Some exciting news to report. First off… Jonathan has been cast in a new film already in production in Luxembourg called “The Emperor’s Wife”, directed by Belgian Julien Vrebos and co-starring Max Beesley, Johnny de Mol, and Leticia Dolera. Jonathan will be playing the part of the Chamberlain in what sounds like a grand love story with many twists. This is a period piece that is not set in any specific time or place. The story is inspired by the life of Suraya of Persia and the court of Istanbul in the 1920′s. Jonathan’s lead role is described as: “Distinguished, utterly loyal to his Emperor. Emotionally intense, yet meanwhile radiating the immemorial grace of royalty. Deeply moved inside, but outwardly obedient to protocol. Eventually his loyalty begins to shift from the Emperor to Sabah as he falls in love for the first time in his life.” The film is scheduled for release in Europe next fall. Check out the website for Fu Works productions for a complete film summary and plot description.

“Bend It Like Beckham” will be making it’s US debut at the Sundance Film Festival. Exact details on when it will be shown are not yet available. “Bend It Like Beckham” was also recently nominated for Best European Film at the 2002 European Film Awards.

“Tangled” is finally being released in the US going straight to DVD and video. You can pre-order the DVD through Amazon.com now. It’s due for release January 14, 2003.

Fox Searchlight has put up a preview website for Bend It Like Beckham. It does not state when the official release date will be other than Spring 2003.

There is word that Jonathan may star in a London play sometime next year. According to a recent Irish Examiner article, it was stated that Jonathan will be in the West End production of Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever”. I have not been able to find any official statement or news about this possible upcoming production.

You can now view the trailer for Prozac Nation. Considering that Jonathan’s character is apparently not in the film that much, he is featured quite a bit in this excellent trailer. Thanks to The Williams Center for this link.

In other random bits of news, Jonathan has been attending various events in London in recent weeks… along with the premieres of “The Importance of Being Ernest” and “Lilo and Stitch”, he went to the launch of a Versace exhibit. There is also no official word yet on the status of “The Last Unicorn”.

Jonathan rides a radio wave
By Charlotte Sheridan
Irish Examiner, October 4, 2002
[View Photos]

Jonathan Rhys Meyers has the world at his feet — he’s only 25 and already has 19 films behind him. So you might be surprised to hear that the globe-trotting actor, made a humble phone call to an RTE producer, expressing his desire to read the short stories of Saki on the radio programme, the Book on One.

Producer Seamus Hosey was only too glad to accommodate the Cork-born actor and his dulcet tones can be heard tonight at 9:45pm.

Saki is Rhys Meyers’ favourite writer. “He was a subversive who took the stuffy Edwardian English drawing room and turned it into a circus tent,” he said, adding that he would love to play Saki in a film of his life. He was intrigued to discover from Hosey that Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), who died in the trenches of World War I, had a brother Charles who was governor of Mountjoy Prison in 1916.

Rhys Meyers was first spotted in a pool hall in Cork by Hubbard Casting. He went on to act in Neil Jordan’s film, The Man who Shot Michael Collins. He was also the decadent glam rock star of Velvet Goldmine, and has worked with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange among others.

Saki’s short stories are not unlike the writing of PJ Wodehouse, says Hosey, who added that Rhys Meyers “caught the wicked humour and sardonic wit of the writer. Radio is a new medium for Jonathan. He wonders if any of his mates in Buttevant will recognise his voice on the Book on One. Cork is very much his stomping ground despite working with the likes of Charlotte Rampling and Tom Cruise.”

“If you are an actor who hangs around only with actors, that’s all you know and how can you play a farm worker, a carpenter or an engineer,” say Rhys Meyers, exhibiting a fine sense of having his feet solidly on the ground. However, sometimes he worries about the super-brat, mad, bad and dangerous to know image of him the media has created.

His base is in his native Buttevant and he was educated by the Christian Brothers at the North Monastery in Cork city.

“The Brothers taught me the O’Riada Mass which I didn’t always appreciate back then. But I still know his setting of the Our Father.”

Future projects include filming The Last of the Unicorns with Christopher Lee and Mia Farrow and next year, he will be in the West End production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever.

Does he fear burnout by the age of 30? “No, I’d rather have 10 minutes of an extraordinary life than 100 years of a happy, boring one,” he says.

Special thanks to Kristin for transcribing this article.

Good news coming out of the Toronto Film Festivial, where “Bend It Like Beckham” was shown. It was one of two runners up for the AGF People’s Choice Award, which is voted on by festival audiences. Fox Searchlight has also announced a US release date “Bend It Like Beckham”, April 2, 2003. Also, listen to Jonathan reading from The Best of Saki by Hector Hugh Munro, featured on Radio 1 (thanks Alec). The show runs until October 4.

