The Jonathan Rhys Meyers Post

I admit it. Occasionally I use this blog to purge some of my pop culture and media demons, and so we had to get to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers eventually. You may have heard of the Irish actor, who has appeared in several well-regarded films like "Bend it Like Beckham" and "Match Point" over the last decade. He recently finished up his run on Showtime's "The Tudors," where he headlined as Henry the Eighth. However, Rhys-Meyers has always been one of those actors who seems to be perpetually on the verge of becoming a big star, but hasn't managed it yet. And from the years of 2001 to about 2006, he was my last major, inexplicable, totally irrational screen crush. He has appeared in thirty-four film roles to date. I've seen twenty-eight of them, including several extremely obscure independent foreign pictures, a few of which have technically never been released.

It was the damn "Gormenghast" miniseries that did it, a British fantasy with dark edges that was produced for the BBC in 2000. Rhys-Meyers played the lead, a conniving anti-hero named Steerpike. While Rhys-Meyers wasn't particularly good in the role, he was attractive, he was charismatic, he was clearly talented, and he had the most intriguing aura of potential around him. So I went and tracked down Todd Haynes' "Velvet Goldmine," where he played the film's David Bowie-esque central figure, and seemed completely unflustered by multiple nude scenes, cross-dressing, and playing gay. Then Ang Lee's "Ride With the Devil," where he was a doomed Civil War-era bushwhacker, juggling a Southern accent and action scenes. I dragged my college roommate to see Julie Taymor's "Titus," where he was one of Tamora's feral sons, who meets a wonderfully grisly end. Every time he was far from great, but there was something fascinating about his presence, and I couldn't wait to see what he was going to do in the future. I totally bought into the "next big thing" narrative that was already being constructed around him.

Clearly, from the projects he appeared in, it wasn't just me. I didn't find it difficult to work through Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' filmography, since it contained the aforementioned films, plus titles from Neil Jordan, Mike Figgis, and Michael Radford. I got introduced to several major British auteurs thanks to him. The films weren't always very good, but they were interesting, artsier stuff that fit right in with my slapdash exploration of non-mainstream cinema at the time. So for the next couple of years I followed Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' career, watching him show up in bigger and bigger projects. He got good notices for Mike Hodge's "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" and "Bend it Like Beckham." He was part of the ensemble of Oliver Stone's notorious "Alexander." He landed the lead of Woody Allen's "Match Point," giving what I think was his best performance up to that point. And then he won a Golden Globe for playing Elvis Presley in a CBS miniseries. And he nabbed one of the smaller supporting roles in "Mission: Impossible III." Hollywood took notice then, right about the time I started losing interest.

The problem with a promising young actor embracing Hollywood is that Hollywood rarely offers the kind of challenging material that really makes the best use of their talents. After 2006, the films Jonathan Rhys-Meyers showed up in just kept getting worse and worse. There was the maudlin "August Rush," and the tone-deaf "Children of Huang Shi." By the time he showed up in Pierre Morel's "From Paris With Love," playing the straight man to John Travolta's loose cannon FBI agent, I'd given up. And then there was the Julianne Moore thriller "Shelter," which was so badly received, it was shelved for four years, and will finally be getting a limited release this spring under a new title, "6 Souls." Of course there was "The Tudors," but I stopped watching after the first season. I wasn't too taken with the show's sexed-up version of Henry the Eighth or Rhys-Meyers in the part. My infatuation with the actor wasn't really with the actor, you see. I never followed his appearances in the tabloids, his love life, or anything else about him in real life. My interest was in the actor I thought he was going to become. And when he didn't, that was the end of it.

I still like seeing Jonathan Rhys-Meyers onscreen. He's become a decent actor, and much, much improved over some of his earlier work. However, I'm not going to be rushing out to see him play the villain in "Mortal Instruments: City of Bones" next summer. And the news that he's landed the lead in NBC's new "Dracula" series fills me with neither dread nor glee. I have no doubt that he'll make a very good vampire, but that alone isn't enough to sell me on the show anymore. I'll watch the first few episodes though, because I do think that the premise - and Rhys-Meyers - still do have a lot of potential.
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