Jeremy Irons (1948-) b. Cowes, Isle of Wight, England.

Jeremy Irons was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset. A student with the Bristol Old Vic, moved to London in 1971 and made his West End stage debut opposite David Essex as John the Baptist in the rock musical Godspell, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1984 he won a Tony award for his Broadway performance in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing opposite Glenn Close. His role as Charles Ryder in the acclaimed television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1981) made him a household name. His film debut came in Nijinsky (1980). In Jerzy Skolimowski’s low-budget Moonlighting (1982) he played a Polish labourer stranded in England during the time of Perestroika in his home country. In 1988 he starred in the dual role of mad twin physicians in David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. Irons won a Best Actor Oscar for his witty performance in Reversal of Fortune (1990).

In Louis Malle’s Damage (1992), based on the novel by Josephine Hart, Irons played a British government official who falls madly in love with sons his latest flame. He then appeared in a couple of dismal Hollywood blockbusters; the third in the Bruce Willis Die Hard series, Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) and the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). After appearing as Humbert Humbert in Adrian Lyne’s controversial remake of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1987), Irons has appeared in a mixture of TV dramas, art-house films and the occasional blockbuster like Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005). He is married to Irish actress Sinéad Cusack.