He might have been just another young Hollywood actor on the rise, but Jonathan Rhys Meyers chose to become a king — on TV. And doing so, the actor said, changed his life.
Four years ago, Rhys Meyers was coming off an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe win for playing Elvis Presley, and he had wowed audiences in Woody Allen’s Match Point and worked opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III.
He was among the hottest young actors in Hollywood, but the Irish-born Rhys Meyers traded his Tinseltown calling card to move to play King Henry VIII in Showtime drama The Tudors. Initially, Rhys Meyers thought the role might last only a year. He was wrong.
The show debuted its fourth and final season yesterday, as King Henry, by now in his late 40s, battles illness, takes his country to battle and, of course, marries and remarries.
The role has earned Rhys Meyers two Golden Globe nominations, and while he says it is now time to move on, he also feels the part made him a wiser and better actor.
“I’ve changed. My concepts have changed. Everything I’ve done up until now has been an apprenticeship,” he said. “Now, I think, at 32 years old, I’ve garnered enough experience to know what I don’t want. Now, I know what I do want.”
What Rhys Meyers wants, he said, is to work with directors who will challenge him, confront him when he’s not getting a role right, and always push him to be a better actor.
He said directors with whom he has worked in the past, such as Allen, Ang Lee (李安) and Robert Altman, have done just that, and the role of King Henry has only strengthened his abilities because of the many facets of the character.
Henry VIII reigned from 1509, when he was a teenager, until his death in 1547, at age 55. He was the second ruler from the House of Tudor, and his time on the throne was marked by the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church and by his six marriages.
The fourth season of The Tudors picks up with King Henry’s marriage to a young Katherine Howard and sees him through his final years as he becomes obese, ill and an increasingly cruel ruler.
But Rhys Meyers reckons there was always a method to King Henry’s madness, and learning how to tap into the monarch’s manipulative nature has helped improve his own acting skills.
“I must psychologically put everybody on edge ... that is an art, and I’ve had to learn that over time.” he said. “And as he gets older, you see more of the internal struggle inside him.”
Queen of US television Oprah Winfrey will try to recreate her daytime success in the evening with a new show she will host from around the world next year after ending her reign as daytime talk-show queen after 25 years, her network said last week.
The new series will be called Oprah’s Next Chapter and will take Winfrey to India, China and elsewhere, said the Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN, the Los Angeles-based cable TV venture she formed with Discovery Communications.
Scheduling and details for the new prime-time series have not been finalized, a network spokeswoman said, but the show likely will air two to three times a week and debut late next year. Winfrey will interview a range of people from celebrities to politicians to newsmakers in other countries.
The show was one of five new series announced by OWN. Others included a reality show about country singer Shania Twain, a one-hour series hosted by Winfrey’s best friend, Gayle King, and an arts series that will spotlight among others singer Lady Gaga and director James Cameron.
In other news, financially troubled Oscar winner Nicolas Cage has lost one of his personal treasures.
His 1,098m2 mansion in the upscale Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel-Air failed to get any bids at its US$10.4 million asking price this week, and ownership reverted to a foreclosing lender.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Cage originally tried to sell the property for US$35 million.
The newspaper quoted a real estate agent who called the interior design “frat house bordello,” with framed comic books on walls.
The mansion also had model train sets on raised tracks in some rooms, in addition to a central tower, a home theater and an Olympic-sized pool.
A spokeswoman for Cage was not available for comment on the report.
Cage, the star of the National Treasure action franchise, filed a US$20 million lawsuit in October against his former business manager, accusing him of harming his personal finances.
The manager, Samuel Levin, later filed a countersuit against Cage that accused him of overspending.
Cage a year ago sold his castle in Germany and told a magazine in that country that tough economic times forced him to make the sale.
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