Jonny as Dracula

Right  

http://watch.accesshollywood.com/video/nbcs-dracula-first-look/2733092206001?utm_source=accesshollywood.com&utmmedium=referral&page=96

Photo's from Dracula Press Launch in London:

Photos from Dracula Launch in Christchurch Cathedral Dublin:

And this is THE best picture.

And here is an article in Indepedent.ie. Apparently, Jonny is also a producer for Dracula.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/rhys-meyers-swoops-in-for-dracula-countdown-29651487.html

Very interesting article about Jonny. You can see it here. Enjoy  

http://www.buzzfeed.com/h2/bfam/nbcdracula/18-reasons-why-eternity-with-jonathan-rhys-meyers-wouldnt-be

Great photos, he looks very good !

Love the pants.  

Dracula NBC promo. Jonny looks very elegant and handsome. Thanks to JRHYSMEYERS.COM  

Jonathan Rhys Meyers: A regular guy


The 'Dracula' star talks America, the red carpet and reading material.


Five things you should know about Jonathan Rhys Meyers, 36, as he takes on the iconic leading role in Dracula, NBC's new drama debuting Oct. 25.

He's fond of America: "I don't understand why Europeans are so rough on Americans; there are an immense amount of smart and lovely people in your country," the Dublin-born star says.

He's not a sharer: "No Instagram pictures of me on a bloody boat with a Victoria's Secret model."

And he hates the red carpet: "A wall of photographers is like an assassination. ... I'm never particularly comfortable."

He's an avid reader: "The feeling of paper is still attractive to me." Recent read: Embers by Sandor Marai.

He doesn't keep up with the Joneses: "I don't care if my neighbor has a Bentley," says Meyers, who doesn't even own a car.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/weekend/entertainment/2013/10/18/jonathan-rhys-meyers-a-regular-guy/3006041/

Interview with the vampire: Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Dracula
Jonathan Rhys Meyers has 'something of the night about him' – so he's well cast as Dracula. Sarah Hughes meets him

The first time I meet Jonathan Rhys Meyers he has been filming all day in 40-degree heat with ice packs strapped underneath his three-piece suit to stay cool. Playing the lead in a new version of Dracula, an ambitious co-production between the US network NBC and the UK's Sky Living, has meant nearly seven months' solid work, and he is understandably not overwhelmed about filling in his time before flying to London for a short break with interviews.

That's not to say he isn't polite and informative – he is. But there's an unavoidable sense that he'd rather be anywhere but here, no matter how detailed his answers.

Flash forward three months, and the 36-year-old Irishman seems as rejuvenated as Count Dracula after a long drink of blood. “It was very gruelling, but that's the job,” he says before acknowledging that he might not have been the easiest of company during filming. “I didn't break character for seven months. So I would work in the day and then I'd go home and read a little, meditate and go to sleep and then wake up the next day and do the same thing all over again.”

It didn't help that this version of Dracula requires Rhys Meyers to play not just the vampire but also Vlad Tepes, the man Dracula once was, and Alexander Grayson, the charming US industrialist he is now pretending to be. “It was quite isolating, because of the nature of the character,” he admits. “But then good things are never easy, and I like this, it's a good thing.”

Whether you agree with this assessment will depend on how high your tolerance is for sumptuous dramas featuring evil aristocrats, naïve young gels and tormented monsters seeking vengeance. Mine is pretty high and I thoroughly enjoyed Dracula's opening episode, which pays homage both to Bram Stoker's gothic source material and to the adaptor Cole Haddon's comic book roots, with a bold colour-filled vision. Its world is one in which barbs are traded with a smile, and female huntresses practise their sword skills in front of caged vampires, and it probably owes more to the Hughes brothers' unfairly maligned 2001 Jack the Ripper drama From Hell than Francis Ford Coppola's sedate, stylised 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula.

“I didn't want it to be staid,” says Rhys Meyers. “I wanted to play someone vicious and vengeful and sometimes kind … because the tiny bit of him that's human – that's the story, not the monster.”

There is something raw and a bit vulnerable about Rhys Meyers, a sense that he feels everything strongly. Asked whether he worries about the comparisons to Draculas past, who include Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman and Willem Dafoe, he admits that he had doubts: “I did think: 'Am I'm really going to be able to do this?' Because I'm only going to get compared to every actor before me…”

He believes that the key to his Dracula is that “he'd like to die … we all fear death because it's the unknown. But if you had to live for that length of time, you really would wish for death; for peace. I think that the length of human life is what makes it so exciting, that fact that it's going to end.”

Similarly, Dracula/Vlad/Grayson's appeal is that “He's the hero, but the hero must die otherwise he's not the hero. Heroes don't get to go home and have the prom queen. Heroes die on the beach.”

That might seem a somewhat fatalistic outlook, but death is very much on Rhys Meyers' mind: both his best friend and grandfather died while he was filming in Budapest. “I went back and put them to rest, and then I took all that pain and emotion and shot it out into the cameras as much as possible. The thing is, sometimes life just is that conflicted and that painful. And that's OK because I've had lots of joy and lots of luck in my life. Yes, I've had a little bit of pain, but I've also had lovely people around me, good friends and family.”

