could happen to either one of us.'

Several times during our meeting Allen mentioned how grateful he was to have his health, and he did look for wood to touch. His father lived beyond 100, his mother to her mid-nineties, so the great screen hypochondriac has genes on his side. 'My hearing is a little worse,' he says, 'and my eyesight is a little worse, but I'm in reasonably decent physical shape. But growing older you never like, because it's sadder, because you're getting closer to dying, and who wants that?'

Last week Anything Else opened to the usual mixed reviews. It's an intriguing film, in which Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci take the roles Allen would once have written for himself. Allen plays a paranoid crank who may also be a visionary, a gag-writer who advises everyone to carry a rifle and water-purifying tablets and a torch that floats in water. It is a part that for once no one can mistake for autobiography: he drives a red Porsche and wants to move to LA. But it may be autobiographical in other ways. Anything Else is rather an optimistic picture, despite the apocalyptic jokes: the Jason Biggs character cleanses his life of pretence and disastrous relationships and moves on to some sort of contentment. I went to see it on the first Sunday evening following its release - and there were only about 30 others in the cinema.

The real buzz is for his next film, completed not long before he arrived in London and already being lined up for the autumn film festivals. He describes Melinda and Melinda as both a dramatic and comic film, telling the same story from two perspectives. It features Will Ferrell, Chloë Sevigny, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Radha Mitchell, the latter replacing Winona Ryder at the eleventh hour and tipped by Allen for great things. In WASP 04, Scarlett Johansson replaced Kate Winslet shortly before shooting began, a switch that required the character to change nationality. 'It was not a problem,' Allen says. 'It took about an hour.'

As we relocate for the fourth time I ask Allen what he enjoys most about filmmaking, and he says 'not the filming. I like the writing and the editing. When I get bored with writing, I can stop and finish the next day, and when I'm editing I have my own private room in New York, I have all my music, and it could be 95 degrees outside or zero, and I'm functioning.'

What he likes most about filming is the improvement actors bring to his scripts. 'There is a lot of improvisation. I make up things all the time, and I encourage the actors to do the same. The first thing I tell the actors is "Disregard the script - if you want to drop lines, change lines, improvise, lengthen or shorten something just do it and if you're getting anything wrong I'll tell you."' Brian Cox said recently that he found Allen a very fast director but the freedom Allen gave him was rather intimidating. 'Woody will say, "You know, it would be nice if I could recognise some of my own words, but that's OK..."'

Ten years ago, when I first met him, I reminded Allen of something he'd once written: he'd said that if he could live his whole life again he'd do it just the same but he wouldn't read Beowulf. I wondered what he'd change in reality. He said he would have liked to have entered a more physical profession, perhaps ballet dancing.

Ten years on, he says: 'It would be like having a re-shoot. Whenever I do a re-shoot for a scene the new scene is always better, and this would be the same with my life. I only wish I could do a re-shoot. I would rather that my talent had been a musical one. I would rather have been a great instrumentalist. Or when I did What's New Pussycat? in 1965, my first movie, in retrospect I regret not staying and living in Paris. Living in Paris was a very happy experience. I thought, "What if I never go home? What if I stay in Paris, I love this city." I wonder in retrospect if I would have enjoyed that more... making films in France.'

The sun was disappearing for him again; there was another career move to make. I asked him what he'd still like to achieve in his life. 'Besides death in sleep? I'd like to keep happy and play with the kids and be with my wife. I've never known great family life since I was an adult, but now I do and it's meaningful to me. I would like to keep healthy and make a great movie. I would love to be able to do that, but I don't think that's going to happen any more. If I keep working, I think it's possible that I could do a great movie some day by accident.'

* =bit about Jonathan Rhys Meyers

This interview was taken from the Guardian online

It was Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes'es 1998 tribute to the glam-rock era, that put Jonathan Rhys Meyers definitively on the map as the outrageous bisexual rocker Brian Slade.

With a smouldering sexuality reminiscent of a young Brando, the 27-year-old Irish actor has the pick of directors to work with. January 2005 (14th to be percise!) will see the release of Vanity Fair, Mira Nair's colourful adaptation of William Thackerey's novel of manners in the era of the Napoleonic wars, in which Jonathan plays George Osborne, love intrest of Amelia Sedley(Romola Garai) and cad extraordinaire.