Why Rising Irish Hollywood Hunk Has No Time For Movie Stars
Sunday World, September 29, 2002

Meyers: I’m Not Playing Fame Game

Irish Hollywood heart-throb Jonathan Rhys Meyers has revealed why he won’t be spending time with his new-found movie pals.

The Cork actor, who shot to fame as the man who shot Michael Collins in Neil Jordan’s movie, says he couldn’t do his job if he spent his life with other film stars.

“What happens to a lot of actors is that they go out and get a few jobs and make a couple of films and get some money and then they start hanging around with all actors and people from the film industry. That is not what made me an actor. I hang out with engineers, carpenters and farm workers. How am I supposed to play a carpenter if all I do is hang around with Tom Cruise or something like that? It is impossible for me to do that. I realised very very young because I didn’t go to school for acting. I was learning on the stage the whole time so I made a point not to acquire too many film friends. I made it a point to be with people who don’t do this job as much as possible.”

The rising Hollywood star, described by screen legend Christopher Lee as one of the best talents around, certainly cannot be accused of having a face for radio, but RTE bosses couldn’t believe their luck when he agreed to do a radio slot in Montrose recently.

Rhys Meyers told how he will star alongside movie legends Christopher Lee and Mia Farrow when he makes his next movie Out of Season in Canada next year.

Listeners to The Book At One will hear the actor reading his favourite short story next week.

Hilarious ‘The Best of Saki’ was chosen by the 24-year old who will make his radio debut on the Irish station.

Rhys Meyers told producer, Seamus Hosey, how he likes to keep his feet firmly on the ground despite hanging around with jet-setting super stars.

The Cork-born hunk says he would never have ended up on the silver screen had he not just fallen into acting.

“I would never have gone to drama school. I would never have been an actor if I was given the choice. It is a very difficult job to do, not in terms of the work as such but because people think we are on a constant holiday. It is not a holiday. There are times that in one day you could do a scene where you’re playing football with friends and later on murdering your brother. You have to put yourself in both those positions so it isolates you from what is going on in the outside world. You can’t just come home and do a crossword or go for a pint after a day like that.”

The actor, who has a reputation for taking on the bizarre roles, day he would love to work in Ireland in the future.

“I still live in County Cork. I don’t have too many friends there but I still have kept in touch with a few. I was never the most popular young fella so when I left I didn’t have that many friends to leave. Nowadays I have one or two or three friends in Cork. My friends always tended to be much older people anyway. Even as a young fella I didn’t find curiosity in kids my own age. They hadn’t done enough for me.”

He said that the image of him as a wild child is not true: “When you play certain parts you get a certain image. But I am none of the things that are said of me. I’m just working and thriving and doing my thing,” he said.

Rhys Meyers has just shot a new psychological thriller, Octane, which is due out early next year. In the movie, filmed in Luxembourg, he plays a member of a blood-thirsty and vampiric cult.

He is currently starring in the football movie, Bend it Like Beckham. The film, about a young Indian girl’s obsession with the Manchester United player, pulled in a whopping 10 million pounds at the UK box office.

Special thanks to Kelly for transcribing this article.

Really, I Want to Read You A Story
Daily Express, September 21, 2002

When Bend It Like Beckham star Jonathan Rhys Meyers left a message on radio producer Seamus Hosey’s phone asking him to give him a ring, Hosey thought it was a “complete wind-up”.

But after a few probing questions he quickly realised that the voice on the other end of the phone line was indeed Jonathan’s.

The 25-year-old Irish actor–voted the 34th sexiest man in the world by Cosmopolitan readers–was at home in Cork between roles when he rang Hosey to ask if he could take part in The Book on One on RTE Radio.

There was no way Hosey could say no to such an offer. “It’s not every day you have a top Hollywood actor ring you up,” he said. Within days the star, who first found fame as Michael Collin’s “beautiful assassin” in Neil Jordan’s film, flew in specially from London for the day to record five short stories from his favourite author Saki.

The author was famous for breaking the rules of stuffy Edwardian England, something Jonathan first admired when he was just 12 years old.

Even though the James Dean lookalike has acted in 19 films to date with many of the greats of the silver screen from Anthony Hopkins to Ewan McGregor, RTE producer Hosey found the star “very open to direction and extremely professional to work with”. Hosey joked: “He definitely has a voice for radio.” But Jonathan hardly has what you would call a great face for radio. Tipped by Neil Jordan as the next Tom Cruise, his attractive features have never been more in demand.

He is currently finishing a film in London before jetting off to star in The Last Unicorn with Mia Farrow and Christopher Lee.

But it is rumours of his on-off relationship with Irish model Cha Cha Seigne that are making all the headlines.

One UK tabloid caught wind of Jonathan’s radio debut, ringing RTE to find out if it was true that Saki was the star’s new lover.

“I could only laugh,” Hosey said. The long-dead English author would surely have laughed too.

Special thanks to Kelly for transcribing this article.

