| ARTICLE TAKEN FROM SUNDAY MAIL SUPPLEMENT 'XS'
OCT 24TH 1999.
A MILLERS CROSSING....
This is the man who swapped the sunshine of California for
a windswept, rat-infested island in the Firth of Forth. It
might make you think that Jonny Lee Miller, Sick Boy in Trainspotting,
is indeed unwell... But there's method to the madness and
working in his native Britain does have its compensations.
Such as his pop star girlfriend of seven months, Natalie Appleton,
from female supergroup All Saints. She was the hottest date
in pop after her split from telly host Jamie Theakston. But
the charms of Jonny, 26, have swept her off her feet... and
punctured Theakston's image as a love god!
"Jamie was half a man and Jonny is a whole man," gushed Nat.
"I have never been happier Jonny has done more for me than
Jamie ever did. He is the love of my life."
To begin with, the pair tried to keep their romance secret.
They shared private jokes and Natalie, bless her, couldn't
stop grinning. But their desire boiled over at a film premiere
in London in April and they gave the game away by kissing
passionately at the after-show party.
Now the glamorous duo has just won a magazine's ultra-hip
Coolest Couple award. When the result was unveiled, Theakston
deliberately turned and nuzzled the neck of his new girl...It
will take a lot more than that to drive Natalie from the arms
on the intense Mr Miller. It seems all his relationships are
intense in the extreme, some so hot that they burn out. Miller
split from his wife, actress Angelina Jolie, in January. But
when they married back in 1996, they were besotted. She arrived
for the ceremony wearing a white shirt - on which she had
written his name in her own blood! Angelina, whose father
is the Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight, also wore black rubber
trousers for the occasion. At least they matched Jonny's leather
outfit! But the American excess didn't stretch to the reception.
There were only two guests at the wedding and Jonny was introduced
to his new father-in-law weeks after he had taken his vows.
Jonny, who met Angelina on the set of cybergeek film Hackers,
set up home in Los Angeles. - capital of the world of weirdness.
They both got tattoos. Jolie had Bravery inscribed on her
arm, Death on her shoulder and a pair of Borneo tribal designs
on her bum. Jonny - who kept a pet snake called Harry in their
house - had a serpent tattooed on the inside of his wrist.
All very different to his upbringing in London's swish Kingston-upon-Thames.
Yet Jonny was a man with a plan. "Being nuts about her had
something to do with the craziness. But it was a great opportunity
to explore other worlds and to work in LA.
"I might otherwise have been asking 'What if?' for the rest
of my life," he says. One of the reasons for the marriage
breaking up was that Jonny got fed up with Hollywood.
Work came Jonny's way easily enough. He starred in a five-hour
western mini-series, called Dead Man's Walk, and in the film
Afterglow, in which he played a workaholic who falls in love
with an ageing actress. But he says: "Although I enjoyed Hollywood
at first, I realised that Britain was the place to be, both
for work and personal contentment. " I know this sounds mad,
but I was missing little things like the Nine O'clock News,
red buses, country smells, the sound of our rock music and
Match of the Day." So he turned his back on the Golden State,
a decision that lately led him to barren Inchmickery Island,
in the shadow of the Forth Bridge. -He was filming the screen
version of lain Bank's gruesome novel Complicity. The whole
cast were warned not to eat, drink or smoke during the entire
time they were there, because they could catch serious diseases
from the rats' urine!
Tinseltown's glamour might suddenly have seemed quite appealing
again, but Jonny's always been a man to take a tough decision
and stick to it.
In the wake of Trainspotting's massive success, he could
easily have fallen into a string of wild-boy parts- but he
decided to say no.
Jonny said: "There were lots of offers. It was as if every
Hollywood director was saying "We need a wild, crazy young
guy -let's get that Sick Boy guy in here." I could have made
lots of money, dug in and become a face - and I would have
been dropped by Hollywood after a couple of years because
all the films would have been rubbish."
Instead, Jonny chose a trickier path with a series of challenging
roles in films that were never going to set Box Office records.
Regeneration told the story of a traumatised First World War
soldier and meant filming in rain-drenched trenches. Plunkett
and Macleane - in which he again hooked up with Robert Carlyle,
this time as highwaymen - was filmed in Prague, mostly at
night.
Now Jonny is working in London on Love, Honour and Obey.
To make things difficult, he is making up his own lines in
the film-The movie, in which he plays a bored postman who
has wheedled his way into a London gang, is a scriptless number
in which the cast - including Sadie Frost, Jude Law and Kathy
Burke - have to improvise. It is a brave move -hitching his
star to a movie that many say has flop written all over it.
Given his hobbies include skydiving and the martial art Aikido,
Jonny has bravery in spades and he's an old hand at the acting
game acting in BBC dramas when he was just nine years o1d
He quit to finish school then left Tiffin Boys School in Kingston
at 16-to work a cafe. He certainly had acting in his blood.
His grandfather, Bernard Lee, played M in the early Bond films.
His dad, Alan Miller, was a stage actor in the '5Os and '60s,
before going into production at the BBC. Even his great-grandfather
was a music-hall performer in Northern Ireland. As he dished
out food in the cafe, young Jonny still wasn't sure that treading
the boards was for him. He found a job in London's Drury Lane
Theatre - not on stage but as a member of the front-of-house
staff. But his decision was made and he began the rounds of
auditions. With no formal drama qualifications, natural talent
landed him roles in prime Suspect 3, Casualty and The Bill.
But he wasn't so bigheaded that he didn't worry about where
the next pay packet was coming
"You never stop looking over your shoulder, wondering if
the work is suddenly going to dry up," he said.
These days, his nervousness seems incredible. For he has
now become a member of the all-conquering Brit Pack, the UK
actors who are taking the movie world by storm. And he has
joined forces with his acting buddies Ewan McGregor, Sean
Pertwee -as well as his Love, Honour and Obey co-stars Jude
Law and Sadie Frost - to form their own production company,
Natural Nylon.
He has become an actor with serious clout. A man with the
hottest girlfriend and one of coolest images in showbiz.
Forget sick boy. Jonny has become the It Boy.
THANKS TO BOB FOR SENDING ME THIS
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