Jeremy Irons:“Who wants their ass groped?”

I don’t follow gossip about Jeremy Irons. I have great affection for him as an actor, but I don’t actively seek out information about his personal life. He’s been married to the actress Sinéad Cusack since 1978 and he seems like a pretty nice, eccentric, lovely Englishman. I might have to rethink my opinion of him after this article, though. It’s not just that Jeremy seems to be in the Dark Ages as far as his view of sexual harassment – it’s also the information about his history with women other than his wife. Jeremy is definitely “PRO” sexual harassment – but of course, Jeremy might be in a different place than most men – because if Jeremy Irons patted my ass, I would probably giggle, not slap him.

Any woman ‘worth her salt’ should be able to take a pat on the bottom with good humour, the actor Jeremy Irons has said in a controversial interview. The 62-year-old declared that such an advance is nothing more than a man indulging in friendly ‘communication’.

His views are sure to anger feminists and those who have campaigned for equality in the workplace but may find sympathy with those who believe political correctness holds too much sway in modern Britain.

Irons, who made his name as Charles Ryder in the 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, said: ‘[Political correctness] has gone too far. There are too many people in power with too little to do, so they churn out laws to justify their jobs. I hope it’s a rash that will wear itself out.’

Interviewed in this week’s Radio Times, he went on: ‘Most people are robust. If a man puts his hand on a woman’s bottom, any woman worth her salt can deal with it. It is communication. Can’t we be friendly?’

Irons has been married to actress Sinead Cusack for 33 years. The couple, who have two grown-up sons, Sam, 32, and Max, 25, are reported to have an open relationship.

Last year, the actor was seen in what was described by observers as a ‘prolonged clinch’ with a pretty Broadway assistant stage manager less than half his age. Then there was a bizarre incident in which Spanish actress Loles León successfully sued a five-star Madrid hotel for £39,000 after she broke her wrist and pelvis falling down steps in the actor’s luxury suite.

She claimed she had gone to the suite so that she could tell friends she ‘had spent the night with Jeremy Irons’.

The actor has previously described his relationship with his wife as ‘dysfunctional’ and claimed that ‘part of our nature is to have as many partners as possible’.

He admitted: ‘Sinead and I have had difficult times. Every marriage does because people are impossible. I’m impossible, my wife’s impossible, life’s impossible.’

He also once said: ‘No marriage is what it seems. I will say that it is very difficult to be everything to one person.’

In this week’s interview he is more circumspect, saying: ‘I float ideas, which I shouldn’t. But why not stir the pot? Lack of privacy is faintly aggravating, particularly if you have a salacious private life, which I hope most people have. We only live once. We all like dirty secrets, don’t we? [But] I’ve never needed a super-injunction. They’re terribly expensive you know.’

Irons is currently starring as Pope Alexander VI in the 15th-century drama The Borgias on Sky.

[From The Mail]

So, Jeremy has an open marriage (or an understanding wife). And if he wants to be friendly to a woman, whether she’s a coworker, a waitress, a random on the street, he’s going to put his hands on her. At what point does it become less about “being friendly” and more about him being a handsy, dirty old man?

Photos courtesy of WENN.