Let the Spanish Inquisition begin!” jokes Jonathan Rhys Meyers, as we sit down in an alcove of the basement bar in the Merrion Hotel.
As you can tell from his opening quip, the Dublin-born, Cork-raised actor is uneasy around the media. You wouldn’t blame him. He may not be in the Tom Cruise or Colin Farrell league yet, but he’s been through the experience of being hounded and harassed, chased and photographed by newspapers at any and every time of the day or night. But then, he is – unquestionably – the Irish actor of the moment.
He has had some extraordinary successes in his career to date. The stand-out moment must be his Golden Globe winning role as Elvis but the highpoints have been many: winning the prestigious Chopard Trophy award at the Cannes Film Festival for his part in Woody Allen’s Match Point; starring alongside Tom Cruise in the third instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise; and then there is his portrayal of the young Henry VIII in The Tudors – arguably the biggest show on TV this year – for which he is garnering rave reviews.
But all is not sweetness and light for Jonathan Rhys Myers. Less than a day – 18 hours to be precise – after our interview, he was plunged into what must have been the worst week of his young life. Refused permission to board a plane at Dublin Airport, he was arrested and charged with allegedly being drunk and disorderly. It's the type of incident that happens far more frequently than is publicised. Unfortunately, it only makes the headlines when you’re famous. After his release from Whitehall Garda station, Meyers appeared to sum it up best when he told reporters: “I said the wrong thing to the wrong woman at the wrong time.”
I have to admit that my first reaction to the news of his arrest was one of disbelief: when we’d spoken the previous night, Meyers insisted that he was finished with drink – for good. During a two-hour interview, the 30-year-old Golden Globe winner frankly discussed his recent stints in rehab. He appeared very earnest about staying away from booze.
“If you don’t go out and do stupid things then they can’t write about you,” he told me.
Two days after his arrest, Meyers was photographed walking through the streets of London, taking a swig from a can of cider. Newspaper reports said it was at 11am. The image seemed to confirm the worst, that he was hitting the booze with a vengeance. I couldn’t help wondering if he'd been less than completely honest with me about his vow to steer clear of alcohol.
The more I thought about it, however, the more clearly I understood that, no, he hadn’t lied, but that this is an ongoing battle that he – like Amy Winehouse and others – has to fight in the full glare of the spotlight. If it is difficult to handle an addiction to alcohol, then that can only be exacerbated by the fact that there's always a reporter or one of the paparazzi waiting to pounce.
Whatever about that, Meyers’ erratic behaviour was put in context the next day when his publicist announced the tragic news that his mother had died. Only 50-years-old, she had been battling with cancer.
But while Jonathan Rhys Meyers is probably at one of the lowest points in his life, I have no doubt that he'll bounce back. He's a highly intelligent and in many ways brilliant man and a great acting talent. Right now, he just needs time to rediscover his bearings.

JASON O’TOOLE: Career-wise, the last 24 months have been extremely good for you.
JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS: You never realise how great things are going for you because you are there on the ground level – you’ve been there from scratch. It just becomes work. What’s my next job or move going to be? You can’t really sit back and enjoy it. There seems to be a certain element of overnight success about it – but it isn’t, it takes ten years to be successful overnight! We have to lay the groundwork first – and then, suddenly, a couple of things you do get noticed.
Winning the Golden Globe for the Elvis mini-series must have been very satisfying.
It has done lovely things to help me along in my career, but I have never stopped to enjoy it. I was very nervous when I got it. I refuse to look at myself accepting it because apparently I look like a deer in the headlights! I was shockingly, shockingly nervous. I forgot to thank my managers, my agents. It was just terrible – it was a disaster actually. Elvis was a bit of a strange experience for me. I took on the role thinking it would be a bit of a joke at the start, and that probably nobody would see it. And then the further into shooting I got, the more I realised that people would see it.
As your profile grows, the media intrusion must be very difficult. Is it possible for you to have a normal lifestyle?
I’ve got loads of fucking normality in my life, really I do. I don’t live as special as you think. I don’t have the same paparazzi chasing me as somebody like Sienna Miller, God love her, or someone like Colin (Farrell) – every move he makes…
You are getting up to that level now.
I’m more famous in America than I am here. It’s kind of strange. But I’m very happy with that because if I wanted to be famous anywhere in the world, America is where I want to be famous.
But any time I open a paper these days there are paparazzi shots of you.