Oliver Stone's epic Alexander follows in December with Rhys Meyers joining Colin Farrell, Val Kilmer abd Angelina Jolie in a cast and cres of 600 battling it out for the world domination. And then, of course there is WASP, the enigmatically dubbed Woody Allen Summer Project shot entirely on location in the UK (an Allen First), in which Rhys-Meyers will star alongside Scarlett Johannson and a clutch of British Actors.

Jonathan is wearing:

Red Goatskin biker Jacket by Dunhill, Vest and jewellery, Jonathan's own!

COLD PLAY

In his films Jonathan Rhys Meyers has visited Ancient Greece, scenic Sweden, and '70's glam-rock London. But he really just wants to go to Iceland. By Charlotte Rudge. Photographed by Emma Summerton.

"I basically play he biggest bastard in all of Brittish Literature, which is great, because who wouldn't want to play a jerk? I am a jerk!" So says the 27-year old Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers of his character in the new film version of Vanity Fair. I get the sense he means that only half jokingly. With his striking almost feminine looks, cocky personality, and genuine star quality, Rhys Meyers has "leading man" written all over him. But for the past few years he's cultivated a reputation as a strong character actor, showing up as everything from the kindly soccer coach whom Keira Knightley lusts after in Bend it Like Beckham to the surly cowboy in Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil (the movie that was suppossed to launch Jewel's film career) to spoiled, boisterous anti-hero Georgie Amberson in A&E's remake of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons.

"There's no method to how I pick my roles," he says "It's not like I say 'I want to go in this direction.' I just take what I get." In Vanity Fair, a big budget period piece helmed by Monsoon Wedding director Mira Nair and co-starring Reese Witherspoon, Rhys Meyers plays George Osborne, the loutish husband of Withersponn's best friend, played by Romola Garai. "He has a lot of money and no title, so he goes and marries this girl, just to piss off his dad. He's a real ass," he says gleefully.

Rhys Meyers has been acting since he was 15, when he appeared in a Brittish Knorr soup campaign. He then landed a starring role in The Dissapearance of Finbar, which was filmed in Sweden, on the icy border of Finland. "I loved it there - the freezing weather and all the funny people. I love the cold. I'm wierd like that: While everyone else is going to Florida or the Bahamas, my idea of happiness is to be in a log cabin in the woods in some snowy countryside."

He went on to get a splashy role as Michael Collins' assassin in the biopic of the same name, and earned a somewhat fanatical fanbase for Velvet Goldmine, where he played androgynous glam rocker Brian Slade. "That character wasn't a rock star, he was basically the '70's equivalent of The New Kids on the Block," he says derisively. Didn't he sing the songs for the film? "Yes, unfortunately I did. I like singing, and I do it on my own once in a while, but that was the only time you'll ever see me doing something like that. I find the whole thing really embarrassing."

He's already got Oliver Stone's Alexander in the can, and he's spent the past summer in London filming the next Woody Allen movie with Scarlett Johanssen, of which he says nothing but, "I can say nothing." About other upcoming projects Rhys Meyers remains similarly mum - "Dunno anything yet" - But he claims to be planning a move to Iceland (where he's never actually been), because it's delightfully cold, and he's fascinated by the Icelandic ancient pagan religion, asatru. "I have an interest in religion in general," he says "I've read the Bible and the Koran, and it's all saying the same stuff. Frankly, it's all bunk. But I like to learn about it."

Stylist: Colin Martin, grooming: Angela Deacon, Jonathan Rhys Meyers wears tank top by Calvin Klein, scaf by Nicole Farhi, and jeans by Diesel

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS INTERVIEW TALKS OF SEXUAL CONTENTS AND SWEAR WORDS!!!

In which a legendary photographer swaps wit and wisdom with Woody Allen's latest leading man, on the absurdity of celebrity, the irrelevance of education, and Michelangelo's jewerly line.

David Bailey is one of the world's most famous photographers, almost as well know sexual conquests (among them '60's model Jean Shrimpton and actress Catherine Deneuve) as for his timeless portraits. The inspiration for an antonioni's cult movie Blow up. Bailey epitomizes a certain kind of brash, working-class Englishman who used his Cockney cham to breach the British class system at a time of radical change.

