British actor of stage and screen. One of the most interesting performers to emerge over the last few years, Irons appears to be forever doomed to play the stiff-upper lip Englishman. He first came to notice in the TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” and starred opposite of Meryl Streep in the Hollywood film, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” both in 1981.
The son of an accountant and a homemaker, Irons was the youngest of three children and attended prep school from age seven. Upon his rejection from veterinarian school after graduation, Irons studied acting instead at the Bristol Old Vic, and made his stage debut in the ’70s musical “Godspell.” Later he played various roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company and occasionally worked on television. In 1981, when Waugh’s novel was released in America on public television, Irons turned heads in his stunning portrayal of the character Charles Ryder. “I think Charles Ryder was the me I’d been educated to be if I hadn’t become an actor,” he said.
Irons made his debut on Broadway in 1985 opposite Glenn Close in “The Real Thing,” winning a Tony. The same couple appeared on screen five years later in “Reversal of Fortune” which won Irons an Oscar for Best Actor. When asked about his choice of roles, he replies, “I do, I know, present a man who appears to be thinking.”
Irons has subsequently appeared in the controversial remake of “Lolita” and “Kafka.” He’s never been tempted to move to Hollywood and doesn’t plan to. “I’ve always felt that living in Los Angeles would be a bit like living over the shop. I’m not one these people who enjoys being at parties being asked what my next project is. I think you pay a price for that. It probably means I will never be a big star or quite as rich, but that’s all right. Whatever I have as an actor is because of where I come from and what I am. And to move somewhere so different as Los Angeles would worry me.”
Irons’ early marriage to Julie Hallam ended in divorce. His second wife of over 20 years, Sinead Cusack, played opposite Irons in two of his more recent films, “Stealing Beauty” and “Waterland.” They make their home in the English countryside with their two sons, Maximilian and Samuel, the latter of whom co-starred with Irons in “Danny, The Champion of the World.” Reflecting on his profession, Irons personifies British reserve, “Actors often behave like children, so we’re taken for children. I want to be grown up.”
Link to Wikipedia biography