Well, they do, especially when you're in town doing The Tudors and stuff like that. There's not that many celebrities around and they’ve got to put things into the newspaper. I certainly don’t court it. When you become famous you’ve got to start living your life in a more controlled way. You’ve got to think the situation through more, because you don’t have the same sort of anonymity as other people. What you do can get written about in the newspapers. So, therefore you’ve got to make sure that you don’t do anything that could end up being gossipy. There's a very, very easy way to deal with the media – if you don’t fuck up, they can’t print any fuck-ups! Of course, they can make a couple of things up – and they do make things up – but they’ve got to sell newspapers every day.
Does that not piss you off?
No, because I know, personally, what’s going on in my life. You only realise how much bullshit there is when you work with somebody like Tom Cruise. I was seeing Tom every day for six months, but I was reading things about him that were completely untrue because I was there. Absolutely mad stuff. You can’t even entertain it. It's the nature of the game. But my job is in the public domain, so therefore it's pretty much open season. It’s a catch-22. Listen, I asked for it, so I’m not going to moan about it.
But the media attention must be difficult for the women associated with you?
Yes, it is harder for friends who are girls because they have their own lives and their own friendships as well, with other guys. And sometimes that can be difficult, it’s like: “There’s a picture of you with Johnny Rhys Meyers in the newspaper saying you are going out together.” And it’s like, “Well, we’re not. We were just shopping.” If I say hello to a girl, sometimes it ends up in the newspaper and you just don’t see that her husband is standing there – conveniently out of the shot. In America now I have got my house rented out to a producer and his wife was having a shower one day – I have this really nice glass shower – and she got a very nasty fright when somebody’s telephoto lens came through the bushes to photograph her in the nip, thinking it was probably some liaison of mine.
The rumours on the internet can also be vicious.
The other night I was in New York, after the premier of August Rush, and somebody just turned on the computer and said, “Would you like to see what they're saying about you?” And she put it up on the screen and I was, like, shocked and within about half-a-minute I asked her to turn it off. This is why I don’t go on the internet. There are many weird, weird people out there, expressing their opinions on the computer. Do I give a fuck about some dude sitting in his room commenting about whatever to do with me? It’s got nothing to do with me. It's somebody else’s thing. So, I don’t get involved.
Do you think your new movie, August Rush, has some similarities with your own upbringing?
Not really, apart from my father, who was a musician, who wasn’t there – that’s pretty much where the comparison stops. I’m not a musical genius. I’ve never been to an orphanage…
I read you have been in an orphanage. Is that bullshit?
Yeah.
So is there a lot of untruths out there about you?
There is. It kind of stemmed from this article years and years ago with this horrible, horrible woman. It was really strange. I don’t quite understand this, but I gave my time to do a three-page interview in a magazine and then they're negative about you. It kind of really fucking annoys me. I’m nobody’s fool. So, it has made me very cautious when I’m doing interviews. I just put my guard up because anything I say can be twisted around. I did this Details article and even the editor wrote a note at the start of the magazine saying, “Yeah, the guy who did the article with Johnny Rhys Meyers, his mind wasn’t really on his job because he’d lost everything in a Dublin casino the night before gambling.” And he decided to take it out on me in the article. That’s even written in the magazine. And it’s kind of like, what a fucking cocksucker! And that time I did an article for The Sunday Times, that woman had been ringing up family members, just pretending to be this nice old lady to sort of get behind the scenes information. I think that can be kind of sneaky. So, now I don’t suffer fools easily at all and if anybody asks me a question I don’t want to answer, they get a very quick ‘fuck off’. And if they don’t like it they can leave.
All the background articles out there on you are very Dickensian. They make your childhood sound very bleak; it’s as if you grew up in the ’40s during the war.
Listen, that’s also the fantasy as well. It’s kind of like, “Discovered in a pool hall” for War Of The Buttons. To a certain extent, that’s true, but that's pretty fantastical, you know what I mean? Or it’s like this kind of Oliver Twist fantasy they have about me – to rise from a street urchin to being this movie hero fella. If that’s what feeds their fantasies that’s fair enough. But that’s not the truth.
What is the truth?
The reality is less fantastical and much more dull and boring and drawn out. Normal working class. If we could find work we’d be working class. The criminal class. That’s what we were – the criminal class (laughs).
I don’t want to go down that road. I can just imagine the tabloid headlines.
