Pablo O. Scholz
09/18/2021 6:00 AM
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Updated 09/18/2021 6:00 AM
It is not a story, nor a legend, because Jeremy Irons confessed it to me in the very city of Mar del Plata.
It was in November 1999. He was in La Feliz, on the occasion of an edition of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival.
He was not much more than 24 hours: he arrived on Saturday the 27th, the closing day, they gave him a special distinction, and he left on Sunday morning.
They also gave him something else.
With what he was paid for his presence, he was able to finish his castle in Ireland
.
Those were times of Menemism in retreat.
Jeremy Irons, in November 1999, in Mar del Plata.
It was his third trip to Argentina.
Photo Clarín Archive
Irons, who will be 73 years old tomorrow, Sunday, September 19, greeted spectators, Argentine actors, ushers smiling at the Auditorium Theater.
The top prize had been taken by the Portuguese film
The Weddings of God
, directed and interpreted by Joao César Monteiro, absent at the time of delivery.
The award for best director was withdrawn by Giuseppe Bertolucci, brother of the director of
The Last Tango in Paris
, for his film
The Sweet Rumor of Life
.
But the fervor unleashed by the arrival of the English actor caused the award-winning Giuseppe not only to go unnoticed,
but almost to be run over by TV cameras.
At the closing ceremony, between Geraldine Chaplin and Sonia Braga, who makes him kill.
Photo Clarín Archive
Before, alone with
Clarín
, while patiently rolling his tenth black cigarette, he remembered his first trip to Argentina, when he was 21 years old, and answered that yes, it had been a surprise that he was invited to the closing of the festival.
“I found out shortly before traveling.
They invited me a few years ago, but I didn't have time available ”, and it was their third trip to Argentina.
I remembered three things about the first: "A city as romantic as Paris, a puppeteer with whom I fell in love and an elevator in which I was traveling that collapsed from the seventh floor."
In "Gucci House," which opens on December 2, he is Rodolfo Gucci, father of Adam Driver's character and father-in-law of Lady Gaga's.
Photo UIP
His blue T-shirt showed a considerable injury on his right arm.
“I didn't have the elevator, it was thirty days ago.
I was fixing some pipes in my castle in Ireland.
It is very old, I bought it and I am renovating it… I would love to know more about Argentina, 30 years ago I had no time, we would go from theater to theater, perhaps in the future.
Life is so fast ... ”, he prophesied.
To film Misiones
The second visit had been to Misiones, where he filmed in the Iguazú National Park, along with Robert De Niro,
The Mission
(1986), the Roland Joffé film, and played Father Gabriel.
With Robert De Niro in "The mission" (1986), which they filmed here, in Iguazú.
Photo Clarín Archive
Jeremy, affable and easygoing, said that he had not had much opportunity to know something of our culture.
"Ah, yes,
Mercedes Sosa
-recalculated-.
I was in Buenos Aires, I had a free night, and I found out about this magnificent singer… There was no more room, it was a small club, but I managed to be allowed in.
I even bought the album.
I was 21 years old ”.
The Oscar winner for
My Secret Condemns Me He
reflected that “music is what allows you to enter the culture of a people.
Tonight we are going to see flamenco ”.
I clarified to him that flamenco is Spanish, not Argentine.
"Aha," he nodded.
Together with Meryl Streep, in his second film: "The French Lieutenant's Mistress", 40 years ago.
Photo Clarín Archive
"There are some films that are made with the heart, and others with the pocket," he trusted.
I finished
Dungeons and Dragons
, in which I personify a real demon.
And, looking at the bills I was paying in Ireland, I accepted. "
That was when he was honest and told that what he received for his visit enabled him to finish the castle.
Like Adrian Veidt, who thinks he is the most intelligent man on Earth, in the miniseries "Watchmen."
HBO photo
Today Irons is known, perhaps, by the new generations for being Alfred in the films in which Batman is embodied by
Ben Affleck
, or by his Adrian Veidt in
Watchmen
.
Those who are older remember him for his film debut in
Nijinsky
, for being madly in love with that redhead who played Meryl Streep in
The French Lieutenant's Mistress
, for his films with David Cronenberg, such as
Pact of Love
, for being Franz Kafka for Steven Soderbergh, for
The House of the Spirits
, with Meryl Streep and Glenn Close, for voicing Scar in
The Lion King
and even being the villain in
Hard to Kill 3
, with Bruce Willis.
For "My secret condemns me" (1991), with Glenn Close, he won his only Oscar.
Photo Clarín Archive
The news marks that we will soon see him in
La casa Gucci
, by Ridley Scott, as Rodolfo Gucci, the father of Maurizio (Adam Driver).
Maurizio was ordered to be killed by his former wife, Patrizia Reggiani (
Lady Gaga
).
Has he filmed it with his heart, or with his pocket?
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