Jonathan Rhys Meyers makes history

BY MARSHALL FINE

Saturday, May 17th 2008, 4:00 AM

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a little-known hero in 'The Children of Huang Shi.'

Jonathan Rhys Meyers has gone from playing The King (Elvis Presley, on the 2005 miniseries "Elvis") to another king (Henry VIII, on Showtime's "The Tudors") to yet another historical figure hardly anyone remembers.

In "The Children of Huang Shi," opening Friday, Rhys Meyers is George Hogg, a British journalist who never found fame - yet is considered a hero in a small corner of China.

"When I read the script, I had no idea who George Hogg even was," says Rhys Meyers. "But a lot of people don't know. He never really got the opportunity to be well known."

In "Children," the 30-year-old actor portrays Hogg as an impetuous Oxford graduate who goes to Shanghai to make his name as a foreign correspondent.

When the Japanese invade China in 1937, Hogg goes to the embattled city of Nanjing to chronicle the carnage. Instead, he is captured by the Japanese and nearly executed, only to be rescued by Communist Chinese forces who hide him at a small orphanage full of victims of the Japanese.

Before long, Hogg has set up a school and has become both teacher and protector of the kids. But when the school becomes targeted by the Japanese army, Hogg must move his students on a 700-mile journey across dangerous mountain passes to take them out of danger.

"George Hogg went to China to tell a story, to become a Robert Capa-like figure," says Rhys Meyers, recalling the famed 20th-century combat photographer.

"[Hogg] was a boy who went to Oxford and arrived in China to find that it was different from anything he'd ever experienced. He found that life was waiting there for him. It gave him all the things he hadn't anticipated."

The same can be said of Rhys Meyers, a high-school dropout from County Cork, Ireland, who began acting on a lark at 16 as a way to put some money in his pocket.

"It was just something I wanted to have a go at," he says. "I don't have to make it any more complex than that. When I first started, I wanted a job. Over a period of years, I started to look at it differently. Now it's less about the money and more about the work itself. It's a learning process. You can't learn to be a painter without painting - and you can't learn to be an actor without acting."

With his sleepy eyes, pouty lips and killer cheekbones, Rhys Meyers could have easily slipped into playboy and lady-killer roles - as he did, literally, in Woody Allen's 2005 film "Match Point."

But Rhys Meyers has made it a point to diversify. He was a David Bowie-like rock star in 1998's "Velvet Goldmine," a tough-minded (though ultimately softhearted) girls' soccer coach in 2002's "Bend It Like Beckham," a soulful musician in last year's "August Rush" and, of course, Elvis Presley and Henry VIII.

While the latter two roles seemingly have very little in common, each presented a unique challenge to the actor, with Elvis the more difficult.

In "The Tudors," which has been renewed for a third season, Rhys Meyers gives Henry VIII a rock-star spin - young, sexy and headstrong - that is considerably different from the way the monarch has been portrayed in past films or even historical paintings.

"It's an approach from my perspective," says Rhys Meyers, adding that no one knows how Henry sounded or what he really looked like except for his portraits.

But everyone has a memory of Elvis - which made Rhys Meyers more than a little nervous when he first approached the role.

"It was very funny to wake up and go work with a crew of Elvis-loving Americans, with me being this Irish lad from Cork - it was kind of freaky," he says.

Yet Rhys Meyers must have done something right. He ended up being nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

"I thought it was possible that I was giving the worst performance in history," he says. "It's not like I ever felt, 'Dude, I was so on it today.' I mostly thought, 'I'm going to look ridiculous.'"