I can imagine it (putting on a satirical broadcasting accent): “Rhys Meyers is part of the criminal class. Links to West Dublin gangs!” (Laughs) “Where were you on the morning of August – whatever – when your man was shot on the strand?” I mean, for fuck’s sake, don’t be ridiculous. No, regular working class Ireland in the 1980s. But when you say that to somebody in an interview in America – and I describe what Ireland was like in the 1980s – you might as well be talking about the 1940s because to them it is bleak.
But your upbringing wasn’t poverty-stricken?
In a world of poor we were poor. There was certainly no one with any real money; there might have been someone who had an extra 50 to 100 quid in their pocket every week and it would have seemed like they were far richer but they probably weren’t. Things were tight for everybody. But, you know, they kind of make up this fantasy – and let them make it up.
You left school early.
I certainly didn’t like school. Myself and school never got on. I never really thought I'd do well in the academic world. I’m too individual as a person and I can’t work within the factory. So, to spin a term, I couldn’t be the Orwellian worker – it wouldn’t satisfy me enough. I’m not very good at brown-nosing. I’m not a very good toad-eater. I think that when you're living in a business or academic world, there's a certain amount of toadying that you have to be able to do. There's a certain amount of politics to get to where you need to go. It's not all about talent, it's about who you know as well as what you know. I don’t think I would have done well at that. The only thing I was going to do well at, in hindsight, was something that was really sort of an individual talent.
Acting would have been like an escape route for you?
Well, yeah. Acting is that fabulous career for people who really don’t want to work very much. That’s not from me. I can’t claim that quote – that quote has been bandied around as long as actors have been bandied around. It's the ultimate sort of dosser job.
Is it true that you have a drink problem?
I can’t drink at all. I don’t drink. It's not that I drank a huge amount or drank for a very long time, I’m just one of these guys that it doesn’t suit at all. For me, basically, I don’t drink because I can’t; I don’t drink because I shouldn’t – regardless, I can’t, nor should I – but I don’t drink because I don’t want to.
I understand you attended rehab earlier this year?
I’ve been more than once. I think rehab is very, very good if somebody needs it. It's very good grist for the mill, but the reality of the situation is if you don’t want to drink because you think you’ve got a drink problem, stop fucking drinking. It's that simple. You can go into all the programmes and you can read all the books, but the basic gist of it is: don’t drink under any circumstances. I remember seeing a videotape, while I was in a treatment centre, of this priest. He was an alcoholic who helped a lot of guys stop drinking. And that was his basic thing – if you don’t want to drink, don’t drink. From there on it's all fucking gravy. It's very simple to figure out. At this point in my life, I want other things – things that drink gets in the way of.
I’m getting the impression that the underlying fear is that indulging in alcohol could thwart your career ambitions?
I want to focus on building a good career, but I just don’t want to be that fucking arsehole sitting in the pub and someone turns around and says (puts on a perfect Dublin working-class accent), “See him there at the end of the bar? He could have made a fucking fortune. He went over to Hollywood and fucking everything, and he just fucking pissed it up against the wall. Fucking good luck to him!” I just like to be alert to the opportunity. I think that’s really what luck is. Luck is sort of preparation meeting opportunity. When someone can really see a gift horse when it’s up there fucking smacking its mouth.
Not drinking must be very difficult?
Of course it can be a little bit difficult. Life comes with its own sort of chariots of doom and gloom and chariots of happiness and joy. There’s fucking times when you just want to go out with your mates on the lash. Of course you want to do that. But there’s this other thing I want to be more. It’s really that simple. It’s not huge. It’s not complex. I’m not on this incredible spiritual path. I don’t claim to be on a quest or a journey, other than trying to live every moment and get the most out of every moment that I possibly can. This moment in my life does not include going out and getting drunk.
Was it difficult for you to go through the route of rehab?
Going into rehab is probably the easiest thing to do. It's coming out of fucking rehab that is hard. Going in there is difficult as well because – who wants to spend that first night in fucking rehab? Nobody wants to do that. It’s a very lonely place and I’m not going to bullshit you, I’m not going to say it's all joy, sweetness and light – it isn’t. You really feel like you fucked up and you’re useless. In that sort of situation, everybody cares about you; everybody is very in tune with their feelings. Nobody wants to offend anybody. It's very easy to stay sober in rehab, but it's much more difficult when you're out in the real world, with people who really don’t give a fuck. You get out into the real world and it’s, “Fuck you, buddy! And if you have a problem with it – fuck you again.”
