Irons was born in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, the son of Paul Dugan Irons (1913–1983), an accountant, and Barbara Anne Brereton Brymer (née Sharpe; 1914–1999).[1] He has a small amount of Scottish and Irish ancestry, tracing the latter back to County Cork. Irons has a brother, Christopher (born 1943), and a sister, Felicity Anne (born 1944). He was educated at the independent Sherborne School in Dorset from 1962 to 1966. He was the drummer and harmonica player in a four-man school band called the Four Pillars of Wisdom.[2]
The role which brought him fame was that of Charles Ryder in the television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1981). First broadcast on ITV, the show ranks among the greatest British television dramas, with Irons receiving a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.[4]Brideshead reunited him with Anthony Andrews, with whom he had appeared in The Pallisers seven years earlier. In the same year he starred in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman opposite Meryl Streep.
After these major successes, in 1982 he played the leading role of an exiled Polish building contractor, working in the Twickenham area of southwest London, in Jerzy Skolimowski's independent film Moonlighting. The film was widely seen on television and Irons's performance extended his acting range. On 23 March 1991, he hosted Saturday Night Live on NBC in the US, and appeared as Sherlock Holmes in the Sherlock Holmes' Surprise Party sketch.[5]
In 2005, Irons won both an Emmy award and a Golden Globe award for his supporting role in the TV mini-series, Elizabeth I. A year later, he was one of the participants in the third series of the BBC documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?.[6][7] In 2008, he played Lord Vetinari in Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, an adaptation for Sky One.
One of his best known film roles has turned out to be lending his distinctive voice to Scar in The Lion King (1994) serving as the main antagonist of the film. Irons has since provided voiceovers for three Disney World attractions. He narrated the Spaceship Earth ride, housed in the large geodesic globe at Epcot in Florida from October 1994 to July 2007.[24] He was also the English narrator for the Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic at the Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris.[25] He voiced H. G. Wells in the English language version of the former Disney attraction The Timekeeper. He also reprised his role as Scar in Fantasmic. He is also one of the readers in the 4x CD boxed set of The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, produced by Marc Sinden and sold in aid of the Royal Theatrical Fund.[26]
He serves as the English language version of the audio guide for Westminster Abbey in London.[27] Irons has served as voice-over in two big cat documentary films by National Geographic: Eye of the Leopard, which was released in 2006,[28] and The Last Lions, which was released on 18 February 2011.[29] Between 2009 and 2012 he narrated the French-produced documentary series about volcanoes, Life on Fire. The series premiered on PBS in the United States on 2 January 2013.
In 2008, two researchers, a linguist and a sound engineer, found "the perfect [male] voice" to be a combination of Irons's and Alan Rickman's voices based on a sample of 50 voices.[30] Coincidentally, the two actors played brothers in the Die Hard series of films. Speaking at 200 words per minute and pausing for 1.2 seconds between sentences, Irons came very close to the ideal voice model, with the linguist Andrew Linn explaining why his "deep gravelly tones" inspired trust in listeners.[30] He recited the spoken sections, most notably 'Late Lament', for The Moody Blues 50th Anniversary Tour of 'Days Of Future Passed', and also appears on the video presentation.[31]
In 2009, Irons appeared on the Touchstone album Wintercoast, recording a narrative introduction to the album.[35] Recording took place in New York City, New York in February 2009 during rehearsals for his Broadway play Impressionism.
At the 1991 Tony Awards, Irons was one of the few celebrities to wear the recently created red ribbon to support the fight against AIDS, and he was the first celebrity to wear it onscreen.[36][37]
In 2004, he publicly declared his support for the Countryside Alliance, referring to the 2004 Hunting Act as an "outrageous assault on civil liberties" and "one of the two most devastating parliamentary votes in the last century".[40]
Irons is an outspoken critic of the death penalty and has supported the campaign by the human rights organisation Amnesty International UK to abolish capital punishment worldwide.[41] Among his arguments in 2007, Irons states the death penalty infringes on two fundamental human rights, the right to life, and no-one shall be subject to torture, adding that while the person accused of a crime may have abused those rights, to advocate the same be done to them is to join them.[41]
He supports the legal availability of abortion, having said that he believes that "women should be allowed to make the decision". Nevertheless, he agreed with a pro-life advocate and was quoted as saying that "the church is right to say it's a sin".[42]
In 2013, he caused controversy for an interview with the HuffPost, in which he said he "doesn't have a strong feeling either way" on gay marriage but expressed fears that it could "debase" marital law, suggesting it could be manipulated to allow fathers to pass on their estates to their sons without being taxed, because he supposed incest laws would not apply to men.[43][44] He later clarified his comments, saying he was providing an example of a situation that could cause a "legal quagmire" under the laws that allow same-sex marriage, and that he had been misinterpreted. He added that some gay relationships are "healthier" than their straight counterparts.[45] He said in a BBC interview that he wished he had "buttoned" his lip before asking if its legalization would see fathers marry sons.[46][47]
He is the Patron of the "Emergency Response Team Search and Rescue" or "ERTSAR" which is a life saving United Nations recognised disaster response search and rescue team and registered Charity. It is based in his home County of Oxfordshire, England. He supports a number of other charities, including the Prison Phoenix Trust in England, and the London-based Evidence for Development which seeks to improve the lives of the world's most needy people by preventing famines and delivering food aid, for both of which he is an active patron.[49][50][51]
In 2010, Irons starred in a promotional video,[52] for "The 1billionhungry project" – a worldwide drive to attract at least one million signatures to a petition calling on international leaders to move hunger to the top of the political agenda.[53]
In November 2015, Irons supported the No Cold Homes campaign by the UK charity Turn2us.[57] Irons was one of nearly thirty celebrities, who included Helen Mirren, Hugh Laurie and Ed Sheeran, to donate items of winter clothing to the campaign, with the proceeds used to help people in the UK struggling to keep their homes warm in winter.[57]
Irons married Julie Hallam in 1969, but they divorced later that year.[1] He married Irish actress Sinéad Cusack on 28 March 1978.[1] They have two sons, Samuel "Sam" Irons (born 1978), who works as a photographer, and Maximilian "Max" Irons (born 1985), also an actor. Both of Irons's sons have appeared in films with their father. Irons's wife and children are Catholic; Irons has also been described as a practising Catholic[64] and has stated:
I don't go to church much because I don't like belonging to a club, and I don't go to confession or anything like that, I don't believe in it. But I try to be aware of where I fail and I occasionally go to services. I would hate to be a person who didn't have a spiritual side because there's nothing to nourish you in life apart from retail therapy.[65]
In March 2016 Irons told the BBC Radio 4Today programme that he would refuse an invitation to the palace to accept a New Year Honour should it ever arrive: "I became an actor to be a rogue and a vagabond so I don't think it would be apt for the establishment to pull me in as one of their own, for I ain't."[70]
^Mark Nicholls (2012). "Lost Objects Of Desire: The Performances of Jeremy Irons". p. 8. Berghahn Books,
^Stanley Green's Encyclopaedia of the Musical, Cassell (1976)
^Dempster, Sarah; Dent, Grace; Mangan, Lucy; Lawson, Mark; Wollaston, Sam; Vine, Richard (19 July 2015). "The top 50 TV dramas of all time: 2-10". The Guardian. London.
^Trowbridge, Simon. The Company: A Biographical Dictionary of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Oxford: Editions Albert Creed (2010) ISBN978-0-9559830-2-3
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