Former Wild Man Jonny Lee Miller Storms Broadway in Julie

It’s 5PM on a rainy New York afternoon, and Jonny Lee Miller is looking a little strung out. There are circles under his eyes, and he collapses into a chair at the rehearsal space of Roundabout Theatre Company’s eagerly awaited production of Patrick Marber’s Strindberg update After Miss Julie as if its the first time he’s sat in days, bouncing one foot and skittishly checking his watch. But Miller isn’t channeling druggie Sick Boy from his cult classic Trainspotting, or the bad boy who married Angelina Jolie in 1996—he’s just an exhausted new father, one who had to pack up wife Michele Hicks and nine-month-old son Buster to relocate to New York a few months ago in preparation for his Broadway debut. After a few minutes, the actor, best known for flicks like Hackers (where he met Jolie) and The Flying Scotsman and his starring gig on TV’s Eli Stone, starts to relax, opening up about his intense new role, life as a third generation actor and the British plan to take over Broadway.

You’re good friends with Jude Law, now starring in Hamlet; Daniel Craig is here, as well, in A Steady Rain. Be honest: Are the Brits trying to take over Broadway?
Yes, we have a pact. We have our own union, a secret handshake, everything. I think the plan is going brilliantly, but I can’t go much farther into it than that. Honestly, it’s quite weird, all of us being here at once. I think it boils down to us not being happy unless we’re stealing each other's thunder. No one can bear the idea of any one person getting all the attention, so we have to roll into town with our movie-star good looks and Shakespearean training and keep that from happening [laughs].

There’s a factoid out there that you were up for the role of James Bond against Daniel Craig. Is that true?
Not to my knowledge, no. I never met anyone or had any discussions about getting to be James Bond. But I think Daniel is an excellent Bond, so I’m happy to have theoretically lost the part to him. I’d have to lift a lot more weights to pull that gig off anyway. All I’m lifting now is babies.

You have ties to the Bond movies anyway—your grandfather [Bernard Lee] played M, head of the British secret service, in the early films.
He did. That’s something I’ve always found cool.

Did you get to visit the Bond sets?
We had a close relationship, but I never made it to any of the Bond sets. I think that would have changed had he lived a little longer—he died while they were making For Your Eyes Only [in 1981]. I was still very young at the time. I’m greatly proud of him. He made over 100 movies, which is just extraordinary to me. I’d love to have a career even half as diverse as his. He also did a play on the West End for a year and a half. I remember thinking, “A year and a half of performances every night? My God, that’s madness.” It takes such stamina to do that.

So you have a stage pedigree—why has it taken so long to come to Broadway?
Mainly because I’ve never been asked to do a Broadway play before! It’s just never worked out. I don’t do plays that often, so that’s been the obstacle.

Your parents were actors too, correct?
My father was actually a company stage manager and stage actor when I was growing up. I watched the plays he was involved in over and over, and got to see the inside of a lot of very cool London theaters. That’s probably part of why I ended up acting, but you choose the paths you do for a lot of different reasons. My dad also worked for the BBC for a time when I was very little, so I was at TV studios as well.

And now you’re a TV star too. Was there anything else you ever wanted to do?
Not seriously, no. Unseriously I wanted to go into the Army, because I found the military so interesting, but I never really pictured myself doing anything else besides acting. If you get praise for something from your peers when you’re little, you take that quite seriously. Not that I was being told, “Oh, God, you’re so amazing,” by a bunch of schoolchildren, but if you do a play and your classmates give you praise, that seriously influences you. I was also given the chance to work professionally at eight years old doing small television roles, and it was fantastic fun. Suddenly you’ve got a Union card, and you’re going, “Oh, well. I’ve already got this card that lets me work. That’s what I’ll do then.”

What do you enjoy about stage acting?
There is nothing, not a thing, like the process of creating a character for the stage—you can’t get it anywhere else. Unless you’re totally method, and spend six months living your life like your character for a film, the theater is the place to get that intense acting experience.

Why not do more?
It sounds so incredibly selfish, but you just can’t earn the same money doing theater as you can doing television and film. I know that’s awful, but you get a mortgage and a family and suddenly paying that seems quite important. I’ve done three plays in the last six years, and had the most incredible experience on all three. So it’s important to me that theater remain something very positive and precious.

The art for Miss Julie shows you and Sienna Miller looking very modern and oversexed. Is it safe to say this isn’t your average costume drama?
This is Patrick Marber’s version of Miss Julie, and Patrick’s managed to modernize Strindberg’s characters in a tremendous way. We do extraordinary, incredible, terrible things to each other onstage. The challenge for Sienna and Marin [Ireland], who are just brilliant performers and women, and I is to make sure those terrible things feel believable to audiences. I don’t want to say the show is “dark,” because that doesn’t sound like a fun night out, but I can say our show is “edgier” than the original. It’s about love, and sex, and tragedy and—and God, that all sounds so corny, doesn’t it? It’s this fucking play, I swear, it’s making us all mad, I can’t even describe it anymore! But that’s a good thing. If it’s making us mad, then we’re doing something right.

How do you shake off the craziness?
We sit down and talk about it. Then you go and have yourself a good cry.

You cry?
You have to! You’re carrying the emotions of the play around with you and living them all day at rehearsal, so a good bottle of wine and a cry is the best way to deal with it [laughs].

In the past you’ve dated famous women, gotten married in bloodstained clothes to Angelina, kept snakes as pets, tattooed a rat on your body…has life mellowed out since then?
When you put it that way, all those things sound a lot crazier than they actually were. But no, my life is in no way mellower than it used to be. I mean, I’m not a freak or anything like that, but real life is crazy, no matter what. I will say that I’m a parent now, and that does change certain things.

How did you react to the news you were going to be a dad [with his actress wife Michele Hicks]?
As a guy, you definitely have an “Oh, fuck” moment. You just go absolutely crazy. I did; I went completely crazy. Once you’re done with that and it’s out of your system, you feel much better and it’s fine.

Speaking of crazy, you’re a marathoner?
I am. I actually the New York marathon in 2002. I wanted to do it this year, but we’ve got a show that day. I’ve run the day before shows or the day after, but I think running a marathon the same day as a show would be pushing it just a little.

Are you out of your mind?
Maybe. It hurts like hell. But anyone can do it if they train for it. They’re a big deal in England, and it’s always a major televised event. I get things in my head every once in a while and decide I must experience them, no matter how ridiculous. So I finished my first marathon and thought, “Well, I’m never doing that again.” Then the next year came around and I wanted to do it again. You just get such a buzz from it. Plus they give you a nice, shiny medal at the end, and who doesn’t like that?

What was your time in the New York marathon? 
Three hours and 15 minutes. My best time though is 3 hours, 1 minute and 47 seconds.

Have you ever had an interview where someone didn’t ask you about you ex-wife, Angelina Jolie?
Nope! Ah, well, to be fair, I’ve had a few, but it’s mainly a “no.” I don’t particularly mind it, but I could do without being asked it anymore, mainly because it’s been talked out enough by now. There’s not much to say. I try to avoid talking about my personal life, but I certainly don’t get angry about it—I just don’t talk about it. Let’s just call it “the question we dare not ask.” And say I’d love a few more interviews where no one asks it.

See Jonny Lee Miller in After Miss Julie at the American Airlines Theatre.