Jonathan recently attended a premiere party in France for “The Importance of Being Ernest”, a film due for release in the UK on September 6. An article about this party was featured in the September 1 Style issue of the Sunday Times. There is also a photo of Jonathan from this party in the latest Hello Magazine. His next film, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”, is due to start production this month. It’s being made in part by Paramount Classics, a US production company.

Wilde things
By Sasha Slater
Sunday Times, Style section, September 1, 2002

The launch party for the latest Britflick was an Oscar performance, says SASHA SLATER

The dinner party is dead, it is claimed. We’re too stressed to have a good time, too tired to cook and too busy (and much too politically correct) for spiky conversations.

Can this really be true? Is the text-message generation incapable of witty repartee? To celebrate the release of the new Britflick The Importance of Being Earnest, the publicists decided to prove that the Wildean spirit lives on. The cast and assorted members of the demimonde were invited to a no-expense-spared dinner party, held at the luxurious Veuve Clicquot chateau in Champagne.

No character that Wilde would have thought essential for a dinner party was left uninvited. The socialite and TV presenter Alice Beer took the role of beautiful ingenue; the toast of the town was Lisa Butcher, the society model and former wife of Marco Pierre White, clad in scarlet Hardy Amies. Playing the foppish jeune premier to perfection was the slim, dark, Velvet Goldmine actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. He had borrowed a Paul Smith suit for his wiry frame, but found it was two sizes too big, while his shoes were one and a half sizes too small. So he wore his sleeveless vest, jeans and the hiking boots he wore in the Himalayas. “Think of me as an urchin,” he said, “picked up by Oscar for the evening.”

The novelist Kathy Lette was perfect in the role of the knowing older woman who has all the best lines, and the actor Nickolas Grace, famous for his portrait of Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited, was the camp court jester. Oliver Parker, the director of both The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, presided sagely over the evening, while the amiably eccentric chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall burbled on, filling any conversational gap. In short, all seemed in place for a decorously glamorous dinner party.

At first, the evening did indeed sparkle and froth, buoyed up with vintage champagne. “Animal, vegetable or mineral?” inquired one guest, gesturing at fellow diners. “Vegetable,” was the riposte. “Champagne’s such a frivolous thing,” said Fearnley-Whittingstall. “That’s why it’s important to take it terribly seriously.”

Meanwhile Rhys-Meyers discussed the merits of Salvador Dali versus Picasso.

Then, halfway through the main course, M Le Comte Edouard de Nazelle, one of the last surviving members of the Clicquot Ponsardin family, took the theme of decadence further, encouraging his guests to balance glasses of the pink vintage La Grande Dame 1995 on their heads. A lot was spilt; make-up started to run.

More was drunk. Some guests were still trying to maintain the elevated tone. “Herb tea: that’s verveine, this is now,” opined Parker. Alas, others, egged on by Grace, were amusing themselves by rushing to the loos with disposable cameras to take unidentifiable pictures of parts of themselves.

Meanwhile, a contingent of love-struck women were in raptures in the dining room listening as Rhys-Meyers lifted his voice in a mournful Irish ballad. Then, bribed with jeroboams of vintage fizz, the party people decided to parade on a home made catwalk from the chateau’s grand sweeping staircase into the drawing room. The one condition being that, no matter what else you wore, you had to be sporting something in Clicquot orange. Luckily, the guests had been provided with branded pashminas and umbrellas, which provided much of their covering (though Beer and Butcher took to the stone floor in nothing but carrier bags). The overall winner was the suitably decadent William Van Hage, Butcher’s walker and a gentleman of leisure, who had the most admirable all-over tan in just the right shade of amber. The night even held romance. Rhys-Meyers conceived unquenchable passion for Butcher. At first, he contented himself with writing her name all over his arms; later, he insisted on confessing it to everyone but the lady concerned (he was too shy to tell her, he said). He then passed out on another woman’s bed and had vanished from the chateau before morning, leaving no trace but an old sock and a bottle of vintage champagne. Oscar, one feels, would have felt right at home.

Thanks to Alec for passing along this little tidbit about “Octane”, from the Sunday Mirror (warning, this does contain a minor spoiler):

Role to Get Teeth Into
August 11, 2002

by Polly Graham

IRISH actors Patrick O’Kane and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers have definitely got a blood lust – in their new film roles that is.

Patrick, who has starred in EastEnders, joined forces with Bend It Like Beckham lead Jonathan to film a new psychological thriller called Octane in Luxembourg.

The film also stars Hollywood actress Madeleine Stowe, best remembered for her role in Last Of The Mohicans.

Patrick told 24/7: “Octane is a road movie with a twist – it’s a psychological thriller with Jonathan and me as members of a bloodthirsty and semi-vampiric cult.

“We’d a great laugh shooting it and going to Luxembourg made a nice change from Belfast and Dublin.”