Actor puts himself on deliberate path to superstardom
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“The more power you gain, the more able you are to steer your career in the direction you would like it to go,” actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers says.
When Details magazine boldly declared in its December issue that Jonathan Rhys Meyers “Wants to rule Hollywood,” somewhere the Irish actor was left grinning in ambitious approval.
It’s true, the 30-year-old Mission Impossible: III and The Tudors star will confirm, he has attempted to set himself on a deliberate path to superstardom.
A leading role in the new film August Rush as lovelorn guitarist Louis Connelly is just another example of his purposeful steps towards household name recognition.
But as the Golden Globe-winner (Elvis) points out, such bold ambitions are only attainable after years of grunt work on the fringes of Hollywood. His began at the age of 17.
“I think you can make particular choices about where you want to go once you’ve gone through the initial audition period,” Rhys Meyers told Metro recently in New York City.
“The more power you gain, the more able you are to steer your career in the direction you would like it to go. You have to put the ground work in and you have to be lucky to get a bit of success before people start really hearing you. When you’re a young actor, you get what you get.”
Until that success arrives, Rhys Meyers points out that like so many young actors, he made the audition rounds praying for roles and taking virtually anything available to gain recognition.
That initial breakthrough came in 1996 with a role in the historical drama Michael Collins, but more notably when Rhys Meyers landed the lead role in Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine playing glam rocker Brian Slade.
He’s quick to remind that with time not only do an actor’s abilities need to evolve, but so too does his image.
“I was almost poetic-looking in a way, and a little bit pretty,” he says of his appearance in the past.
“That’s good when you’re 21- and 22-years-old because you can get roles. You cannot be that at 28 and 29. You’ve got to be a man. Therefore, you have to physically change and transform yourself. One thing is going to work for a while, but you have to be able to adapt. You have to have a certain chameleon element.”
This chameleon has also had his share of off-screen challenges, namely stints in rehab this year for a reported alcohol addiction and an arrest on Sunday in Dublin airport for drunk and disorderly conduct.
Those problems aside, Rhys Meyers has never had trouble turning heads, a reality he takes in stride.
“I look the way I look because of my mom and dad at the end of the day,” he says. “It’s helped me, it’s helped me to get my roles and stuff like that if people view you as a sex symbol. But the most extraordinary people get viewed as sex symbols. There’s a politician in Ireland at the moment that’s a sex symbol, but if you saw him there’s not a sexy bone on that man’s body.”
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August Rush opens today.
