Jeremy Irons was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset. A student
with the Bristol Old Vic, moved to London in 1971 and made his West
End stage debut opposite David Essex as John the Baptist in the rock
musical Godspell, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1984
he won a Tony award for his Broadway performance in Tom Stoppard's The
Real Thing opposite Glenn Close. His role as Charles Ryder in the acclaimed
television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1981)
made him a household name. His film debut came in Nijinsky (1980). In
Jerzy Skolimowski's low-budget Moonlighting
(1982) he played a Polish labourer stranded in England during the time
of Perestroika in his home country. In 1988 he starred in the dual role
of mad twin physicians in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. Irons won
a Best Actor Oscar for his witty performance in Reversal of Fortune
(1990).
In Louis Malle’s Damage (1992), based on the novel by Josephine
Hart, Irons played a British government official who falls madly in
love with sons his latest flame. He then appeared in a couple of dismal
Hollywood blockbusters; the third in the Bruce Willis Die Hard series,
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) and the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle
The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). After appearing as Humbert Humbert
in Adrian Lyne’s controversial remake of Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita (1987), Irons has appeared in a mixture of TV dramas, art-house
films and the occasional blockbuster like Ridley Scott’s Kingdom
of Heaven (2005). He is married to Irish actress Sinéad Cusack.
