Sorry - for some weird reason the whole link didn't connect properly! :o( Anyway, via cut & paste here it is:-

ISSUE 1688 Saturday 8 January 2000
Here's Johnny
Adapting Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' for the screen was always going to be a daunting task, especially the crucial casting of its villain, Steerpike. Then the director met Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a young Irish actor on the verge of stardom. By Murphy Williams
THE marmoset on loan for the day's filming is refusing to sit still, perhaps because everyone else on set is so hushed. Try as she might, the animal handler cannot get the poor thing to hold its position next to Jonathan Rhys Meyers on a rich red sofa. So she agrees to have it tied in place for a few minutes only. The monkey screams as this is done and Rhys Meyers nips off set, presumably for one of his many Marlboros. Then another animal sound can be heard: a terrifying, unplaceable howl from the soul that all present, apart from the monkey and me, ignore completely. It is Rhys Meyers. As he re-emerges from the darkness, the monkey has fallen into line. A quick thumbs-up from the star and 'ACTION'.

When director Andy Wilson came to cast the central role of Steerpike for Gormenghast, the BBC's four-part 'classic drama serial for the millennium' and its most expensive yet, he suspected Rhys Meyers might not be ready 'to handle that level of dialogue'. He had seen him shine as the corrupted pop star in Velvet Goldmine and romantic rebel in The Governess and admired his extraordinary looks, but Steerpike is a formidable literary character, a kitchen boy fuelled by rage who manipulates and destroys his way to power at the vast Gormenghast Castle.

The chosen actor would be performing alongside such luminaries as Ian Richardson, Zoe Wanamaker and Christopher Lee. For this 'Hamlet with knobs on', Wilson had Tim Roth in mind. Rhys Meyers, virtually unschooled and definitely untrained, hadn't quite earned his stripes. Then again, he bore such a neat resemblance to Mervyn Peake's drawing of Steerpike that Wilson decided to screen-test him. The actor didn't make it to the first meeting and stumbled into the next in, Wilson says, 'lovely riding boots, ridiculously tight, torn jeans and a peculiar white jumper hanging off his shoulder'. He looked down at his feet until the camera was switched on and then, pzzang! He then launched into a 'deeply intelligent' speech about Steerpike and what he would do with the part. Everyone was stunned.

Little has been heard of Meyers since late 1998, when he appeared in three films released on the same day. When I went to interview him then, he was lying on the floor of a hotel lobby, signing photographs. He opened a present from his cooing publicist, gave her a big cuddle, kissed one of his three younger brothers and looked tickled to see me, even though we'd never met. Right then, the 21-year-old pretty boy was in such demand he had spent maybe two months in his native Cork over the past four years, during which he made 11 films. The media buzz had started in Cannes that year, where his performance as the decadent Brian Slade in the glam rock tribute Velvet Goldmine had made him a hot property. Then there were roles in Ang Lee's civil war drama Ride with the Devil and Mike Figgis's The Loss of Sexual Innocence already in the can. Within days he was off to Italy to film Julie Taymor's Shakespeare adaptation, Titus, with Anthony Hopkins. It wouldn't be long now, it was agreed, before Rhys Meyers's wide, dazzling blue eyes, plenteous lips and chiselled, androgynous features were appearing on the walls of teenage bedrooms across the land. More than a year later, he has websites devoted to him and ranks 34th in Cosmopolitan's list of sexy men, but he's still not really A-list, due to a poor reception for all three films. With Gormenghast, this voracious talent may well get a decent bite.

Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast Trilogy' - Titus Groan (published in 1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959) - was always going to be a monster to film, deemed impossible by most. The problem was not just one of condensation (the story has a honeycomb of subplots) and practicality (the decaying castle contains endless vast and exotic rooms), but also of vision: Peake created an enclosed world with no outside influences, no set time or place and its own rules and rituals. Within its fantastical frame, however, lies a powerful allegory, which is why, after several have attempted to film the story (among them Terry Gilliam and Sting), the BBC has taken up the challenge, albeit concentrating only on the first two books.

Gormenghast itself, still one of Waterstone's top 100 bestsellers, can usually be found in the fantasy section, invariably adorned with a gloomy, gothic illustration. After the serial, that may change. The Trilogy (as it has become known - Peake would have written more books had Parkinson's disease not struck) is wild and far-fetched, true, but it contains no dragons or trolls and glows with vibrant colours. If anything it's a family saga, full of bawdy, rollicking humour - hence the casting of John Sessions, Spike Milligan, Stephen Fry - and excitement in its five murders, two tragic deaths, three seductions, a flood and a disfiguring fire. 'Every scene is a huge set piece: big number, big event, big stuff,' says producer Estelle Daniel. 'It's this most amazing thriller that lurches from huge crisis to action scene to comedy cameo, so you never see four people sitting in a room just talking.'

Walking around the mammoth sets at Shepperton Studios, one can't help thinking of the scale and organisation of the fictional castle. In the kitchens at Gormenghast there are 'two pastry cooks, an ancient poissonnier, a rotier with legs so bandy as to describe a rugged circle, a redheaded legumier and five sauciers' Likewise hundreds of craftsmen are toiling away for this production, converting three studios into 120 different rooms, hand-stitching countless costumes with the Gormenghast patterns and motifs, blowtorching furniture to make it look ancient, painting canvases as described in the text - doing everything possible, generally, to keep the aficionados among us happy.

