Sharon Waxman, Squeezing Water from a Handsome Stone (was: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, World’s Most Difficult Actor)

At Home in Oliver’s Macedonia and Woody’s London, the New York Times, November 6, 2005
Selected highlights from the Times’ Hollywood scribe Sharon Waxman’s interview/Q&A with actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, star of Woody Allen’s upcoming tennis thriller Match Point…
First up? The 28-year-old actor touches upon this whole “crisis in the Middle East” thing and its relationship to his filming Alexander with director Oliver Stone:

RHYS-MEYERS: You had 20 young male actors, as his main friends, and then 350 soldiers who’d recently pulled out of Basra and Tikrit – they were all actual soldiers. These guys were constantly living their life to the full, because when they were finished, they were being sent back to the Middle East.
WAXMAN: Let’s talk about “Match Point.”

OK, so the subject of Iraq doesn’t interest Waxman so much. Or, at least, an Irish actor’s take on Iraq. What about an Irish actor’s take on being, hmmm, an Irish actor?

WAXMAN: Are you very Irish?
RHYS-MEYERS: What’s very Irish?
WAXMAN: Are you attached to being Irish?
RHYS-MEYERS: Am I in touch with my roots? Yes, I am very Irish.

And with that matter settled, young Jonathan returned to his pensive brooding, coyly maneuvering his gaze about the room, pausing ever-so-briefly to flit his eyelashes…and looking anywhere, anywhere but at this cursed interviewer who had deigned to help him promote his most recent film.