The Oscar-winning movie Jeremy Irons was unceremoniously booted out of: “The safest bet”
Jeremy Irons is an unusual movie star, as he’s far from the buttoned-up, traditional British thespian that he appeared to be during the first few decades of his career.
Although Irons won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ for his performance in Reversal of Fortune, he has experimented in a wide variety of genres, and might even be best known for his work with David Cronenberg on the classic horror film Dead Ringers.
He has been no stranger to controversy, always very politically outspoken, and has been more than willing to admit when a film he appears in doesn’t turn out well. In an industry where actors are often forced to adopt plastic personalities in order to appeal to the cameras, Irons has rarely been anything but completely upfront and honest.
Irons first began to attract global recognition as a potential star when he received a Bafta nomination for ‘Best Actor’ for his performance in the psychological romantic drama The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which co-starred Meryl Streep.
Not only did it prove that he was a capable leading man in romance films, but that he could hold his own against an acting powerhouse like Streep, who was on one of the most impressive runs of any female actor at the time. Given how well-received their chemistry was, Irons was considered to be a possibility for another role opposite Streep in Out of Africa, a romantic epic directed by the great Sydney Pollack.
According to the film’s producer, Frank Price, there was an option to make Out of Africa for $17million with Irons, and to make it for $27m with Robert Redford. Regardless of how the film turned out, quality-wise, Redford was the bigger star and could provide qualities that Irons simply couldn’t.
“If the $17m Irons picture didn’t work, that would get me in trouble, but with Redford at $10m more, the performance in ancillary markets was insured, no matter how it turned out,” Price recalled, “So the safest bet was Redford. It’s hard to do it any other way because there are so many variables, like if you are making a romance and the chemistry isn’t there between the leading woman and man. You’re dead, and that is very hard to predict in advance. So you cover your downside, and if you have something, who knows what the upside will be.”
It was a strategic move that paid off, as Out of Africa became a major hit and took home the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’. Although, in retrospect, it’s one of the weakest films to ever win the top prize, especially when considering that it beat Witness and The Color Purple. It was certainly a moment in which voters felt that Pollack was owed a ‘career trophy’, given that he had never been awarded any of the top prizes.
Ironically, the decision may have actually helped Irons’ career, given that Out of Africa is a flawed film that was reliant on the stars’ charisma, and not their acting abilities. That Streep and Redford don’t have much chemistry in the film doesn’t even matter, as their names were big enough to get it sold. Nonetheless, Redford never would’ve been able to take the career risks that Irons did because he was never a true chameleon in the same way.
