"I separate my rubbish. I encourage people not to use these terrible plastic bottles. I pick up my dog’s sh*t," Jeremy Irons enumerates his efforts to be more eco-friendly. The British Oscar winner comes to TV April 3 in "The Borgias," Showtime’s nine-episode biography of the notorious Italian Renaissance family headed by Irons’ character Rodrigo, who became Pope Alexander VI."It was a time quite unlike the time we live in today," Irons sets the scene, "There were murders in Rome every night, poisonings most weekends. There was incest here and sodomy there. Life was very violent, very visceral. Life was cheap. Torture was commonplace. People carried swords, daggers, poison rings."
He found Rodrigo, a married man with many mistresses, and a schemer of the highest order, to be an enigmatic, riveting figure. "You can’t play someone like that and think, ‘I’m a bad person.’ Most of the time I thought I was quite a good guy. But George Bush probably thought he was quite a good guy, too. I mean, they all do. Stalin probably liked himself," Irons muses wryly. "He’s fallible — religious leaders do have feet of clay, and power corrupts. We see the contradictions within him and that’s why he’s fascinating to play."
In the fall, Irons returns to a contemporary setting in "Margin Call," a thriller with Kevin Spacey and Paul Bettany set during the Wall Street financial crisis in which he plays "a guy that’s trying to get out of trouble pretty quickly, as they all were at that time." For his next project, he’s eyeing a project set in 1920 in Europe, based on a novel. "It’s about love. That’s all I can tell you," he says. "I hope to be making it in May if it all comes together."
"Stalin probably liked himself," Irons muses wryly." LOL
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Via Jeremy Irons: ‘Borgias’ star talks waste