Then there's the Groan family, played by heavyweight actors who have been around seemingly since television adaptations began: Ian Richardson, Fiona Shaw, Warren Mitchell. Lastly, there's Steerpike, or Rhys Meyers, now in the depths of perfidious, Machiavellian ambition, and the blood-curdling off-set howl we hear is Rhys Meyers's preparation for a demanding monologue that explains his character's uncontrollable wickedness.

The performance is mesmerising, revealing more and more layers with each take. In the space of two minutes, Rhys Meyers switches between a dozen moods, his mind visibly fizzing with self-pity, fury, menace. 'I'm cleverer than the others,' he broods to camera, and the director, who has been staring into the monitor in an obvious state of bliss, nods in agreement. 'That was f-ing genius,' he tells him when they've got the shot. 'Superb. Perfect.'

By this point in the 17-week shoot, Rhys Meyers's 'wild, creative energy' had won over the entire cast. Richardson, who plays Lord Groan, talks fondly of the gregarious scamp who hurtled down corridors jumping into his arms. 'The whole crew adored him too,' says Andy Wilson. 'It was as if they had a pop star among them.'

When I first met him, he had spent a gruelling day doing countless interviews and he casually asked for my phone number. I remonstrated, secretly pleased. 'But look,' he said lightly, pulling from his pocket a handful of scraps of paper. 'Everybody else gave me theirs. It's just that I don't know many people in London and I like to be shown a good time.' He never called. Six months on, Rhys Meyers still claims to long for a social life here. Maybe this is because, as Wilson says, 'He worked like a dog. When he wasn't filming, he'd be with the voice, sword or riding coach.'

In his dressing-room, I tease him about the phone number request. 'I think it's just a sympathy thing,' he offers, 'a big sexual frustration thing. I was 21 at that time. I'm 21 still, but over the past few months I've definitely discovered that I'm a sexual being.' His girlfriend, Chacha, is a university student in Dublin; before that he had a relationship with Velvet Goldmine co-star Toni Collette. Rhys Meyers is not one to squirm away from analysis. He has been devouring poetry and history books since he got kicked out of school at 15. I find myself gushing that he should become an academic. 'Acting's for me,' he says quickly. 'Probably because I'm not happy with myself.' Was he happy when he secured the part of Steerpike? 'God, no, no, no!' He corrects me. 'It's not part of the deal. You're not meant to be happy. How can you be, in this vulnerable job where you're constantly opening yourself to criticism?'


Challenging: 'Sometimes, trying to get a grip on Rhys Meyers's lyrically expressed but backflipping thoughts is like going down one of Gormenghast Castle's unbounded corridors'
He writes, sings, paints and has a suspiciously astute take on Steerpike: 'He's the polar opposite of Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot, who is one of the most beautiful characters ever written. With him, the world is rotten and he is pure. In this I am rotten and the world is pure.' He puts his acting skills down to 'poverty, pure and simple'. His musician father walked out when he was two, leaving Rhys Meyers to become what he calls 'an outrageous liar and thief as a kid. I was always play-acting to survive.' When he left school, frustrated, a friend told him he'd end up either sweeping the streets or owning them. He deliberately befriended older people 'because I needed to learn things from them'. He was soon spotted in a Cork pool hall by a casting director, and met David Puttnam as a result. 'The camera loves you,' he told the 15-year-old. 'And I love the camera,' came the pert reply.

Rhys Meyers left his council estate to live on a dairy farm outside Cork. A round of auditions followed, resulting in his first starring role, the low-budget Disappearance of Finbar. A small part in Neil Jordan's Michael Collins followed. ' "He came into the audition with amazing confidence",' says Rhys Meyers about himself, quoting from Jordan's diary entry.

' "Gifted obviously",' he grins.

Echoing the pattern of his life thus far, Rhys Meyers plays the star system by his own rules. 'What sets me apart is that I don't have to do a hell of a lot to play a part. I never prepare. What for?' he trills. ('That's @#%$ says Andy Wilson, 'he was always word perfect on set.') 'If I do, the performance is going to be boring. What I have to sell is honesty. If you give an honest emotion, you get an honest reaction and that's what it's about.' He doesn't bone up on a director's previous films, so he says, rehearsals are a chore, and learning lines is left till the last moment for maximum spontaneity. Which isn't to say Rhys Meyers doesn't do his utmost to get his delivery right, even if he still hasn't read Peake's work.

Sometimes, trying to get a grip on Rhys Meyers's lyrically expressed but backflipping thoughts is like going down one of Gormenghast Castle's unbounded corridors. Shooting Titus was a nightmare, he says, 'but I'm quite glad it was, because the fact of the matter is that maybe it will turn into a great film, and it taught me there's so much enjoyment in being negative, you know - whip, whip, whip - but it gets you nowhere.'

Is he worried by his ability to play a rotten man in a pure world so convincingly? 'Yes, I am. Inside I feel rotten like an apple, you know, when it falls off the tree and you pick it up in November. I try to be nice but sometimes I get these thoughts where I'm really nasty to people, and then I catch myself and wonder why I'm feeling that. I shouldn't have to.'

Rhys Meyers has all the raunchy, cheeky masculinity of a latter-day Albert Finney and the febrile, sensitive physicality of Peter O'Toole. A few months after the shoot, Wilson is no less impressed. 'It's Johnny's show, without question,' he says. 'He's an out-and-out star.' Johnny, though, is having none of it: 'People say to me, "What's it like," ' he mimics their whispers, ' "being famous? Must be great: parties, chicks, cars." But the thing is, you see, they do not exist.'

I believed you last time, Johnny, and I just about believe you this time, but next time, it just won't wash.