As a young, 19-year-old actor playing the Bowie-esque Brian Slade in Todd Hayne's Velvet Goldmine, Jonathan Rhys Meyers demonstrated the kind intuitive flair for the camera that you see in the best of Bailey's subjects: when the two met some years ago there was an instant rapport that Bailey compares to working with the Stones or Jack Nicholson. With roles that fall in Mira Nair's Vanity Fair and Oliver Stone's Alexander, Rhys-Meyers is on a career high that has just been capped with a starring role, alongside Scarlett Johannson, in Woody Allen's 36th Movie. Just off a plane from Ireland, he dropped into Bailey's London studio where the two got talking.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers:David, this is the first time I've ever interviewed someone, so it's bound to be fucking shite. So with all that bollocks, go ahead and tell us about yourself.

David Bailey:What? [laughs]

Blackbook: It might be good to start off with how you met.

DB:You were standing on the corner of Dean Street was it?

JRM:When we first met?

DB:Yeah, and I said , "How Much?" [laughs] I fancied a bit of Irish takeout

JRM:And I said, Not on your fucking Nelly, fat chance."

DB:So what was the first question?

Blackbook:Well, maybe we should start with celebrities-

JRM:- There are no more great celebrities.

DB: Well, there's celebrity, and then there's talent. I've tried to avoid the so-called celebrities who don't actually do anything, but it's all changed. In the '60's, celebrities were Stravinsky or Picasso. Now it's some Big brother contestant. I mean, Andy [Warhol] got it wrong - it's not famous for 15 minutes: it's famous for 15 seconds.

JRM: Yeah, everyone craves attention, everybody wants to be admired. But being admired for just being famous is a slippery slope because you're going to stop being famous someday and then all your insecurities are going back again, without having actually done anything to develop belief in yourself, or a body of work that will stand beyond three front pages of the tabloids, and a story eight months later to tell everyone how you fucked it up.

DB: They spend six months in the tabloids, and the next six months in the Priory [a famous British treatment center for celebrity addicts].

JRM: Bailey said something very clever that I read on the internet: If you set out to be famous, you won't be, but if you go out and don't give a shit, and do what you want to do, you probably will. And that's it. People like people who don't need it. What I'd like, is essentially, is just to keep working up until I'm 50 or 60.

DB: How about 70

JRM: Well, I smoke cigarettes, and that knocks a good decade off [laughs]

DB: Well, think of me -it's getting close.

JRM: Fame is so transitory now that you can't keep up. When I was growing up as a kid, I always knew who was at number one in the charts, because it wasn't so media soaked. We're not really embracing people anymore. We're not letting people develop. We always want something new, new, new, straight away

DB: The English are the worst about new, new, new. Americans love their old heroes. They stick to them for years, but the English don't want something better, they want something new. Then you get people like Naomi [Campbell], who want lots of bodyguards, which only make you more vulnerable because they create an atmosphere that's conducive to violence. It's like in New York: If you walk down the street thinking you're going to get mugged, you're probably going to get mugged. I've been hit -people have come up to me and said, "are you David Bailey?" and I've said yes, and they've smacked me on the nose.

JRM: Fucking husbands probably [laughs].

DB: But you don't have to be famous to get laid anymore.

JRM: I fucking can't I haven't had good sex in years. I think it's an illusion.

DB: I'll lend you a Viagra -it'll be better, don't worry.

JRM:Viagra's grand. I'll get a stiffy all night and be running around the room vibrating. But no, women have never thrown themselves at me.

DB:I might sound like an old fart now, but it used to be exciting to chase. Now you don't have to chase. Now you don't have to chase. It's just there. It's lost the magic. Except for Jonathan, although if he has a bit of plastic surgery, makes the Woody Allen film, maybe he'll get laid more. [laughs] Seriously, though, I don't meet many people like Jonathan anymore. Where I instantly think, There's something special here. The last one was Johnny Depp, and before that maybe Jack Nicholson. And they don't have to be good-looking, either Damien [Hirst] has got it, Julian Schnabel's got it. You meet the guy and you think, "God, I like this ego," and you just click. It's like sex with a woman. When you're young, you just walk into room and think, "I know that woman and we're going to be together if we want to be together."

