Oscar-winning English actor Jeremy Irons has said he's "never happier than when I'm down here in West Cork."
"I did [get bored] in my 50s when I was sort of changing over from being the leading man to being the sort of father of the leading man. It was a difficult ten years," he said.
"I was getting a bit bored with my work and you know when you start getting bored with your work, you started behaving badly. And I thought, 'Ah, I think I’m going to stop this for a bit.’
"And that’s when I did up Kilcoe Castle then - I was almost 50 I think I was."
He said that he didn’t put a budget on the extensive renovations, which had been uninhabited for 400 years.
"I think it probably was [naivety] but I thought we could do this if I got the right people behind me. It’s not rocket science – we’re just rebuilding a castle."
Speaking about how he assembled a crew of craftspeople and tradespeople for the project, he said, "They find me, strangely enough."
"Word gets out in West Cork, you can't keep a secret in West Cork - people would walk down to the castle and say, 'Can I have a job!?’ People were assembling," he recalled.
"Fridays were a terrible day as Fridays were payday and I think when we were going flat out, I had to do 40 wage packets every Friday. And that’s terrible - the money becomes monopoly money.
"I hadn’t put a budget on it because I had no idea what it would cost, but I thought we’ll do it until we run out [of money]."
The actor, who recently appeared in The Beekeeper, will soon feature in a "live-to-film" concert version of The Lion King, set to take place in the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The new show will mark the 30th anniversary of the film, in which he voiced villain Scar.
He explained that the show will alternate between the film itself, shown on a large screen, and live onstage performances of its songs by actors and dancers.
"Well it’s terrifying isn’t it - I don’t know why I agreed to do it but I did," he said.
"I’ll be singing Be Prepared, which is what Scar sang… just the song.
"I think it’ll be alright… I only sang it once in the studio so I’ve got to learn it, haven’t I?"
Later in the interview, he said, "There’s a generation of kids who only know me for Scar… a bloody cartoon!" he laughed.
When D’Arcy asked if Irons is drawn to playing villain roles, the actor responded, "They tend to be more interesting than the goodies, from Shakespeare into movies, it’s the same.
"Richard III, all the Shakespeare baddies are a lot of fun to play."
He said he is unsure as to why he has so often won these roles, saying, "Whether it’s my face or how people think of me, maybe they think I’m a baddie – I don’t know, but I certainly have more fun doing that."
He also spoke about potentially starring in an film adaptation of Neil Jordan’s book, The Well Of Saint Nobody. He said he prefers these kinds of smaller independent projects rather than the large, "Marvel spectaculars", in which he says actors are a "a pretty small cog in a vast machine," and describing them as "not so much fun".
He also outlined the difficult emotional involvement he felt while starring alongside his wife Sinéad Cusack in 1992 film Waterland and using his own father as inspiration to get into his role as Claus von Bülow in the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor.
He discussed his fond memories of filming The Mission as well as his love of playing music, describing how he plays guitar, violin and viola, and revealed he once played traditional music with Cormac Begley.
D'Arcy also spoke to Irons about his work as an ambassador with the Hope Foundation, a charity which for 25 years has helped street-dwelling and slum-connected children in Kolkata, India.
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