-Welcome back to "Late Night." We are here with Jeremy Irons.
Now, I have read that you actually,
in your youth, considered a life in the military.
Is this true?
-No, I never considered it.
It was considered for me.
When I -- When I left school, I had very few --
I wasn't very intellectual.
I had very few grades, you know, couldn't go to university,
and they thought -- I had done very well at school.
We had a sort of cadet corps, and I got to the top.
I was, can you believe, a regimental sergeant major,
which was the real gig.
Loads of stuff hanging off me,
and epaulets and sashes and things.
And I was extremely fierce, and so they thought,
"He'll go into the paratroopers or something,
and fall out of airplanes."
And... But I didn't want to.
What they hadn't realized was the only reason
I did this cadet training was it got me away from school.
It got me out in the mountains.
In fact, there was one time when they --
I'd left, 'cause you could leave when you were 16 or something.
And I was 16 1/2, and they said,
"Listen, would you come back to this camp?
Will you run this summer camp in Brecon Beacons,"
which are mountains in Wales.
And I said, "Oh, God." Well, I said, "I'll do a deal.
If you give me a Jeep and a section of about seven men,
and let me be a sort of terrorist
for all your great, great operations" --
where thousands of boys have to sort of
walk on their stomachs through brush
and in the middle of the night --
It's horrible, and with rifles and things --
I said, "If you let me break up that
and capture people
and take them off in the Jeep, I'll do that."
And we had a most wonderful week.
Wonderful week.
[ Laughter ]
But it was just really to get away from school.
That was why I went.
-That is one of the most loveliest,
sadistic stories I've ever heard.
-Yeah, yeah, well -- -So you also --
you also looked at a life in the circus.
-I wanted -- I wanted to be a gypsy.
I didn't want to spend any more time
with the sort of people I'd been educated with,
who were all going on to be bankers or military
or businesspeople,
and I thought, "I can't bear these people."
And so, "I want to be a gypsy. I want to travel."
And I played guitar, and I used to busk in London's West End
and earn my money that way.
And I thought, "The circus or the carnival,
maybe that would be great.
I can travel around with this group of colorful people
and ride horses or be a trapeze artist or something."
And so then I went and I looked at the accommodation.
I went to a circus, and I went to a carnival
and looked at where they lived.
And they live in these sort of caravans
which had doors at the side,
and you go up these steps and go in and there's four people.
One, two, three, four. That's where they live.
I said, "Well, I'm too middle-class for this.
I -- I need a house.
I need a mortgage, I think." [ Laughter ]
So then I looked at the theatre,
and I got a job in a theatre and saw how I liked that.
And it was sort of similar, in a way,
in that you worked odd hours.
You know, you worked in the evening.
But I love the people, I love the smells,
and so then I thought I better go and learn to do it.
So then I went off to theatre school.
-When they showed you the housing at the circus,
did you say, "I was hoping for something a little bit more --
just a little bit more like --" -Yeah, that's right.
-You mentioned busking and playing guitar in the West End.
So, you know, that's a way to make money,
but what were you doing?
You were just sort of walking around,
or were you in one location, did you move around?
-No, it was very hard
because the locations are greatly valued.
You have to get there early,
and then people come and kick you off sometimes.
But it's cinema queues, basically, I would do.
Cinema queue, you could make sort of 5 pounds, 6 pounds.
And in those days I was earning 2 pounds, 10 a week.
So, to earn 5 pounds in half an hour was like nirvana,
and it was, of course, also a wonderful way
to pick up girls. -Oh, perfect.
-Meet girls anyway.
-I haven't gotten a chance to speak to you since
sort of the show of a couple years ago, "Watchmen," finished.
-Right. -And it was such a wonderful
show, and I'm wondering, you know,
for someone like you, who maybe didn't know
the comic book, did you understand
what you were getting into when you took on that role?
-I didn't have a clue.
I had no clue, from beginning to end, what I was doing.
I met our writer, our showrunner, fantastic man.
We had a lunch in Los Angeles, and he talked for 2 hours,
and I understood nothing of what he was saying.
[ Laughter ] But what I saw
was huge enthusiasm and huge intelligence
and huge imagination.
I thought, "Well, I don't know what we're going to do,
but this is going to be really interesting."
It was not going to be boring. I could tell that.
So I said, "Yes, I'll do it."
But while we were shooting, I had not a clue.
Actually, when I watched it,
I didn't understand much of it, either.
[ Laughter ]
-As someone who understood it, I just thought you were fantastic.
[ Laughter ] -Oh, good.
-Hey, thank you for being here, Jeremy.
It's always such a pleasure. Next time, in person.
-Yes, sir. Take care.
Give my love to Mike.
-Jeremy Irons, everybody.
"Munich: The Edge of War" is in theaters now
and available on Netflix January 21st.