Certainly, Rhys Meyers is aware more than most of fame's vagaries. For there was a time when he was the next big thing; the boy most likely. An eye-catching turn in Todd Haynes's Velvet Goldmine in 1998 bought him to Hollywood's attention, and roles in Ang Lee's Ride With the Devil and Julie Taymor's Titus followed. Yet A-list recognition never quite arrived, and his highest-profile role remains the unlikely but hugely charismatic Henry VIII in the US cable television show The Tudors.

There's no doubting his talent – he was heart-breaking as the troubled brother of Clive Owen's gangster in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, compelling as a social climber in Woody Allen's uneven Match Point, and perfectly cast as the hip-shaking king of rock 'n' roll in the 2005 television movie Elvis – yet his unearthly looks can be a curse as well as a blessing. Certainly, it's easier to believe in him as an otherworldly emissary than as the boy next door. As Dracula's producer, Christopher Hall, joking remarked: “Jonny has something of the night about him.”

Rhys Meyers doesn't appear too affronted. “Yes, I'm cast as a vampire because I look like one…” He laughs and then adds: “No, I can convey conflict because I'm a guy who lives in conflict a lot of the time. It's not something I have to search for. That sense of looking for some sort of peace, some sort of balance, is evident regardless of what I do.”

At this point it's hard not to be reminded of Rhys Meyers' own demons. His problems with drink have been well documented, his most recent stint in rehab came in 2011, and when he says of Dracula, “I see him as somebody affected with a terrible illness that has no cure … I absolutely believe it's a metaphor for addiction”, it is with a sense of self-knowledge hard won.

He recently finished work on the thriller, Panda Eyes (also known as Another Me), and plans to take the rest of the year off: “I just want to go out in the world, because you can't go from film to film to film without going out and living your life. So I'm going to paint and write music and just …”

“Relax?” I suggest with a hint of disbelief. He smiles. “Correct. I'm just going to relax for a little while.”

'Dracula' starts on 31 October at 9pm on Sky Living

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/interview-with-the-vampire-jonathan-rhys-meyers-in-dracula-8887121.html

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/346246/Dracula-actor-Jonathan-Rhys-Meyers-I-am-bloody-good-at-sex-scenes

Dracula actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers: 'I am bloody good at sex scenes'
LOVE, revenge and a bloodthirsty vampire bringing terror to a community on screen. It can only mean one thing – Dracula.

The horror legend has been brought to life once more and is set to take a massive bite out of British telly fans this Halloween.

Oozing glamour and bucket-loads of sex appeal, Sky Living’s new version of the iconic story sees Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the title role.

And with his silky smooth voice and piercing eyes, he’s the perfect person to play the tortured soul.

Jonathan brings a level of intensity and sexual magnetism to the role that will make fans fall in love with him, loathe him and envy him all at the same time.

“Was I born to play Dracula? I think my physicality lends itself to that type of character,” says the 36-year-old.

There’s also something else that lends itself well to this part – Jonathan’s past performance between the sheets on screen in the explicit BBC series The Tudors.

Thanks to that show, he’s no stranger to sex scenes, which is probably a good thing as in the new series Dracula has his fair share of the ladies.

So what does Jonathan think about romping with the likes of gorgeous Victoria Smurfit, 28, who plays Lady Jayne Wetherby?

“I find the sex scenes very easy,” he whispers in a playful Irish tone that instantly draws you in.

“You have to understand that when you’re doing sex scenes the whole world gets blurred out and the only person who exists is the woman you are making love to.

“It’s one of the gifts I think I have been blessed with as an actor.

“If I am doing a sex scene I can really, really – for those moments – totally fall in love with the actress that I am working with.

“I find them incredibly beautiful in every sense.

“Afterwards I can pull out of the character and we become friends again.

“But for those moments I’m so in love with her and I see everything that is beautiful about her.”

The Irish-born actor’s passion is not just confined to love scenes. He is so dedicated to making sure he plays his part well that he refused to step out of character during the entire seven-month shoot in Budapest.

He even picked the most Gothic building in the Hungarian capital to spend some time in while filming the show.

“I’ve switched off now. I’m no longer the Prince of Darkness,” Jonathan admits.

“But for seven months I would go home to the most Gothic place I could possibly find and sit on the balcony as still as possible and then eat a little.

“I never really broke out of character for all that time. I wanted to be as authentic as possible.

“There were some times during the production that I felt isolated, lonely and as sad as the character.

“But that’s natural. I remember having a conversation with Daniel Day-Lewis and he does the same thing too.

“He immerses himself in his characters which is why he does so few of them. It takes an awful lot out of you.

“I lost my grandfather and one of my best friends during this production as well, so I had to go back for funerals.

“I had to take all of that emotion and put it on to the camera as much as possible.”

Jonathan is keen to stress that his Dracula is nothing like those that have come before him from the likes of Christopher Lee or Gary Oldman.

His version is three people in one – the 15th Century aristocrat Vlad Tepes, cursed to live as the vampire Dracula, and smooth-talking American businessman Alexander Grayson.

This is the character Dracula poses as when he’s brought back from the dead and moves to Victorian London to get his revenge on those who cast the initial curse.

But Vlad also wants to wreak havoc on those who took away the thing he loved the most – his wife.

There is only one thing that can upset his mission. Dracula meets a woman who poses a striking resemblance to his dead wife and falls hopelessly in love with her.

Jonathan says: “Playing an out-and-out monster would be easy, it would be bliss. He would go around feeding his addiction and be high all the time.