JRM: It's interesting what you said about ego, because everyone has got one -it's about the right type of ego, and if you have one that's relaxed, you can enjoy somebody else's.

DB: American actors can be difficult. If I ask Jonathan, he's always got an opinion. A lot of the Americans look at their PR to see what they think. Who gives a fuck! I hate all that. Publicists control everything now, and the magazines deserve it because they gave in to them. The editors should have said, "Go fuck yourself," because those people need the magazines as much as the magazines need them. And the magazines are stupid. You're sitting around waiting for Naomi -and I love Naomi by the way, but I wouldn't wait around for her -and they're screaming, "Where is the bitch, she's a monster, she's awful," and when she comes in they say "Oh Naomi, how wonderful to see you -What would you like? Would you like some champagne?" and two minutes earlier she was the biggest bitch in the world. So now Naomi thinks it's normal to mess up peoples lives. It's not her fault: it's because she's been treated like that since she was 17. It's a kind of disease -a celebrity disease. To want to be a celebrity is a disease. You need a doctor.

JRM: I've seen people getting frustrated and having a bitch and scream because they just want to get it all out, but I love that. A couple of times filming Alexander, Oliver [Stone] would blow up, and I really enjoyed it. He would be a really hard man, I think, to be good friends with -I don't think I could go around to his house for dinner -but he commands respect, because he comes in with all the guns blazing, and you want to ride him out. I don't think he's somebody who suffers fools easily. He likes strength, and strength doesn't always mean you're the strongest: it means that you can accept that you're not always the strongest, and then you can ask for help, and with that help you can go and create something fantastic.

DB: The problem is that we don't have enough lives. I'd like a life as an artist or filmmaker, but you only really get one chance at one thing. It was different during the Renaissance, when you could do many jobs. You could as Michelangelo to make you a pair of earrings. That's why I liked those guys, because they wouldn't be insulted if somebody asked them to make a pair of earrings. I hate people who take themselves too seriously -we're not changing the world. As much as I love Jack [Nicholson]; As Good As It Gets is not going to solve the war in Iraq; Damien's butterflies are not going to solve Afghanistan. We're great because we're poets, and the world needs poets, but we're not going to solve anything. Once you acknowledge that, you can get on with what you do best

JRM: I'm 26 now and I think I'm just getting that. My mid-20s were quite difficult, but now I'm becoming more relaxed with myself, and it's not that I really know what I want, but I certainly know what I don't want, I don't want to be afraid. I was afraid for such a long time -so much insecurity and so much fear. That's why I'd go to the pub with my friends, to have a couple of beers and try to forget about myself. I don't do that now -I'm not interested. I'm about to do a film with Woody Allen, and I've decided that I'm just going to enjoy the man. For 11 weeks I'm with a man who is one of the last auteurs. I mean, the moment I saw him, I knew I was comfortable with him. I try to be as comfortable as I can be because I was always very comfortable in my sexuality anyway -I was always rather androgynous. I didn't give a fuck if people thought I was gay or not. David said something very interesting that I read online, about liking people who take their creation from what's around them now, today, instead of trying to copy what was around 50 years ago. That's why David Bowie is so interesting, because he knows what in five or six years time the whole music industry is going to change, and they are not going to be ready for it. But Bowie was always slightly ahead of his time. The future is where art is.

DB: Only bad art get old-fashioned. There's nothing old-fashioned about Picasso, there's nothing old-fashioned about Hitchcock. If someone says something is old-fashioned, it was probably no good to start with. Seven Samurai is just as good now as it was 50 years ago. Citizen Kane is just as good. Richard Avedon's photographs are just as good. The Beatles "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" is not Cole porter. And "Michelle my belle." I mean, give us a break.

Blackbook: We're living in a time now where we fetishize the past. Are you in awe of the past that you helped immortalize?

DB: No, I hate the past. I think you should learn the past a bit before he went to Iraq -but I don't think you should plagiarize or copy it. The only way you can exist is to do things in your own time, and some people are unfortunate because their time runs out. The average photographer or painter usually has ten years at the top, but then you get others like Irving Penn who go on forever. Or actors like John Gielgud or jack Nicholson, who are timeless.

JRM: Malcolm McDowell, when he did a clockwork Orange.

