The buzz has been building on actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers for nearly two years and it's only gotten louder since he was cast in the glam rock extravaganza Velvet Goldmine. Here's the most exciting actor of the moment-along with two more nuggets from Todd Hayne's movie, Toni Collette and Christian Bale. (Excerpt of interview) Whatever abilities Jonathan Rhys Meyers hasn't yet acquired as a film actor, he has one quality in his favor: Once he's on-screen, it's impossible to take your eyes off him. The boy is electrifying, in the same way Montgomery Clift was in Red River, James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, and Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas--electrifying in a way that some of our most beloved stars have never been. It's a quality that renders critical judgement about a performance irrlevant--good or bad, it doesn't matter--and it's a quality that can seldom be sustained. That Rhys Meyers has it for now will be enough to establish him as a special kind of movie presence. Given his fleeting scene in Michael Collins (1996), his lovelorn Victorian suitor in The Governess, and now his Bowie-esque pop prima donna Brian Slade in Velvet Goldmine, he's also got the chops to create an extraordinary career (it continues next year in B. Monkey, Ride With the Devil, and The Loss of Sexual Innocence) long after the magnesium glow has begun to fade. Velvet Goldmine is director Todd Haynes' giddy yet melancholy requiem for the mythical freedoms of early '70s British glam rock. It's a deliberately splintered piece of filmmaking, both in its pop art structure (modeled on Citizen Kane but collaged together like a Roxy Music or Bowie song) and narrative perspective. Christian Bale, doleful as a reporter and former glam fan called Arthur on a grail quest for his past, carries the burden of the story. Toni Collette (who has been romantically involved with Meyers) gives her most haunted performance yet as Brian Slade's discarded wife. And Ewan McGregor (who appeared in Interview last month) is a magnificently ravaged Iggy Pop-alike--the treasure at the end of Arthur's search. But it's Rhys Meyers's epicene Brian who, metamorphosing from naive posthippie minstrel to corrupted peacock, is the source of the tragedy Haynes locates at the heart of glam's narcissism. The right actor at the right place, Rhys Meyers--closer perhaps to Mick Jagger in Performance than Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth--makes an eerily evocative lad insane. There's nothing eerie about the twenty-one-year-old Irishman who met with me in the lobby-bar of Manhattan's Royalton Hotel. Johnny Rhys Meyers, as he calls himself, has all the sinisterness of a puppy dog. Idealistic, trusting, a stream-of-consciouness spouter given to spontaneous affection--even with his stern interviewer--he's a maelstrom of nervous energy, although there's no doubt he can command it at will. To quote an early Bowie line, he's a "chameleon, comedian, Corinthian, and caricature." Just watch him. GRAHAM FULLER: Why did you become an actor? JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS: Poverty. [laughs] It was something I could do. I never actually had any desire to be an actor. When I was younger I was shy and coy and humble. I'm still quite humble because I don't want to be seen as egotistical. But I've started to realize in this last year that my glass is half-full rather than half-empty. GF: How did you get started? JRM: I was kicked out of school when I was fifteen and started hustling pool in the place called The Vic in Cork [Ireland]. I was nervous doing that because I usually wouldn't have the money I was betting against and then I'd lose and end up owing it, or I'd have to run out the door in case they beat the shit out of me. I was in there playing pool one day when these people from Warner Bros. came in. They were casting a film called War of the Buttons and asked me if I'd like to audition, so I did and they brought me to see the director. I didn't get a part because I looked older than the rest of the boys they were casting, and I was crushed--I felt incredibly rejected, like my legs were cut out from underneath me. For about two months, I refused to watch television or videos, and then I thought, Fuck that, it's beating me, and I'm sick of being beaten. I'm going to go and do it--I'm going to go and make a movie. I auditioned and auditioned for about a year and a half without getting a part. I felt like I was in a boxing match: I'd come into the ring, which was the movie industry, and go up against my opponent--and he'd constantly be hitting me back against the ropes; every rejection was an uppercut. But then I got a part, and I hit him back. GF:What was the part? JRM: It was for a Knorr's Soup commercial. It was my first job, and when I got it, it was like, I've got one, now let's get another. I got one night working with Albert Finney and Rufus Sewell on A Man of No Importance[1994] and then the lead role in Disappearance of Finbar[1996]. I was so excited. One month before shooting I was in the house where I live with the Crofts family in Buttevant [County Cork]; nobody else from the family was home. And I'll never forget what happened as long as I live. It was five past eight on a Wednesday evening. Six men came into the house with shotguns. One of them shoved a shotgun in my mouth and a handgun to the back of my neck . They tied me up, dragged me around the house, and started playing Russian Roulette at the back of my head. They wanted twenty-five thousand pounds, and they held me for about an hour and a half. There was a farm manager there and they beat him up a bit and