“But it’s that tiny bit of human in him that starts the conflict.

“He’s driven by love, but also by the pain and suffering of watching his wife being burned alive in front of his eyes.

“Even if it takes centuries, he will tear them limb from limb.”

While Dracula may be different this time around, there’s still one similarity – his thirst for blood.

Jonathan says some of the “feeding scenes” are so gruesome he even shocked himself.

“It’s emotional when you do something like the feeding scenes,” he says as he crosses his arms, like he’s protecting himself from the memory.

“I find it very intense myself. But my main concern is looking after the actress as much as I can so they feel comfortable – that this is a fantasy world and not real.

“They can be quite scared because they are in a very vulnerable position.

“There’s one scene when I feed on this girl and it’s so vicious that I annihilate her.

“It can be quite scary having someone biting into your neck, and I was vicious with it.

“Once I feed, I turn my head and spit the blood into the air so it all falls over us.

“I caught myself in a mirror and I was covered in blood and I thought to myself ‘Wow, that’s not natural.’ But that’s the job.”

As well as getting the chance to bring a different version of Dracula to life, Jonathan says he’s pleased that his version of the iconic role is in a TV series rather than a movie because he believes it can have a bigger impact on his audience on the small screen.

He explains: “It’s not that hard to keep someone interested for an hour and a half on the cinema screen but to keep someone interested for 10 hours at home... that’s a different story.

“But that’s how television is different now. I don’t need to be in the theatre, I can come into your living room.

“I become part of your life, part of your family, part of your furniture even.”

And if you do decide to let Jonathan and his blood-thirsty alter ego into your living room, then we promise you won’t regret it.

● Dracula starts on Sky Living, October 31, 9pm.

And another interview

http://www.list.co.uk/article/55781-jonathan-rhys-meyers-dracula-is-very-different-to-twilight/

Jonathan Rhys Meyers takes a bite out of classic ‘Dracula’ role
By Robert RorkeOctober 19, 2013 | 11:04pm

With all the supernatural creatures populating the fall TV landscape, it was just a matter of time before Dracula made his entrance. The granddaddy of vampires is back and inhabited by the compact frame and penetrating blue eyes of Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers. With his talent for playing playing monsters — Henry VIII on “The Tudors” comes to mind — Rhys Meyers says he’s more than willing to follow in the footsteps of a galaxy of actors — Gary Oldman, Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi, among them — who’ve portrayed the Vlad the Impaler in the movies.
“I play the bad guy because I look like one,” he says. “I suppose there’s a kind of feral element in me. It’s just part of those energies that encompass me.”

Still, Rhys Meyers admits he was daunted by the prospect of playing another sinister historical figure. “I have to say there was a weight on my shoulder. I really loved Gary Oldman’s version and ‘Nosferatu.’ But I knew it was going to be a network show, and I was going to find a way to make it fascinating within those parameters.”
It’s not like NBC is skimping on the blood to keep advertisers happy. This “Dracula” sheds enough hemoglobin for a 100 transfusions, though the sepia lighting and persistent fog may soften the graphic nature of the show. And it can’t be easy to find a new wrinkle in this very old story, but creator Cole Haddon has tried, primarily by turning Dracula from a villain into a hero.
“Dracula can’t be the antagonist,” says showrunner Daniel Knauf. “He has to be the one driving the story, but you don’t want to denude him. Cole created a bigger antagonist — the Order of the Dragon.
The Order of the Dragon was a chivalric order for selected nobility, founded in 1408 by Hungary’s King Sigmund. The order, which has its own vampire huntress (Victoria Smurfit), saw as its mission to fight enemies of Christianity. While its function has been modified for the series, this Dracula holds the group responsible for the death of his wife.
“There’s an element of Dan Brown to it,” Rhys Meyers says. “Could be Opus Dei. The papacy in Rome owned the Western world at that point. and Vlad defied Rome. His wife is dragged out of bed and burned. Vlad is cursed with living eternally.”
Of course, Dracula looks fabulous for such an old coot, receiving mysterious injections that will help withstand daylight and hiding behind drapes and inside his horsedrawn carriage. Dracula trolls the foggy streets of London at night looking for fresh meat, but he has his heart set on a woman who is a dead ringer for his wife, Mina Murray (Jessica De Gouw), a medical student who finds herself oddly drawn to the American stranger.

Murray is not the only character on the show who was in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. Solicitor Jonathan Harker is now a journalist, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen. Mina’s best friend Lucy Westenra (Katie McGrath) shows up. Renfield (Nonso Anozie), a lawyer Dracula turns mad in the novel, is his manservant here. “A pasty, spider-eating nut-bag is not going to cut it as a confidant,” says Knauf of the change in his role.
Most controversial, Abraham Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann) has been dramatically changed — from vampire hunter to medical-school professor and Dracula’s ally.
“The idea of taking these characters and putting them on the same side so that they both have a common enemy, those kinds of stories are kind of fun,” Knauf says.
What’s different about Dracula himself is that he’s masquerading as Alexander Grayson, an American industrialist. He’s arrived in London with plans to bring electric light to high society. In the pilot, he holds a ballroom reception and hands out light bulbs to his finely dressed guests.
“Victorian is the old world; America is the new world,” says Rhys Meyers. “Someone can go to the US, and if they have work hard, they can be welcomed in any society. They can sit at the head of the table. For a British person, it’s about who your father is, if you want to sit at the head of the table. For a young brash American to come over with a new form of clean energy, he’s trying to destroy petroleum energy, because the Order of the Dragon has invested in it.”
Rhys Meyers can identify with being the underdog, as he was discovered in an Irish pool hall and started getting cast in films as diverse as the indie “Velvet Goldmine,” about the British glam rock era, and a TV movie about Elvis Presley, in which he perfected a Southern accent. His magnetism is undeniable and Knauf says his coming on board got “Dracula” bumped up from pilot to series order.
“We know [Rhys Meyers] is going to bring a certain intensity to the role. It’s so far inside his wheelhouse,” Knauf says. “When he commits, he gives 110 percent.”
For “Dracula,” Rhys Meyers uses a non-regional American accent when appearing in public as Grayson. and his vocabulary is full of vernacular (“You bet on it”) that is not necessarily specific to the times.