Do you think being a famous actor gets you less sympathy and understanding about your problem?
Ahh, no! I mean, they expect it of you more. Yeah. They are kind of like, “Oh, he’s an actor.” It’s like par for the course. “He’s Irish.” There’s actually a term in rehab and AA and stuff like that called ‘CIA’ – Catholic, Irish, Alcoholic. There’s a lot of that.
So the stereotype of us Irish being alcoholics is alive and well in LA?
It's not just alive and well in LA – it's alive and well all over the world because it's fact and the reality of the situation is that we do drink a hell of a lot more than most nations in the world. And you don’t recognise it until you leave. We have that stigma attached to us. They're not shocked to see an Irish actor going into rehab, or Colin going out and getting drunk, or going into rehab himself. It's not unusual. And it's not unusual for actors. Everyone in LA has some sort of programme. Regardless. Candy Anonymous! It’s that bad.
Is fame everything you’d imagined it would be?
No, it's nothing like I’d thought it would be because you don’t really feel it. I just feel like an actor, who is out there trying to do well. Someday, hopefully, I’ll sit back and go, “Wow! I have passed that threshold where my fame is more secure.” I think there’s a couple of actors who are very lucky, they are at that stage where someone like Tom Cruise, Mathew McConaughey and Brad Pitt can sit back and relax. They are what you would call modern classics, at this point. With any luck, hopefully in the next three, four, five years I’ll give a couple of very, very good performances that will allow me that time to sort of settle and re-focus. I think that if the wheels don’t buckle, if I can keep my focus and if I can keep my fucking ears open and my ego to myself, I can learn a lot more and I can possibly do one or two really important things in the next ten years.
I was surprised to learn that you didn’t have any formal training in acting. It doesn’t show in your work.
Thank you. When I get cast for a film now, they are not only taking on somebody who has a percentage of talent, but with me they are now taking on someone with 12 years of experience in front of a camera and on a film set. It can make a huge difference to how a film is paced, and how a film goes, when you’ve an actor who knows why a scene is being shot a certain way, knows how to hit his mark, knows how to work the camera, what the lighting is for and why it’s there. It's totally different than working in theatre. Film is a technique.
Which of yours films are you most proud of?
I’m not sure about that because I can’t really judge it. But I can tell you that there are a few that I’m not very proud of. I’ve just made a bunch of things that I’d rather not see on my CV – things like The Killer Tongue, The Tribe. I didn’t like my performance that much in The Governess because I’d done it so quickly after I’d completed Velvet Goldmine that I hadn’t got out of that campy, glam rock phase.
You obviously still have a hunger to become more successful?
Of course I’m hungry. Nobody gets into anything to go to the middle. Of course I want to go to the top of my game. I would like to start doing bigger roles and becoming more prolific. I would like to enjoy getting better at what I do – I really would. The money and the fame thing is grand. I just want enough money where I’m comfortable and I don’t have to think about it – that’s the plan. If people want to pay me millions of dollars to do a film that’s good.
I understand that you're going into the gym to beef yourself up in order to get away from playing the androgynous type of roles.
Absolutely. It’s everything you think it is. It’s methodical. It’s for a purpose. You physically have to develop yourself. I want to do leading men parts, so if that means I have to do a bit of extra time in the gym, to put a bit of weight on to become more physically imposing, then that’s part of the job too.
You recently made this comment in an interview: “There’s something about the way I look that lends the fact that I could be a little cruel. There’s definitely a darkness in my physicality.”
I said this in an article and the fucking quote has been bandied all over fucking America. I think I got a little bit misunderstood. It was just this fucking asshole in this Details article. He was being snarky and he was like, “Do you think the way you look has had a lot of influence in how you get your films, you know, in being as famous as you are?” And I was like, “Fucking doh!” I said, “It’s very fucking simple. You take someone like Brad Pitt, who is an incredible actor, but he’s as famous as he is because of the way he looks.” It’s a given. Any actor who does not realise that the way they look determines the roles they play is a fucking idiot and shouldn’t be involved in the business anyway. Then I read in an Irish newspaper: “Johnny takes a swipe at Brad Pitt.” I don’t swipe at anyone and I especially don’t fucking take a swipe at Brad Pitt. Am I a mug?
But being a film star is more than just looking great, right?