brought him into the room and we were both handcuffed. I had the fear of God in me and my stomach was turning, but I appeared completely calm. GF:Did you think you were going to die? JRM: It didn't matter to me. If they had just pointed the gun at my head and shot me that would've been fine. I'd die and that would be it. My fear was about them beating the shit out of me or something like that, because that would hurt a hell of a lot more. The only thing I was pissed off about was if I died I wouldn't get to be in Disappearance of Finbar. That's what drove me on. I was like, I have a fucking movie to make--I'd better control myself and get out of this situation intact. There was this one young fellow who got freaked out enough to point his gun at me and cock the hammer to shoot me but the leader just kind of gave him a cuff around the head and said "Don't be stupid." So I looked at the leader and that's when I knew I was going ot be all right. From that moment on I started to establish a rapport with him. Basically, I acted my way out of the situation. GF:Once they left, you were OK? There was no trauma? JRM: I think I broke down about three months later. Maybe for a month I hated them and wanted to burst into their houses and point a gun at their kids, but two wrongs don't make a right and I forgave them a long time ago. I also realized they were doing it because they were poor and it was coming up to Christmas and they needed money for their families; I would have given them all the money, you know? I think some of them went ot prison for different things afterward. That's good if it taught them a lesson and stopped them doing it to other people, but I don't want to hurt them--I don't want to hurt anyone. GF:Was it an experience that changed you? JRM: Yes. From that point on, I knew I would be an actor--that there was nothing I couldn't do. It gave me a strong head and a strong heart. It also gave me a purpose not only to be an actor, but to be a human. I suppose I realized that I have things to do in this world not just for myself, but for other people too. And it taught me to have no fear of people. If somebody comes up to me and tries to pick a fight, I'm like, "You know how many guns I've had pointed at me at one time?" GF:Doing Disappearance of Finbar must have seemed anticlimactic after that. JRM: It was actually difficult because I'd only ever had one or two acting lessons and I was so raw, as I realized when I saw the film. It was also hard because I had to be away from home for the first time. But when I got back I heard that Neil Jordan wanted to see me and I ended up getting a part in Michael Collins. GF:And you made a powerful impression in the last few minutes of the film. Now, why did it become important to you to play Brian Slade in Velvet Goldmine? JRM: It was the challenge--I wanted to see if I could do it. And because I'm a boy from Cork who watched television when I was young and always thought movie stars were superhuman people and I could never be one. When I was a kid I could never imagine magical people like Sylvester Stallone or Michael Jackson going to the toilet, because I go to the toilet.[curly's note: I don't want to believe it!] I think Brian Slade thought that, too, but he also knew that he could be a star. And I wanted to put some of that into me because I wasn't feeling very confident when I started doing Velvet Goldmine. GF: Why the self-doubt? JRM: Being in this industry can put a lot of pressure on you. You can either wallow in the pressure or you can rise above it. To rise above it you have to think to yourself, It doesn't matter if people don't like this performance or if I don't get another job. What matters is I did something for me. So I thought, If I make a fool out of myself, so be it, but I'm not going to be afraid and not do it in case I screw up or something. It was a challenge to go off and try and transform myself, but I didn't transform anything. That was the thing about the early '70s. People thought they had to transform themselves--they just took off their masks: the masks of being uptight, being establishment, and doing what everyone else was doing. And I think that's what I did somewhat when I played Brian. GF:Why do you think glam rock happened? JRM: I think that after flower people--which didn't work--people were looking to go to an absolute extreme, and glam rock was that. Bowie wrote in his song about Andy Warhol: "Dress my friends up just for show/see them as they really are," and I think that is so honest: it's about seeing people at their most comfortable, which is usually not about wearing a checked shirt and jeans but it may be about a guy wearing a dress and high heels with a big biker jacket over it--or whatever it is that makes him feel comfortable. I came to realize that's what a lot of people in glam were getting at--that idea of putting everything they were about on the outside and saying, "Well, I've been something else for so long, and now this is the real me." GF:What happens to you as an actor when you start working on a role? JRM: As opposed to being romantic and poetic about it, I start walking hand in hand with my own honesty about myself. I would never sit down and study a character. The character is in me and all I have to do is bring it to the surface, so I look really truthfully at myself and what I am. If you're giving an honest emotion and you're not trying to fake anything, it's going to be beautiful because honesty is what people feel, essentially, and it can turn into art. Every character I play is just an aspect of who I am. Everybody has every emotion in the world. Some people aren't able to surface them, and I'm lucky enough that I can.