“Vlad has an British accent. Regular, firm and clipped. I see him as a Howard Hughes-y character and I tried to infuse him with as much charm as I could,” Rhys Meyers says. “But of course he’s moody. He’s been dead for 400 years. He’s in an enormous amount of pain. It would be great to be immortal if you were your current age and in the peak of condition.”
The actor, who is 36 and lives in London, says he has his put his boozing days behind him, after a stint in rehab. He spends time with his girlfriend and generally avoids the company of other actors, even though so many of his “Tudors” co-stars — Gabrielle Anwar, Henry Cavill and Natalie Dormer, among them — have gone on to fame and fortune.
“I’m not somebody who has many actor friends. After four years you’ve had enough of people and they’ve had enough of me,” Rhys Meyers says. “I remember working with Anthony Hopkins when I was 22, and he said, ‘I love saying hello to people at the beginning of a production and I love saying goodbye to them at the end. I like my co-stars being successful. They were worth the time, the energy and they are very nice people.”

http://nypost.com/2013/10/19/jonathan-rhys-meyers-takes-a-bite-out-of-classic-dracula-role/

And another one

Meyers brings 'Dracula' to life — sort of — on NBC Kate O’Hare 10/21/2013 4:31 AM

As King Henry VIII in Showtime’s “The Tudors," Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers took on an English king with a taste for fancy dress, pretty women, power, and lopping the heads off unfaithful wives and indiscreet or uncooperative courtiers.

Friday, on NBC, Rhys Meyers tackles another iconic character, an Eastern European king-turned-vampire with a taste for understated dress, pretty women (with and without bloodletting), power, and taking down rivals as rich and powerful as himself.

From the producers of PBS’ “Downton Abbey," “Dracula" returns Irish author Bram Stoker’s creation — adapted in ways ranging from the sexy to the comic and from the past to present day — to his native 19th century. Having been revived from a desiccated imprisonment by a fresh infusion of blood — from a surprising source, for those who know the original story — the former Vlad the Impaler assumes the guise of American entrepreneur Alexander Grayson.

He makes a grand appearance in London with the goal of bringing an abundant, wireless source of energy to the world, upsetting the nascent Industrial Revolution and the energy interests fueling it. At the same time, he seeks revenge against an ancient order that wronged him, killed the woman he loved and cursed him with undead immortality.

But when he puts his plan in motion, the sudden appearance of a woman who is, ahem, a dead ringer for his late wife, throws, as the British would say, a spanner in the works.

Daniel Knauf (“Carnival") is the writer and one of the producers, along with Tony Krantz, Colin Callender and Gareth Neame. Also starring are Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Jonathan Harker, Jessica De Gouw as Mina Murray/Ilona, Thomas Kretschmann as Abraham Van Helsing, Nonso Anozie as R.M. Renfield, Katie McGrath as Lucy Westenra, Victoria Smurfit as Lady Jayne Wetherby, Ben Miles as Mr. Browning and Robert Bathurst as Lord Thomas Davenport.

“I play him as a dead man pretending to be alive," says Rhys Meyers of Dracula. “That’s pretty much how I approached it, that he’s dead. There’s no spirit; there’s no blood pumping through his veins. So every emotion is a pretend emotion, but when you see him sometimes, I wanted that image that he’s completely dead inside."

Rhys Meyers also keeps in mind that, while Stoker’s epistolary novel (told in letters, journal entries, ship’s log entries, news clippings, etc.) is now considered literature, that wasn’t always the case.

“Bram Stoker’s book was extraordinarily successful pulp fiction," he says. “So, I don’t view Dracula the novel as great literature. I feel it as the Dan Brown of its day. It’s very exciting, and that’s what people liked. Like Dracula, a penny dreadful, they loved reading these gory stories.

“So the thing is, what makes him interesting, when they change him into a monster, they make him immortal. There’s one small part of him that’s human — because all monster would be bliss. But he’s not all monster; there’s one small, tiny part of him that’s still human, and that’s the thorn, that’s what causes the pain.

“It’s the spark of human that brings a conflict in a vampire. If it were all monster, it would be bliss, because it would be all of something. There’s a duality there. There’s a small, tiny desire for life and death."

As to whether that inherent tragedy makes the vampire such a compelling figure, Rhys Meyers says, “I think it probably is, and they’ve made vampires an attractive thing. But I’m not sure how attractive sleeping with somebody who’s been dead for 400 years would be."