DB: It's also about presence; some people don't have to be great actors, they just have presence. Kate Moss is not the most beautiful girl in the world, but she's like Jean Shrimpton. There's a democratic beauty there that you can't resist. Everybody loves her. Gays, straights, dogs, cats. And some people can be too good at what they do. Look at Meryl Streep -you long for her to make a mistake. She's perfect, like Ella Fitzgerald. You think, "Ella Fitzgerald, just sing off-key once in your life, just make a mistake, just let me know you're a human, don't be perfect." And I think you must not be scared of being bad -that was the great thing that Picasso had over Matisse: Matisse was never bad. Picasso was.

Blackbook: What were you afraid of in your mid-20's Jonathan?

DB: Being 30 [laughs]

JRM: Same thing that I've been afraid of all my life. Coming from a small city in Ireland, coming from a working-class background, I was taught in school to be afraid, I was taught to be less. When your peers and asults put you down like that, it can go either two ways. It can turn you into a fucking caterpillar, it can grind you into the ground, or you can become a butterfly and fly away from it. What am I afraid of? I'm afraid of letting myself be myself. You always worry about what the person thinks, or whether you have to conform to somebody else's idea. Now, and only now, I am starting to understand that…. Jesus, being myself is probably nicest thing I could possibly be, and it's definitely going to be the most interesting.

DB: It's the thing you know how to best.

JRM: Also, I used to think that in making films I had to put something of myself into it, but I've realized that I can do whatever I like with a role. In the last year I was the king of France in the 11th century, I was in the battle of Waterloo in 1815, and I was a member of Alexander the Great's army. Even though I never ever lived that, I sort of fucking did live it. I know what it's like to ride at the head of 50 men with a shield and a sword in my hand and have the battery and cavalry charging down on top of me. Also, it was Oliver Stone directing, so he just put eight cameras around me and said, "Kill, Kill" and people just went for it. And that's why Alexander's going to be much more interesting than Troy, because he did it in such a way the he let people be people, and he let emotions come out.
It takes a long time to discover yourself. Of course, I'm going to be a different person at 30 than I am now -hopefully I will have developed, but sometimes you go forward, sometimes you go back, that's life. Your parents and your teachers try to put you on a straight road, but Jesus -they didn't tell you about all the fucking intersections along the way.

DB: The excitement lies in never getting it right, if you're doing something perfectly you should stop doing it, and do something else. I quite like the idea of always being second best, because then you have something to strive for.

JRM: It's great being the underdog. It's great walking around the corner and not knowing if it's going to hit you there and then, instead of waking up in the morning and there are 80 scripts worth $10 million apiece on the doorstep. After meeting Woody, I came out of that room and I was hard! I was walking up the street with a cigarette and nobody could touch me, I was invincible. But Christ, if I can feel that way, and I can create that in myself, why can't I just turn it on? You can't, because you need other people's emotions -other people are very, very important. The more it's a team effort, the more you can create something fantastic. Like the Rolling Stones; they listened to all the good players, the players that the famous people were learning from. I think Keith Richards is the man of the Stones because he just loved playing his music, and he loved being a rock star, but he didn't dwell on it too much, you know. Keith was always just cool.

DB: The coolest guy in rock, but you don't do it because you want to be the best, you do it because you like doing it. It's the media that has told us that you've got to be a pop star, or a fashion designer, or a famous hairdresser, but why not be one of the best plumbers in the world, or be the best carpenter, because that's art.

JRM: That's the one thing I never got about film, the really big letdown, because you performance is usually in the director's hands, and you have to trust him very, very much.

DB: Well, trust is everything, that's the trouble. People don't trust artists enough; that's why you have corporate decisions all the time, and they fucking ruin everything, because they don't trust you. And you can't explain your process; it doesn't work that way. If you're building a brick wall, there's a rule to making it, but with photography or acting or art, there is no rules. You can't teach someone to be an artist. When I first saw Picasso it changed my life: He didn't teach me anything about painting or art, he just taught me there are no rules. George Bernard Shaw said he wasted ten years of his education at school.

JRM: I think that being kicked out of school at 14 was the biggest advantage for me in becoming an actor, but also in being somebody who could walk into any room with someone of any educational breeding. I used to hang around the streets an awful lot. That's how I learned to act. I used to seal off people, and you can't steal off people, or become a pool hustler, as I was, without playing a part. They don't prepare you for the real world at school; they prepare you for an exam at the end of it.

