| February
21, 2004 Mad, bad and dangerous to know ... Jonny Lee Miller
as Lord Byron.
The BBC's Byron presents the Romantic poet as the first great
celebrity. Michael Idato talks to the show's charismatic lead,
Jonny Lee Miller.
When Lord Byron's second book of poems was published in 1812,
it sold out within days. "I awoke," he wrote in
his diary at the time, "and I was famous." In 1996,
when Danny Boyle's confronting film Trainspotting was released,
British actor Jonny Lee Miller could well have penned the
very same words.
Miller, who plays the Romantic poet in the BBC's new costume
drama Byron, bristles at comparisons with the man once described
as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". In a superficial
sense, however, such comparisons are tempting. Byron was one
of the world's first true celebrities - an aristocrat and
poet whose fame opened his private life to scrutiny, at one
point so intense that the phrase "Byromania" was
coined during his lifetime. Miller, meanwhile, has been called
the "British Brad Pitt", was once married to American
film actress Angelina Jolie and can claim Ewan McGregor and
Jude Law as close friends.
The burden of fame, however, could be where the similarity
ends. Byron was known for wild narcissism. Miller, in dramatic
contrast, is shy - almost painfully so. He is charismatic,
certainly, but quick to blush, displaying the awkward uncertainty
of a man not entirely comfortable when the spotlight is on
him.
The life of Byron, as Nick Dear has written it for the small
screen, plays out as a cautionary tale about fame and celebrity.
"He was like one of the first rock stars," says
the BBC's head of drama serials, Laura Mackie. "He had
women falling over themselves to seduce him. But it all rather
bored him ... He just thought his life was rather meaningless.
"He was raised up, lauded as a celebrity figure and
then brought down in the way that celebrities are brought
up and then down by the tall-poppy syndrome."
"The warning," Miller says, "is simply that
fame is not going to bring you happiness. When Byron was living
on Lake Geneva, the guy who owned the guesthouse across the
lake used to hire out binoculars, like long-lens paparazzi."
On the subject of his own fame, Miller is dismissive. It
is something to be managed, he says, but adds it isn't something
he worries about too much. "What I have observed is that
if you get scared by it, then it becomes that, and suddenly
you're Mariah Carey. Or you can just chill and be Paul Newman.
It's what you make it."
After Trainspotting, Miller delivered noteworthy performances
in 1999's Mansfield Park and 2000's Love, Honour and Obey.
He flirted with producing, in the now-dissolved company Velvet
Nylon, which he formed with friends, including McGregor and
Law.
"I was up for producing then," he laughs, "But
my mind doesn't really work in that way. Maybe one day, but
for the moment I feel it's too much of a grown-up job for
me."
His career, he says, is entirely focused on his acting; the
attraction of Byron was the script. "It had a lot of
humour in it, which I thought was interesting because I had
tended to think of it as a heavy subject. There was a great
lightness of touch. And also because it ran the whole gamut
of emotions, it had everything in it that you could want as
an actor."
Byron examines the poet through a series of key relationships
with women: his half-sister Augusta (Natasha Little); his
lover, Lady Caroline Lamb (Camilla Power); his wife, Annabella
(Julie Cox); and his confidante, Lady Melbourne (Vanessa Redgrave).
"More significantly," Miller adds, "he was
defined by his relationship with his mother, who you don't
really see. He just wanted to be loved, he wanted affection."
Despite the perception that Byron was a dark figure, temperamental
and intense, Miller's research discovered a gentler man with
whom he felt great empathy. "I did a lot of reading and
I got a sense that he was a kind man, and a funny man, which
again I think was different to most people's perception of
this tortured gothic kind of character. I wanted to make him
essentially lovable.
Read this interview
here
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