Nevertheless, there is an erotic edge to “Dracula."

“Of course," Rhys Meyers says, “there’s sex involved. Vampires are associated with such things. But the one thing I didn’t want is this quite pretty-looking vampire. So I made certain choices. I went for lighting quite harshly in parts. I had my hair slicked back, and it gave me a more severe look.

“There’s variety. I didn’t want everybody walking around as pretty vampires. That gets boring very quickly. So I wanted him to sometimes appear a bit attractive, charming, and sometimes to appear quite monstrous and afflicted."

Although Rhys Meyers did 10 episodes in all but one season of “The Tudors" (Season 3 was eight), and he’s doing 10 episodes of “Dracula," he noticed a big difference going from a pay-cable series with a large cast to a broadcast network one where he’s playing the title character.

“It was, all in all," he says, “a long time to stay at that level of intensity. So that was a little bit difficult."

One might say Rhys Meyers graduated from college football to the NFL.

“Yeah," he says, “it is the f ... NFL, I’m telling you. And I feel like a bruised and busted-up halfback right now. By next year, I’ll be a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers."

http://m.bendbulletin.com/bb/pm_105846/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=wF9v1SEN

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10387043/Jonathan-Rhys-Meyers-Born-to-play-Dracula.html

Jonathan Rhys Meyers: Born to play Dracula
The actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers is intense with a stare that can shrivel souls. Perfect casting for Dracula, says Benji Wilson

Prince of Darkness: Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Dracula Photo: Sky/NBC
By Benji Wilson6:00AM BST 22 Oct 201311 Comments
For an actor, to be told that you have finally found the role you were “born to play” should be a real red-letter day. Yet when that role is Dracula, the bloodsucking, whey-faced, tormented prince of darkness, it is a dubious compliment. Not only could it be taken as a mild affront – you give people the creeps – but Dracula is one of the most endlessly exhumed characters in all fiction. What could you possibly do that Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee or Gary Oldman hasn’t?
That was the problem facing Jonathan Rhys Meyers this summer in Budapest, as he filmed a new 10-part adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic. I went to the set and everyone I spoke to agreed, in the kindest possible terms, that Rhys Meyers had something decidedly Dracula-ish about him before he’d even been measured for the fangs. When I finally sit down with him, I confess, he makes me nervous: he is skittish, intense, he rarely smiles and he has a stare that can shrivel souls.
“I don’t think Dracula is a role I’m born to play but it’s one where I don’t have to fight how I look,” he says, over the first of several Marlboro Lights. The cigarettes end up dotted with blood – he is still in costume after a rather ghoulish scene.
“I play the bad guy a lot because I look like a bad guy. I look like somebody that has a certain amount of haughtiness, a certain amount of arrogance… I don’t mean to. People are always giving me a hard time because they’re like, ‘His eyes, he looks like a psychotic’. It’s not that; I just have really strong eyes. They stare a lot. They’re not soft.”
Rhys Meyers’s near-transparent irises are indeed astonishing, verging on disconcerting – but they’re not the only thing that gives him, a comparatively slight figure, a big presence. He is, I can testify, a man that people just stare at when he walks into a room, and it’s not just women. In an age when no one quite knows what star quality is, here is someone who definitely has it.

Yet his CV doesn’t do justice to his aura. When he appeared in Todd Haynes’s 1998 Velvet Goldmine as a bisexual glam rocker in the David Bowie mould, he looked destined to be another Leonardo DiCaprio or Christian Bale, an actor who could be classified as both a serious artist and a cover star. But things haven’t quite worked out like that.

Though he has since appeared in big-budget fare such as Mission Impossible III, hits such as Bend it Like Beckham and in Woody Allen’s Match Point (Allen called him “naturally magnetic and sweet and tortured and sympathetic”), he is best known for playing Henry VIII in HBO’s TV series The Tudors. It only takes one glance at Rhys Meyers – whippet thin, all cheekbones and lips – to see that he looks nothing like the monarch, yet this unconventional piece of casting was inspired. If he was never big enough in literal bulk, he radiated majesty, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2007.

Rhys Meyers, 36, comes with an ever-present whiff of danger. He has been in rehab several times, been arrested twice at airports over drink-related incidents and charged with drink driving. He had a tough childhood in Ireland, growing up in a council flat in Cork. His personal life is, I am told, strictly off limits, but he had a long-term relationship with the make-up heiress Reena Hammer that ended last year. He has demons; now he is playing one.

I ask him if he feels any affinity with Dracula.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I mean, it’s like he’s in a world and he feels scared – sort of like myself. I’ve had a slightly complicated life and I fear… It’s like he’s got the mark of Cain on him. It makes him recognisable all over the world. Anybody who feels that they’re under any type of a cloud or anything like that, I think this is what he feels. I can sort of relate to losing his sense of peace, losing his sense of joy. I’ve lost people in my life. I cremated my friend last week, my best friend of 21 years. That creates a pain that can never be quenched.”
He pauses, stubs out a cigarette, then says, “He died of cancer, it’s a terrible disease. I think of Dracula’s curse as a cancer that’s rotting the inside of his body. The shell on the outside is pale and he’s dressed well but if you were to peel off his skin, it would be covered in maggots. That’s what he feels like on the inside, that there are things crawling under his skin, eating his very essence. I don’t think of him as Dracula; I think of him as a very dangerous person with a very dangerous affliction.”