DB: That's what's wrong with education -they don't want people to be educated; they don't want to teach them imagination. The schools want dull children who are going to become lawyers and accountants. All those schools have never had a Michelangelo or a Damien Hirst, because they upset the apple cart too much.
Education is stupid; it's just 20 people in a room learning exactly the same thing, but when you get a rebel who says, "I think this a load of bollocks," they chuck him out. The only advantage to youth is being naïve and stupid, and it's because you're naïve and stupid that you break the rules. I mean, who wants to grow up being Tony Blair?

Moderated by Aaron Hicklin, photography David Bailey

Thanx to Vanessa/maridancingmoon website for the transcript, and for sending me the pages of the magazine to type out for me to have here. check out her site: HERE

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Jonathan Rhys Meyers is the latest Irish hottie to take Hollywood by storm, and as it turns out, he's just as devilishly charming as his fellow countryman and good buddy Colin Ferrell. Here, the actor, who's in the new movie Alexander, dishes about his womanizing ways

Whats's the most trouble you've ever gotten yourself into?
When a girl was texting me about how great I was [in bed] the night before and my girlfriend at the time was snooping into my text messages and saw it.

What do you do for fun?
I travel a lot. I have a house that I go to in South Morocco. It's beautiful right on the ocean. I don't swim, but it's great to look at. I also like sword fencing. I learned to do it for Vanity Fair.

How was it working with Reese Witherspoon in Vanity Fair?
Very nice. I was always astounded- how can she have the lead role, be pregnant, not have her hubby there for most of the time, and be nice to everyone?

What do you think is sexy?
Number one, she's gotta be smart. I also think athletic woman are very sexy too. Like my costar Angelina Jolie in Alexander. God she is sexy!

A woman looks hot wearing...
My shirt and nothing else, with a cup of coffee in my apartment on a Sunday morning, reading the sports section

What so you look for in a girl?
I like kind woman, but I'm not averse to having a one-night stand with a scorcher who's got a bit of an attitude.

Stud Stats
Hometown: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 27
Where you've seen him: Playing a Glam Rock star in Velvet Goldmine, and a sweet soccer coach in Bend It Like Beckham, and a snobby stud in Vanity Fair
Dating Status: Single-ish (he's actually dating Renna Hammer)

Interview by Lesley Goober, Picture by David Bailey

John Mortimer, writer, barrister and wit, entertained a group of us with a story about his daughter Emily's acting career.

Having just shot the as yet untitled 'Summer Project' with Woody Allen, Emily pronounced the American director terrifyingly difficult to read. From his semi-autobiographical oeuvre, she had expected a hands-on, neurotic control freak. Instead, Allen ventured off the set while many of the scenes of his latest movie were shot, preferring to sip latté at the local cafe. When shooting was over, he presented leading actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers with a biography of Byron, beautifully wrapped, with a hagiographic inscription along the lines of 'You are a great romantic figure - the next Lord Byron'. Another actor received an elegantly wrapped biography of Cary Grant, with a similarly enthusiastic inscription about how he had so much charm, he would be the next Cary Grant.

Emily, too, was handed a perfectly wrapped book. When her father asked why she hadn't yet opened it, she replied: 'I'm terrified that all he wrote in mine is "Best wishes, Woody".'

this was taken from The guardian.co.uk

Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the flesh delivers much the same impression as he does on screen. On the one hand, he is fragile and pretty, with a walk straight out of Zoolander, pointy cowboy boots scissoring one in front of the other, shoulders shimmying in his white vest and khaki jacket. On the other, there is a feral quality about him: he has the pallor of someone who is never long separated from a drink or a Marlboro Light, which it turns out he isn’t. For lunch, he orders a burger, which he snatches at like a wolf, and a Guinness he barely touches. You get the feeling that it’s an appropriate prop for a 27-year-old from Cork, and the first of many.

