Evelyn Waugh Describes Charles For Film-Makers

@Troll_Dahl » Mon Dec 17 2012

You remark, "I thought Ryder was supposed to look a little disenchanted and tired, at least in the army sequences. At any rate, I didn't notice it in any way that detracted from Irons' performances or the piece overall."

What you say makes perfect sense. All I'll add is that I did not claim that Ryder's fatigue detracted from his performance.

By the way, thank you for maintaining, correctly,
that "Irregardless is not a word."

@dizexpat on Thu Jun 14 2012


You observe that Irons' remark "was reported in a "Time Magazine" article about the series back in 1981."

You go on to say, "'If the actor finds the character he's playing "boring" it is a bit difficult for him to convince the audience otherwise.''"

You're exactly right in your observations. I think, as I've mentioned, that Irons portrays Charles Ryder well. But other viewers find the character of Ryder dull. Perhaps Irons' attitude toward the role comes through despite his careful acting.

As for "Brideshead," a man named Donald Foley uploaded the entire series to YouTube several years ago. Someone else uploaded a documentary about the filming of the work. In the documentary, Irons speaks dispassionately and sympathetically about the series.

The IMDb page for the series has a section titled something like, "See Jeremy Irons Discuss This Work." I never viewed the discussion, and it no longer exists, at least through whatever entity provided it for IMDb.

Well, Irons did a good job with the part anyway. I feel like I'd want to see the quotation in context of the entire interview/article to judge, but on its own I can't really say that I find it "tactless and offensive" per the other poster. For one thing, I appreciate the candor. In a world in which entertainment figures are often pressured to lie through their teeth to get the right publicity, Jeremy's remark can be taken as a breath of fresh air for his intellectual honesty and succinctness. At any rate, I wouldn't read that much into it, at least not when presented without any of the other words that would have been spoken around it. The bluntly humorous honesty seems characteristic of Irons and I kind of like it personally. There's no good being too uptight about these things.


I don't really think Charles is "vanilla" either, although the fact that he's the one telling the story means that he generally doesn't emphasize himself too much and pieces of exposition regarding his life are sometimes highly condensed. For instance, we go through a ten year period, including his marriage to Celia, in a couple of minutes. I think it is evident that the character has some emotional and psychological depth, although the fact that he spends most of the time losing his innocence and having his convictions about life shattered makes it easy for him to come across as naive and weak at times. In other words, he's in over his head quite a bit of the time, so he's probably going to look clueless. And his general lack of happiness and or fulfillment throughout his life makes him come across as hollow.

Of course, he also doesn't emote as much as many of the others, like Julia or Sebastian. Their inner turmoil turns explosive and they are central to some of the most intense dramatic scenes of the story. Charles is the one taking a lot of this in. As Julia says, he sees things secondhand. It's a way he has. On the other hand, I think you can really feel his pain when Julia walks away at the end. That's something of a watershed moment for Charles in terms of emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, living with the influence of his detached father probably crippled that part of his mind early on, and when you combine that with a string of traumatic and deeply unhappy experiences, it's easy to see how one could become so cold. But I don't think "Vanilla" is the right word. Call me weird, but I could actually have watched a lot more of Charles traveling the world, painting, and growing a beard. I know some people are a little bored by those post-Sebastian episodes but I'm not.




'Irregardless' is not a word