In this version, as Rhys Meyers describes it, he is playing Vlad Tepes, a 15th-century Wallachian warlord better known to us from Romanian history as Vlad the Impaler. Tepes returns to Victorian London four centuries later in the guise of Alexander Grayson, an American millionaire entrepreneur, whose apparent aim is to bring electricity to the masses. In fact, Grayson/Vlad/Dracula is out to wreak vengeance on the Ordo Draco, a secret cabal of oil magnates who killed his wife centuries before.

“I think of Grayson not necessarily as an entrepreneur but as a many-tentacled control freak,” says Rhys Meyers. “He’s using Harker [Jonathan Harker, a solicitor in Stoker’s novel; a gutter journalist here] and newspapers and he’s using the public domain.”

For fans of Stoker’s original perturbed at the thought of Sky mutilating the novel, this new Dracula manages to include most of the key characters and plots from the book. It is period but with a dash of rock’n’roll in the costumes, and the mythology has been finessed to appease fang fans in the post-Twilight era – for example, crucifixes don’t kill Dracula but they blind him. Grayson is also sexually irresistible.

“There’s always been a sexual vibe to vampires,” says Rhys Meyers. “Biting the neck is quite a sensual thing. My Dracula only feeds from women. There’s only one man he bites in this whole season and it’s out of pure rage – he consumes him like Homer Simpson would consume a pizza.”

Rhys Meyers brings near-mania to whatever he does; he attracts both passionate fans and critics. He knows that he will be compared with other Draculas, and not all of it will be favourable.

“Sometimes I get freaked out and really scared of these kids, you know, fanboys and stuff like that. They’re like, ‘No, this is not how you do it! This is ridiculous, you can’t!’ And it’s like, woah, stop for a second. It’s a movie, it’s a television show. It is not a personal affront to your vision. I got a fair amount of f------ abuse for The Tudors – ‘He’s not this, he’s not that.’ But nobody can tell me exactly what Henry VIII looked like because nobody knows.”

I say that it’s odd that he worries about criticism of a former character, even when that series was a hit and his performance widely praised. Does he really care what people think?
“I do. People can have mis-opinions of you or you do a couple of f------ stupid things, like I got nicked twice a couple years ago for being drunk and disorderly. So people think that encompasses all of you. It doesn’t. My life is different to that. Vlad did some terrible things but it doesn’t encompass what he is. There have to be different shades. You just can’t be all monster.That’s boring.”
And one thing Jonathan Rhys Meyers will never be is boring.

Dracula begins on Sky Living on Thursday, October 31 at 9pm

http://www.irishmirror.ie/whats-on/film-and-tv/jonathan-rhys-meyers-reveals-victoria-2473738#.UmUgvjo0qS4.twitter

Jonathan Rhys Meyers reveals Victoria Smurfit beating on Dracula set

21 Oct 2013 05:00
Dublin actor says he was shocked at how vicious the blonde beauty was

Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Victoria Smurfit
Hollywood star Jonathan Rhys Meyers took a beating from co-star Victoria Smurfit on the set of his new drama Dracula – but only in the name of art.

The pair were filming a fight scene for the new TV series on Sky Living but the Dublin actor was taken aback by just how hard his co-star lashed out at him.

He said: “There was a moment where we came up close and I ripped her top open and in return Victoria just walloped me right in the face!

“For a second I was stunned at how vicious she had been but it really adds to the scene.”

Victoria added the pair had grown comfortable enough with each other to really bring the scene to life despite being given no direction.

She revealed: “We sort of hesitated and said, are you going to choreograph us?

“They said no, just go for it, and we shrugged and thought, OK. It was great because Jon and I had built up a lot of trust in each other at that point and we were able to really attack it – and each other.”

The latest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic horror is a ten-part series that kicks off on October 31. Tudors star Rhys Meyers, 36, feels the format lends itself well to the story and added TV shows are becoming as big a business as the movies.

He said: “If you go to Los Angeles right now all the meetings are about TV.

“The success of shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones proves that you don’t have to go to the cinema any more to get that calibre of entertainment.”

With the success of the Twilight series and True Blood, it was certain to only be a matter of time before a new adaptation of the most famous vampire tale was produced.

Its Victorian setting stays true to the source material but there are plenty of new elements.

Speaking in the latest edition of TV Now, Jonathan added: “We wanted our story to encompass the character of Victorian England but also to resonate with people in their own lives.

"This is for people who have been through a divorce, this is for people who have struggled with family.

“These days people often think, ‘Vampires = sex’, but for this we thought, ‘Vampires = suffering’. This is not another vampire drama for teenagers.”

But Victoria added: “There’s still loads of sex in it though.”

The full interview can be seen in this week’s TV Now, which is in the shops today.

http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/TV/2013/10/21/Jonathan-Rhys-Meyers-is-a-joy-to-work-with-says-co-star/UPI-32351382361960/

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a joy to work with, says co-star

By KAREN BUTLER, United Press International  

NEW YORK, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Irish actress Victoria Smurfit says sharing the screen with fellow countryman Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the new NBC series "Dracula" was a joy.
"As a fellow Irishman, there is an ease and a naturalness to your conversation," Smurfit told United Press International in a recent phone interview.