The thing about film is you don’t have to be the best looking guy in the world and you certainly don’t have to be the best actor in the world, but you do have to be interesting and photogenic. Some people who aren’t the most handsome men are very photogenic and very alive on camera – someone like Robert De Nero. In Taxi Driver, you just can’t take your eyes off him. Or in Godfather 2. It takes a very interesting person like Francis Ford Coppola to get Bobby as a young Marlon Brando. It's fucking genius casting. Looking at Bobby, he’s like, “You can’t be Brando but you can be Vito Corleone.” I would like to work with somebody with that fucking depth. It was the most brilliant casting of fucking all time. I would like to work with someone with that level of insight into how a person should be cast.
His daughter is doing some amazing work these days.
I’d love to work with Sofia Coppola. I loved her film Marie Antoinette. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I’d seen in a very long time. I was never really into Kirsten Dunst. I always thought she was a very good actress, but physically I never thought she was gorgeous. I never thought she was beautiful. I never fancied her until I saw her as Marie Antoinette. I think I fancied her more because of her role, more than any other actress in any other role that I’ve ever seen. She caught my imagination – totally.
When you immerse yourself in a role do you ever find yourself becoming infatuated in reality with your co-star?
There are little elements of them that you have to fancy, to a certain extent. That's part of the job. The nice thing is you're working with people who are extraordinary or beautiful for one reason or another. It's not hard to fall in love with Scarlet Johansson. She's very beautiful, charming, sexy, intelligent, wealthy, famous. She’s got all of these ‘zzzz’ things going for her. It's very easy to fancy someone like Natalie Dormer, who is playing Anne Boleyn. She is very sexy, very vibrant, very intelligent. Or Radha Mitchell. Or Keri Russell. These are all very beautiful girls. So, it's very easy to pretend to be in love with them. I can pretend to be in love with most people, I think, for a short period of time.
But do you have affairs with your co-stars?
You don’t take it home with you. I don’t have affairs with actresses. It has been eight years since I had a fling with an actress – I was, like, 22. It's not a good idea. When you start having sex with them the chemistry slightly goes because you’ve had what you’re not meant to have yet! Sometimes you can really pick that up, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes the chemistry is just electric because they're having great, extraordinary abandoned sex with each other. But more often than not the chemistry dies as soon as you start having sex with somebody. So, if you're going to have an affair with an actress you're working with it's probably best to do it after the film. Even better to do it on the publicity tour (laughs) because you have to really like each other by the time the film comes to being distributed. You don’t want two boring actors sitting there trying to compliment each other or being snarky to each other – when really all it is, is an affair that went sour. So, you have to stay professional from that point of view.
Now that you're famous you must get women throwing themselves at you?
I don’t get that really. You know what, I’d like it if a woman would throw herself at me. I would love to see somebody literally throw themselves at someone (laughs). I don’t see it as much, but I think people around me see it more than I see it myself. Girls are usually more discreet than throwing themselves at someone. I don’t think they're as blatant as (makes a girlie screaming sound); I think they are much more savvy.
You don’t seem to have a problem doing gay love scenes. A lot of men would be uncomfortable with that.
Fuck ’em! I’ve never really had a problem with it because it's just part of the gig and I can sort of pretend to do it. I can’t bring my own personal morality into what I feel about roles because it just wouldn’t work. Otherwise, if I have a problem with that, then when does it stop? I have had to do things that a lot of fucking men just wouldn’t do. I had to do a scene were I got raped up the arse by Malcom McDowell in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. I’ve had to come out of the North Sea balls naked – nobody wants to come out of the sea balls naked, let me just tell you that, on camera. I know a lot of fucking actors who would have turned around and said absolutely no way. Their pride and their ego wouldn’t let them do it. When I was doing The Tribe, Jeremy Norton was really uncomfortable doing our three-way scene. Ewan (McGregor) didn’t really like doing the kissing scene in Velvet Goldmine. In Titus, I play Chiron who, along with his brother Demetrius, rapes Lavinia, chops her hands off and cut her tongue out. Does that make me a rapist in real life? If it's a gay scene and I’ve got to be naked with a man, kissing a man – and if that's what the role needs and requires – then that’s what I’ll do. Moralistically, as an actor, I have to be, to a certain extent, in limbo.
On a personal level do you feel in limbo?
I’m always in limbo. I’m always ready to go off and do a role wherever it is – that’s the nature of my job. Some people may find that kind of shallow – and to an extent there's a shallowness because my depth I very much keep for myself. I wear my heart on my sleeve a lot, because as an actor it's very much what you can bring to the surface. But also, I tend to not get attached to people and places and things because I might not be there all the time. So, there’s a certain amount of limbo that you exist in.
