“Do you care to know why I’m in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks? I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. I’m here to guess what ‘the music’ might do a week, a month, a year from now. That’s it.” Jeremy Irons lines as the villain CEO John Tuld in Margin Call (2011), a film that defined 2008 financial crisis.
Watching Irons perform one could easily think that he was a born actor.
But as Irons recalls his childhood experiences “speaks like an angel and looks like a god, let’s have him! – said no one to him”.
Success Trait No. 1: A Direction.
Though he trained at the theatre for two years, he showed no innate talent, and his colleagues believed that he will be the first one to quit.
But he didn’t.
The one thing that Irons always had was: A Direction.
Success Trait No. 2: Persistence.
After announcing to his father that he wants to be an actor, he took any odd job he could find in order to pay his bills, and persisted at the thing he feared the most:
He went to every single audition in order to improve his auditioning skills and score a role he would like.
Eventually he did, and at some point he realised that acting fits him like “kid gloves”.
Success Trait No. 3: Taking Risk.
When he was in his 30s and believed that this was his ‘time to make it’, he found himself in a conflict with his employer that almost cost him everything he had worked for.
Despite the risk he stood up for himself, thinking:
“If you step down, knowing that you are right, fine, but know that if that’s the way you are going to manage your life, don’t expect too much.”
This could have been the last we have seen of Irons.
Except it was his direction, persistence and taking risks how Irons made it as a Villain.
Image: Jeremy Irons in Margin Call (2011).