"He's got the same reference points and the same humor, which was really handy because it was sort of like shake hands, 'Nice to meet you,' [and off to work,]" the Dublin-born actress explained. "I had met him at some awards ceremonies, but I had never sat down and chatted with him. [Then we started taping the show and it was like,] 'Nice to meet you, by the way, here I am in my underpants and corset. Let's go for it.' So, it was very easy because it just meant you were able to have some fun with it and enjoy yourself because you have that common place you come from and he is so charismatic. You never quite know what he is going to do in a scene, which is gold for an actress to be in a room with him because it means you are always playing offense and defense at the same time. I loved it. I absolutely loved it."

The former "Ballykissangel" and "Cold Feet" star plays the glamorous, but lethal Lady Jayne in this reinvention of Bram Stoker's gothic novel "Dracula," while "The Tudors" hottie Meyers plays the titular vampire posing as Alexander Grayson, a wealthy American entrepreneur attempting to bring modern science to Victorian London.

Smurfit said she was initially drawn to the series as she read script scenes featuring Grayson and Lady Jayne, his lover and eventual nemesis.

"I thought: 'Oh, I just love the dynamic between these two! This is juicy. This is fabulous,'" she recalled.

"So, that actually came first and then it occurred to me, 'Oh, Alexander Grayson is Dracula, it's a reboot.' But at that point, I was already in because it had been written so beautifully. The two characters had been written so beautifully. And, from that point on, I met the executive producer Tony Krantz and he said: 'You'll have to be part stunt girl. You'll be chopping vampires' heads off,'" she said. "Between the script, Dracula, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and getting to chop vampires' heads off, what's to say 'no' to, really? It's a total dream job."

Co-starring Thomas Kretschmann, Jessica De Gouw, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Nonso Anozie and Katie McGrath, "Dracula" premieres Friday

And a video interview, press the link.

http://www.tv3.ie/ireland_am_video.php?locID=1.65.74&video=70630#

Yet another lovely interview.

http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4286545&tpl=archnews&force=1

Jonathan Rhys Meyers Talks to IFTN as 'Dracula' Begins on Sky Living this 31st Oct
22 Oct 2013 : By Kevin Cronin

Jonathan Rhys Meyers shows off his fangs in 'Dracula', starting on Sky Living on Halloween night.


Jonathan Rhys Meyers - best known for his iconic performance as Henry VIII in ‘The Tudors’ – will return to TV screens on Sky Living this Halloween night with a starring role in NBC’s ‘Dracula’. A lavish reimagining of the Bram Stoker classic, the ten-part series was filmed in Budapest and also features Irish acting talents Victoria Smurfit and Katie McGrath in supporting roles.
Ahead of the UK and Irish premiere of ‘Dracula’, Mr Rhys Meyers and his co-stars descended upon the crypt in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, for a media interview which IFTN participated in.

A Golden Globe winner in 2006 for ‘Elvis’, Rhys Meyers achieved global fame with ‘The Tudors’ the following year - which sustained an entire industry of production crew in Ardmore Studios during its hugely successful four-year run.

As Rhys Meyers entered the crypt amid red mood lighting, he was in ebullient form, clearly relishing the opportunity to discuss the complexity of his blood-sucking onscreen creation.

Also in attendance were Ms Smurfit and Ms McGrath, whose interviews will be covered in separate articles for IFTN coming soon.

IFTN began by asking what first attracted him to the role and how this incarnation of the ubiquitous character differs from other interpretations in film and TV over the years.

‘I’d worked with [NBC Executive] Bob Greenblatt on ‘Elvis’ and ‘The Tudors’, so we had a relationship with each other. I flew over to Los Angeles and he said he wanted me to play Dracula. When I asked how he wanted me to play him, he said the idea was for a triptych - so I’m playing three characters. There's one central character, Vlad Tepes. Then Dracula is the monster - ‘Dracul’ meaning dragon or monster - but that only comes at the instant that he has to feed his addiction, which never ends. Alexander Grayson is the performance within the performance. It's the mask that he uses. For me that was really interesting because as the series goes further on, there are scenes where I have to switch from British to American accents within the same scene. I hope it doesn’t get confusing for people, but it was fun for me to play! It’s difficult - there’s no doubt about it. We didn’t have time for a lot of takes. We’re making big television, ten hours, which is like five movies in one.’

When asked about the appeal of playing the bad guy, Rhys Meyers waxed lyrical about Dracula’s physicality in comparison to his portrayal of Henry in ‘The Tudors’.

‘It can be more fun to play the bad guy than the hero. I suppose I often play the bad guy because there’s something in my physicality that lends me to that sort of intensity. I’m 36 years old now and when you’re younger you always want to look good. In this, I allowed myself to look good in some of it but also absolutely dreadful in other parts - to have that variation in the character. Now I only care about how good it’s going to be for an audience to watch. When I did ‘The Tudors’, I was playing a very impetuous Henry because I saw him as a spoiled boy - which essentially he was. But there was still the sense of wanting to look good onscreen, whereas now it’s completely different. I just want to really enjoy what I’m doing and enjoy the production. Because I’m not making it for me anymore, I’m making it for other people. I’d love if people see it and are freaked out by it, but still want more!’

On some of the artistic influences on his performance, Rhys Meyers was equally enlightening.