What makes you tick as a person? It can’t all just be about the work.
At the moment it kind of is. But I like the work; I like going to the gym; I like hanging out in London and Camden; I like watching TV. I like very simple things. Somebody asked me recently what was my favourite holiday destination and I said home! Home is my favourite holiday destination. A fucking cup of tea, sitting down in front of me TV, a nice football match, me cigarettes there – that’s a holiday. The thought of flying 11 hours to some fucking beach sort of drives me mad – I can’t even think of it. Some exotic palm tree location? No! I want to go home. Music actually takes up a big part of my life – more than I thought it would. Listening to music, playing music. I’ve got a dog called Bruce. It’s really strange because I always thought these guys who have little dogs – and they love their dogs – were fucking saps. Well, I’m a total sap for this dog. A wasp stung him the other day and I couldn’t be consoled. I was rushing into the hospital and everything – and it was kind of like, this is a fucking dog! The dog is kind of my baby replacement. I’m 30 and I feel like I should be a father in some way, but… let’s have a dog. I don’t want to have a kid, I want to have a dog! Much nicer!
So is parenthood something for the future?
I don’t know. I’m just not quite sure. I love kids, but I’m just not quite sure if being a father is me. I’m just not quite sure that I’m that guy. If I get a phone call at the eleventh hour – to fall into the lead role of some super spectacular film somewhere because someone’s dropped out, then I’m gone. It would be hard if it’s your baby’s birthday –or your kid’s taking his first steps – and you're up the top of a fucking mountain in East Africa making this big epic movie. And it's hard for the mother. Whatever about the fucking father running away, doing his adventuring and being Mister Movie Star and cool and famous, it’s hard for the mother to stay behind and sort of rear the child and have all that responsibility all the time. I’m not sure I can inflict that on someone.
Sure, when you're 50 or 60, as a big Hollywood actor, you can marry a 25-year-old and start a family then.
Now, you behave yourself!
The papers are constantly full of speculation about your love life. Are you in a relationship now?
I am, but that’s all I am saying.
Would you describe yourself as a religious person?
I definitely think there’s a spiritual path. I’m more spiritual than I would admit or realise about myself, but I don’t practise any type of spirituality. I’m certainly not a religious person, but I am respectful of other people’s religions and their rights to have their opinions. I don’t believe they should be fucking shooting each other with AK47s to settle it. I’m more of a realist.
What type of music do you like?
Everything. I’ve got an iPod with a bunch of stuff. At the moment, I find myself actually listening to a bit of ’80s music. Bruce Springsteen. The first album I ever bought was Born In The USA. So, I’m revisiting Bruce. Magic is a very good album. I’m listening to Genesis. I found a really good compilation by them on the internet, so I downloaded it. Some of it's just great catchy tunes, but then some of it is too ’80s, some of it is too much like Huey Lewis and The News – I don’t want to go quite there! I’ve a lot of The Cure.
Do you have The OKs (his three brothers’ band) on your iPod?
I certainly have The OKs on my iPod. I have a really good demo of a song that my brother Alan wrote called ‘Grace’ and it’s such a gorgeous song. My brother is such an amazing songwriter – but he hates every song that he writes 20 minutes after recording it. They're very fucking talented lads. I would like to see them do something. I’m not quite sure if I’d ever work with them. After August Rush, a lot of people in America have been asking me if I’m going to be releasing an album because I sing the songs on the soundtrack.
Did you sing in the Elvis mini-series?
I only sung for a couple of seconds in the studio scene (he then does a brilliant singing impersonation of Elvis). It was all Elvis’ tracks. It was the first time that Elvis’ masters were ever used because when John Carpenter made his film with Kurt Russell they had to get somebody in to sing like Elvis – they didn’t have the rights to his music.
You also sang on the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack.
On Velvet Goldmine I was 19-years-old and I hadn’t really sung much, but they were very sort of glam rocky songs, so some music magazines in England were sort of really harsh – but again, fuck ’em. For something like August Rush they were closer to my own voice, but they were also songs that were written for a film – and they were good songs and they suit the film. But I would like to see what my voice would be like if I recorded a song that I found, which I really desperately wanted to record. That would be a little bit more interesting. Maybe with my brothers in a few years time, but not on a professional level.