It's good to be King

Jonathan Rhys Meyers has a lot in common with his 16th century alter ego, Henry VIII. Photo / Supplied

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is feeling playful. We're on the set of The Tudors, and as the director dishes out instructions to the cast, Rhys Meyers pretends to stab him with his sword. Then he leans over and whispers to one of the pretty young actresses on his right. "How's your sister?"

This could be taken the wrong way, especially coming from a guy who has been linked to a string of Hollywood beauties, and whose alter ego is King Henry VIII, who had six wives. But Rhys Meyers is just being polite. The actress updates him, then introduces the actress next to her, who happens to come from Virginia.

"Oh, you're the Yank?" he says, flashing her a grin. "Virginia! Land of corrrrn! You like corn?"

His fake American accent sounds a bit silly but it has all the girls in fits of giggles. It's suddenly apparent why Rhys Meyers, initially a surprising choice for this role, got the part.

"When I first heard that they wanted me to play Henry VIII, I laughed," he says. "I was like, you've got to be kidding. It's ridiculous."

It's a day earlier, and the actor has arrived at Dublin's Ardmore Studios, dressed in black skinny jeans, black singlet and black geek-chic glasses. He looks more rock star than royal.

"I thought, they're going to want a proper Henry VIII. And I said 'guys, I'm not like that. I'm not your guy'. And then they explained what they were going to do."

The idea was not to portray Henry as the fat, ageing tyrant of the history books but the young, athletic figure of emerging power in the 16th century.

Rhys Meyers didn't have the weight or physical presence you'd expect for the part but he has a lot in common with the notorious monarch, says The Tudors creator and writer, Michael Hirst.

"From what one reads about the young Henry VIII, he's not dissimilar in temperament. He's not dissimilar in looks either, but that was when Henry was young. But he lives kind of on the edge. He has a very small attention span and Henry did too. He's very bright and Henry was incredibly clever."

Rhys Meyers can thank his short attention span for kick-starting his career. His father left the family home when his son was just 3. The eldest of three brothers, Rhys Meyers didn't exactly take on the paternal mantle. After he was expelled from high school at 16, he was discovered while hanging out in a pool hall in Cork. Later he went on to star in a series of commanding roles: a football coach in Bend it Like Beckham with Keira Knightley, a version of David Bowie in Velvet Goldmine, Elvis Presley in Elvis, for which he won a Golden Globe and a cheating husband in Woody Allen's Match Point with Scarlett Johansson.

Perhaps because he makes up for his slight frame by projecting an inner danger, Rhys Meyers tends to polarise opinion, on and off-screen. His role as Henry has divided critics, unsure of what to make of his glowering interpretation of the king. Others have nothing but praise.

"I don't see Henry VIII as the jolly, go-forward, go-getter king," he says. "That's horseshit. It doesn't exist. Nobody knows what he sounded like. Nobody knows what he thought like and nobody knows what he looked like, really, or the way he walked or how he behaved ... .

It's hard to know what to make of Rhys Meyer in person, either. He is gentlemanly and charming, shaking hands with everyone in the room, yet avoiding eye contact. He is adamant he doesn't take himself too seriously but when he gets carried away discussing Henry's political failings, his spiritual beliefs, his life story, he speaks theatrically, as though reading from an imaginary script or giving a history lecture.

He seems to find it difficult to sit still, crossing his legs, uncrossing them, fidgeting with his hands or glasses, his eyes either boring into you or gazing, distractedly, out the window.

"Johnny's very intense," says Hirst. "He didn't have formal drama training, so he has to find everything in himself. But Johnny has a wicked sense of humour. He's very challenging. I love it. I can't imagine doing this with anyone else. And the unpredictability, too."

Hirst found he was starting to write scenes inspired by the actor.

"I would fill the court with people and Johnny would go from one person to the next and he would be totally different with each encounter. So, he might appear to be drunk with one person and then the next person he'd be threatening. And then he'd be flirtatious. You could just sense that this guy was pretty dangerous."

It would be tempting to think he was always like this. In late 2007, a few months after a stint in rehab for alcohol problems, Rhys Meyers was arrested at Dublin airport for public drunkenness and breaching the peace. His PR team insist there be no personal questions but the actor will say he is aware how the public might perceive his edgy side.

His Henry is obviously not a random, spontaneous performance but one built on research, insight and "a certain amount of natural narcissism or arrogance".

"I look like a pretty intense person," reasons the actor. "I've got big eyes and so they seem more intense than they really are. And for some people it's, you know, almost harrowing. But I try my best to be as convivial as possible."

In the first two series of The Tudors we've watched Henry grow from optimistic boy to a tempestuous, sexually insatiable monarch. Having dispensed with Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon in series two, the next will portray his marriages to Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves.

Rhys Meyers prepared for the part by meeting with two royals, a prince and an African king, and found they both exuded an energy that can only come with never hearing the word "no". The Tudors is often referred to as "The Sopranos of the 16th century" but it's hard to imagine even bad old Tony being responsible for the deaths of 75,000 people.

Rhys Meyers attributes his character's nature to the fact that Henry was never meant to be King, didn't particularly want to be, and had a chip on his shoulder as a result. His older brother Arthur had died and until then, Henry had been allowed to go off and have a good time. He likens Henry to Prince Harry, should anything ever happen to William.

"He had that chip on his shoulder that being a spare gets you. But I think he was very traumatised. I mean, if you put a 7-year-old kid into that situation where they're locked in a room and their father's outside chopping people's heads off and he might come back dead," he says, referring to the Cornish rebellion, "you can imagine what that child's going to be when it's grown up."

Of playing Elvis, that other famous king, he says, "I only ever played him as a country and western singer from Tupelo, Mississippi. As soon as I started thinking of Elvis, it's too big. I don't think of Henry in The Tudors as Henry VIII, to be honest with you. I just think of myself as a young prince. I took a lot of inspiration from Peter O'Toole as Henry II. I wanted that sort of wildness, that loucheness."

And yet, he says Henry was more of a prude than he appears in The Tudors. He concedes there is an element of exploitation involved but points out that back then, people had more sex because there were fewer distractions.

There's no chance, however, that we'll see him naked and fat, should the final fourth series get the go-ahead. He couldn't envisage being unhealthy for an extended period, then the eight or so months of hard work required to get himself back into shape.

Nor did producer Morgan O'Sullivan want to risk viewers getting withdrawals from seeing the hard-bodied version of the king. A former model, Rhys Meyers gets a kick out of the elegance of his role anyway.

But could he be getting a little too used to playing the king? Dame Helen Mirren recently said she found people treated her differently when she played the Queen. So how does he treat his castmates between takes?

"Who, them?" he sneers, as though referring to rodents. "Them?" Then he drops the act and smiles.

"I treat everybody with as much graciousness as I can. I'm not an asshole, I'm just an actor."

LOWDOWN

Who: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays King Henry VIII in The Tudors
Born: Jonathan Michael Francis O'Keeffe on July 27, 1977
Key roles: Velvet Goldmine (1998), Prozac Natio, (2001), Bend it Like Beckham (2002), Vanity Fair(2004), Alexander (2004), Elvis (2005), Match Point (2005), Mission Impossible III (2006), August Rush, (2007)
When: Third series starts TV1, 8.30pm Sunday, October 25 (the repeat second season finale is on 10.20pm tomorrow night)