‘I’m an artist and I borrow! There’s a scene where I’m feeding in the second episode and I completely borrowed from Brad Davis in ‘Midnight Express’ when he has the fight and he bites the man’s tongue out and spits it into the air. When I was biting the girl’s neck in ‘Dracula’ - and it was a very vicious killing - I put my head up, so you could see this shower of blood. And it’s almost like he’s soaking himself in his own suffering.’

Rhys Meyers was also producing for the first time on ‘Dracula’, an experience which lent a collaborative spirit to proceedings and forced him to consider factors beyond his performance alone.

‘For the first time as producer I wanted to look at things. I wanted to look at what the pace of it was like. It has to be fast-paced. It has to be vibrant. It has to be feral. There are soft moments but then it speeds up at break-neck speed, and slows down again. So it had to have the right sense of pacing. Also I had to check what the CGI was going to be like because I wanted something that would look beautiful, almost like in a comic-book, but at the same time it has a certain sense of suspended realism to it.’

On a humorous note, he recounted the difficulties of pronouncing his dialogue with vampire teeth in his mouth, which necessitated a significant amount of ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) in post-production.

‘I haven’t kept the teeth. I broke them on the last day so I wouldn’t have to use them! They’re actually made by a proper dentist so they’re real teeth and I put them in, but unfortunately I had to ADR everything because they gave me a lisp. And Dracula with a lisp is not going be scary! And it’s not going to be sexy! But it was an awful lot of fun to play. Doing the ADR for that was actually very funny because there’s a scene at the end, in the last episode, where I go into the billiard room - and I have a few vampires with me - and for the first time people in the room realise I’m not an American because they can hear my real accent. I turn around and you can see my teeth coming down. I say to the boys, ‘Bon Appétit’. Of course I had to ADR it because my pronunciation was hilarious! Nobody will know that! Well, they will now…’

Rhys Meyers explained his motivation in wanting to maintain a largely restrained performance, so that the moments of violence when they come would deliver a more powerful impact.

‘I said let’s hold the teeth back. Let’s hold the murdering that he does back as much as possible so when there’s brutality, it’s so brutal that it’s actually terrifying. So we’re not overusing it. Unlike ‘The Tudors’, in this I think I only shout three times in the whole ten hours. I keep it incredibly still and incredibly focused, for Vlad Tepes. Alexander Grayson is more charm. It was important for me to try to stay still within the character as much as possible and to allow everything to happen because there’s so much going on. I was actually on the phone to the producers asking for me to not be in so much of an episode because I thought it would be more effective to focus on the other characters. And I’m glad I’ve got to that point as an actor, where I don’t always have to be the centre of attention in it. It allows you to be more authentic.’

The actor reserved special praise for his fellow cast members who - along Ms Smurfit and Ms McGrath - included Australian actress Jessica De Gouw and British actor Oliver Jackson-Cohen. He also recounted the first time he and Victoria met at the IFTA awards.

‘Yeah, we actually really liked each other which is shocking. Everybody was so good at what they did from day one. And that’s shocking because it usually takes people a while to get into something. They were almost tailor-made for their parts. I couldn’t have asked for something better.’

‘Victoria and I actually only used to meet at awards ceremonies. It was the IFTAs. I was presenting something at the IFTAs and Victoria was doing a fantastic job of presenting them that evening. She was very elegant and very beautiful. I came on stage and she introduced me and I kissed her on the cheek, and that was the first time that I met her. Victoria has an incredible warmth. To describe Victoria Smurfit is to say ‘silk and steel’.

The gradual migration of big name actors from cinema to high-quality TV drama was another area that fascinated Rhys Meyers, along with the advantages of getting to know characters over a longer time span.

‘You can spend ten hours exploring a story on TV and you get to be part of people’s furniture and come into their home and be part of their night. The characters become people that viewers feel like they know. When you’re watching ‘Breaking Bad’, you’re actually thinking about Mr White - Why is he doing what he’s doing? The process for television is much more personal and you can watch a box set for ten hours in bed and really get into it. Also, because of technology, televisions have become so big, they’re home cinemas. There’s not this little box in the corner when we were watching Glenroe. I’m not knocking Glenroe, only the technology. They should rename TV ‘home cinema’ because the production qualities are home cinema. We use the best DPs, the best set designers, the best costume designers, the best make-up artists and the most fantastic actors we can get our hands on. And we got our hands on some really good ones for this one!’

More interviews, just the link now.

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/jonathan-rhys-meyers-imagine-what-it-takes-to-suck-the-entire-blood-system-out-of-somebody-1.1570727?page=2

http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/tv/jonathan-rhys-meyers

http://starsentertainment.com/3730/nbcs-dracula-extended-preview-with-jonathan-rhys-meyers/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

http://www.irishcentral.com/IrishVoice/-Jonathan-Rhys-Meyers-in-Dracula-Video-228913371.html

http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4286545&tpl=archnews&force=1

Your first impressions about Dracula? Have you watched it?

Jellyfish wrote:

Your first impressions about Dracula? Have you watched it?

Yes I watched in a page that share the first episode... Well I don´t know. Obviously is a ver very free adaptation of Stoker´s novel, I think that only few things. In one hand I think that it´s entertainmment and it´s OK , but in other hand I think in Jonny and his talent, and I think that is wasted in this. The product is good in costumes, art direction etc, but for me the plot isn´t good.
I hope that Jonny will choose good roles in the future. I think that he has the talent but perhaps no the luck.