Image is a crucial ingredient of the Rhys Meyers appeal. He is extraordinary-looking, with cold blue-green eyes, high cheekbones and full, sulky lips that are happiest when in full pout. You may remember his sinister Steerpike in Gormenghast on the BBC, or his Bowie-esque turn in Velvet Goldmine. It isn’t hard to see why the makers of the upcoming big-screen version of Vanity Fair chose to cast him as the spoilt young blade George Osborne. Dazzling, vain and petulant is what Rhys Meyers does standing on his head, and he knows it. When I rave about his and his co-stars’ scarlet uniforms, he says: “I think I looked like the top of a Quality Street tin.” Then he adds: “There’s a point when James Purefoy rolls up his shirtsleeves and he’s standing there with his pool cue. When I saw it, I said, ‘You bastard, that is such a sexy pose. I wish I’d thought of that!”’

This could well be Rhys Meyers’s moment. Besides Vanity Fair, he is starring in the new Woody Allen, in which he plays the lead opposite Scarlett Johansson, with whom he claims to have flirted unsuccessfully. “Oh, Jesus, more’s the pity. I wasn’t Scarlett’s cup of tea. I don’t think she fancied me at all.” Before that hits the screen, he will appear alongside Colin Farrell in Alexander. The set was, reputedly, fairly wild: “That ’s what Oliver [Stone] wanted — that wildness, with all the boys. Not like Troy, where everyone had perfect make-up and perfect lighting. And 600 boys on a film set, you know ...” He cocks an eyebrow. “It was fun. Maybe a bit too much at one point.”

Rhys Meyers read for the part of Alexander’s best friend, but ended up being cast in the smaller, nastier role of Cassander. This was a disappointment to him, but not a surprise. From his earliest roles — he played the assassin in Michael Collins via the ruthless killer in Ang Lee’s civil-war epic Ride with the Devil — he tends to get cast as the bastard. It’s because I look like a bit of a bastard and I’ve got a darkness about me. That’s what Oliver said.”

I tell him that he doesn’t seem particularly dark at the moment. Actually, he’s sweet and funny, punctuating his conversation with eerily accurate impressions of Woody Allen, Colin Farrell and Malcolm McDowell — with whom he shares a slightly dangerous, edge-of-madness charm. “No,” he agrees, “but see me in a couple of hours and it might be a completely different story. Actors are the worst quality of person. If I had a daughter who said she was going out with an actor, I’d be, ‘Like f*** you are. Sit down there!’ Actors are naturally insecure. You have to be a little bit in emotional limbo, let’s just say. And I’m your sort of particularly moody actor.”

Discussing what it is that feeds his particular insecurities is a game that Rhys Meyers was happy to play once, but lately he has been burnt, and now his personal life is out of bounds. For the record, it is complex in the extreme. He was expelled from a Christian Brothers school at 14, ran away from home at 15 and was befriended by a man called Christopher Crofts, whose Cork farmhouse he now calls home. Crofts is gay, although he has a family, and has taken him in as a son in the hope, he has said, of allaying Rhys Meyers’s “terrible insecurities”.

I’ve had lots of therapy, Rhys Meyers freely admits. I believe that everyone has to do that at some point, and actors more than most. But, essentially, you have to work on it yourself. Nobody can give you a magic pill that makes you feel better.” The matter of relying on other people seems to be a particular issue for him. “I suppose I have been a bit of a loner, because I didn’t want to get involved with people and then lose them.”

Meanwhile, there are women falling over themselves to look after him his current girlfriend is Reena Hammer, whose father owns the spa at the top of Harrods even though he comes across as camper than the Scissor Sisters. There is a large mirror opposite where we are sitting, and every now and then, he surreptitiously narrows his eyes at his own reflection and thrusts out his lips. Once or twice, the light catches some glitter on his cheekbones, which he gleefully reveals is a shimmery face cream. “It does give quite a sheen, but I like that.”

I ask him what exactly he looks for in a woman (previous girlfriends have included Toni Collette, as well as a flirtation which he denies with the socialite Victoria Hervey). “I dunno ...” he hesitates, lighting another cigarette and looking put upon. “I like beauty.”

The more pressing question is how he will handle stardom if it comes his way in the next year. I’m 27, he says, without missing a beat. I’d like to think that I would be able to handle it as I get older.” Then, displaying disarming self-knowledge, he adds: “I’d like to be nominated for an Oscar, but not get it.” And win it a few years down the line, perhaps? Oh, God, yes, he laughs, hysterically. Jesus, yes!

photographs by uli weber

Taken from the daily Mail in Wednesday 22nd December 2004