| April 1 2000 METRO FILM
After Trainspotting, how could Jonny Lee Miller's career
ever falter? Yet his love life now has a higher profile than
his films. Can Mansfield Park change all that? Lisa Verrico
finds out
Here's Jonny
There can be few film stars who make less of an entrance
than Jonny Lee Miller. When the 27-year-old Britpack actor
arrives alone to meet me in the foyer of the hip St Martin's
Lane Hotel in London, no one bats an eyelid. Miller may have
earned tags as a rising star and instant sex symbol as Sick
Boy in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting (1996) - not to mention
attracting tabloid attention for his relationships with the
darling of the 2000 Oscars, Angelina Jolie, and All Saint
Natalie Appleton - but he is still far from a famous face.
I almost missed him myself. Dressed in chain-store combats
and black hooded jumper, not only is Miller much slimmer than
he looks in photographs, but the distinctive peroxide-blond
hair, which he sported as Sick Boy, has been replaced by a
mid-brown crop. Moreover, he is softly spoken and at times
surprisingly shy, nothing like the self-assured celebrity
that his public persona suggests.
"Even I don't recognise myself in the papers," he says solemnly.
"The person I read about isn't me. I'm supposed to be some
sort of party animal, but that couldn't be further from the
truth."
Famous for his dislike of interviews, Miller is here to talk
about Mansfield Park, an offbeat film adaptation of Jane Austen's
novel, which hit British cinemas yesterday. In his first serious
costume drama, Miller plays leading man Edmund Bertram, the
kindhearted but naive second son of a wealthy, early 19th-century
aristocrat (played by Harold Pinter).
"I'm not a big costume drama fan," admits Miller, who can't
name one such film that he has enjoyed. "Mansfield Park appealed
to me because I thought the script took an unusual approach.
There's a lot of humour in it, which you wouldn't expect.
I also liked the idea of playing someone as square as Edmund.
I've never had a character like him before."
Surprisingly, Miller didn't bother to read the book. "I probably
should have done," he says. " I usually do read the book if
I'm working on an adaptation, but this time I thought it might
be better not to. I knew that the film was wildly different
from the novel and it was the guy in the script that I wanted
to get to."
Born in middle-class Kingston-upon-Thames to an acting family
- his great-grandfather, Edmund James Lee, was a music hall
performer, his grandfather, Bernard Lee, played M in the first
dozen Bond films, and his father, Alan Miller, was a stage
actor in the Fifties and Sixties - Miller says he was seven
when he first knew that his future lay in films. Two years
later he made his small screen debut in - spookily enough
- a BBC adaptation of Mansfield Park.
By the time he enrolled at Tiffin School for Boys, his local
grammar school, Miller had developed a passion for acting.
He attended drama classes and joined the National Youth Music
Theatre. Aged 17, and armed with nine GCSEs, Miller left school
to pursue a stage career. After a year working in a café,
he got an evening job backstage at London's Drury Lane theatre
and devoted his days to going to auditions. His first parts
were in television series such as Inspector Morse, Minder
and The Bill, with only two or three lines to say. Then he
landed a regular role in EastEnders.
"Do you remember Mrs Hewitt, the woman who had an affair
with Arthur?" asks Miller. "Well, I was her son. I used to
help Arthur in the garden. It was five weeks' work and I made
more money there than I ever had in my life. Then they offered
me a year's contract. I said no, thank God. I thought I should
get out of there while I still could. No offence to EastEnders."
Miller's break on to the big screen came in 1994 when he
was cast as cyber surfer Zero Cool in Hackers. It was while
filming in New York that he fell in love with his co-star,
wild child actress Angelina Jolie, then 18, who's just bagged
an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Girl, Interrupted.
The following year saw Miller in Scotland shooting what he
thought would be a cult underground film, after his friend
and fellow struggling actor Ewan McGregor suggested him for
Trainspotting's Sick Boy. Miller was the only non-Scottish
lead.
"That was a little nerve-racking," he admits. "But the guys
were great - they all helped me out with the accent. I adopted
it as soon as we got to Glasgow and kept it up the whole time
we were there. People thought that I really was Scottish.
Ewan and Robert (Carlyle) thought I was mad."
Flooded with offers of sub-Sick Boy roles, Miller moved to
Los Angeles where, in March 1996, he married Jolie. The bizarre
ceremony involved Miller wearing black leather and Jolie writing
his name on her white silk shirt in her own blood. Two weeks
later Miller met his father-in-law for the first time - the
Hollywood legend Jon Voight. Over the next 18 months, the
marriage failed and Miller's career began to trail behind
those of his Trainspotting co-stars.
His first flop was a two-part, American television western,
Dead Man's Walk (1996), with Harry Dean Stanton and David
Arquette. Then came the Canadian film Afterglow (1997), which
won Miller rave reviews and his co-star, Julie Christie, an
Oscar nomination, but bombed at the box office. He returned
home for a second spell in Scotland to play shell-shocked
Billy Prior in Regeneration (1997). Again, the film was a
critical hit, but a commercial disappointment.
Last year, the highwayman caper Plunkett & Macleane -
in which he starred alongside the now highflying Carlyle -
seemed certain to give Miller only his second real success.
Unfortunately, the critics panned it, and already this year
the Miller curse has struck yet again. Having spent three
months in freezing conditions in Scotland playing investigative
journalist Cameron Colley in an adaptation of Iain Banks's
novel Complicity, Miller suspects the film has been shelved.
"It came out in Scotland, but nowhere else," he says, clearly
bemused. "I have no idea why. None of the cast was invited
to the opening. I had to ask to see the finished film. I'm
a bit pissed off, to be honest. I thought it was pretty good.
It's hard for me to be subjective because I'm in it, but it
certainly doesn't merit being lost."
Miller claims to have no idea what his next film role will
be. However, he will be appearing on stage in London's West
End later this year, alongside Michael Gambon in a Patrick
Marber-directed production of The Caretaker.
Meanwhile, much to his dislike, Miller is making a name for
himself as one of the world's most sought-after celebrity
bachelors. Besides Natalie Appleton, he has been linked with
the likes of Kate Moss and Anna Friel and is now a prime tabloid
target.
"I'm not comfortable with celebrity at all," Miller admits,
although he was happy to turn up at the Elle style awards
last year, where he and Appleton were named Britain's Coolest
Couple. "Despite how it looks, I'm not interested in that
type of attention. All I want to be known as is a good actor.
A good actor who minds his own business and keeps himself
to himself."
Mansfield Park is on general release.
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