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Jude Law interview: 'In 43 years I've had a crisis of everything'
In one of the opening scenes of The Young Pope, Paolo Sorrentino’s mesmerising new drama about the politics of the Vatican, Jude Law is filmed in his birthday suit as his character, an American orphan who goes by the name of Lenny Belardo, prepares to put on his papal robes for the first time.
This is more symbolic than it is gratuitous, although – in true Sorrentino style – the series confounds expectations at every turn, not least in the casting of the eternally handsome and at times philandering Law as an ultra- conservative pope who hates gays, tourists and freedom, and sometimes professes not to believe in God.
‘It’s no coincidence one of the first shots is of him naked in front of his white costume,’ says Law when we meet early one Friday evening in Soho. ‘It’s this uniform he puts on that ultimately gives him a role through which he can investigate his own failings, his own doubts, his own misgivings and his own desires for power.’
In the first two episodes we learn that the new pontiff was abandoned by his parents at the age of seven, only to be brought up in a convent by a nun, played by Diane Keaton, who, as well as wimples, likes to wear T-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as: ‘I’m a virgin, but this T-shirt is old.’
His Holiness drinks Cherry Coke for breakfast and reverses a smoking ban introduced by Pope John Paul II. However, when the Vatican’s flirtatious communications director asks him to light up her ciggy, during a meeting that sees him refuse to let the Church sell merchandise bearing his image, we discover that the ban remains for everyone but him.
It would be fair to say that Pius XIII – as Lenny has styled himself, fully aware of the associations of papal support for Mussolini – is an entirely different kettle of fish from the real Pope Francis, who has just allowed divorced people to receive Holy Communion. Law’s portrayal of Lenny is… well, almost devilish.
Some critics have dubbed the programme ‘House of Cardinals’, thanks to all the bitching and back-stabbing. However, the Vatican newspaper (and every other publication) gave it a glowing review after it premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and anyway, as Law says, ‘it isn’t trying to shock. It would be more shocking if Lenny was having rent boys up to the Vatican and smoking pot. But he’s not. He’s a conservative. In fact, he’s a prude. He’s homophobic, he’s anti-divorce, he’s anti-abortion and all those things are in the scriptures.
He’s standing up for things we know are questionable within the rules. It’s more about a man trying to rein in and understand his own crisis of faith.’ Law has played some meaty roles in his time – Hamlet in the West End, Dr Watson in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock films – but nothing quite as big as the head of the Catholic Church.
‘I was overwhelmed initially,’ he says, when I ask how on God’s earth you tackle the role of the pope. ‘I sort of lost myself in the scale of the Catholic faith and the Church, and papal history. But Paolo was very clear that he didn’t want me to worry about the pope as much as the character of Lenny. Really, our shorthand was: it’s a piece about a guy called Lenny who’s an orphan, who happens to be the pope.’
It’s about a man playing a man, I say. ‘Exactly,’ he says, eyes beaming. ‘So there’s a lot of similarities in a funny way.’ Just as audiences will be compelled to ask who the real Lenny Belardo is, we must now ask the question: who is the real Jude Law? Is he the serial-shagging father of five the tabloids like to paint him as, or simply misunderstood?
We break the bread placed on the table by a starstruck waiter and start our interview, but not before being spotted by a table across the restaurant. ‘It’s Jude Law!’ they squeal. But he is either too focused on the matter in hand, or too used to it, to hear.
This is what we do know about the 43-year-old actor: he was born David Jude Hayworth Law in Lewisham, the son of two teachers, and began his career as a teenager with the National Youth Music Theatre. The Young Pope is the first television he has done since appearing in the Granada soap Families (he was 18); his big break came in 1994 with the movie Shopping, in which he starred alongside Sadie Frost, the woman with whom he would go on to have three children before their divorce in 2003.
He met Sienna Miller while starring in the remake of Alfie – their relationship was almost all the media spoke about for a couple of years, until it ended after he was unfaithful with his children’s nanny (to be fair to Law, Miller was also unfaithful with Daniel Craig, a fact that only became known because Craig’s phone was hacked).
Law’s voicemail was also targeted, and it was only at the phone-hacking trial two years ago that he discovered a relative had been selling information about him to the News of the World. It was a tumultuous period for which he is still well known, despite having been nominated twice for an Oscar (first for the career-defining role of Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley, next as a wounded American Civil War soldier in Cold Mountain).
He has never stopped working. His CV is impressive: movies include Gattaca, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Contagion, Road to Perdition; he has played both Errol Flynn (The Aviator) and Cockney safecracker Dom Hemingway (in the movie of the same name), and wowed as Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas alongside Stephen Fry in Wilde. He has played Hamlet and Henry V on stage.
Yet his reputation has often preceded him – mention Law and you do not think of his range of roles but of partners (this is not helped by the fact that he fathered a fourth child during a one-night stand with the model Samantha Burke, before having his fifth with Catherine Harding, a young musician, last year). Did all that press stuff, I ask, as a member of the press, slightly sour the experience of what has been by any stretch of the imagination a pretty successful career?
‘When I’m done and dusted with this acting business,’ he laughs, ‘when I croak and people look back, I desperately hope that I’m not just known as the guy who was hounded by the press.’ Things have calmed down now, partly because of his relationship with the psychologist Philippa Coan, with whom he lives in north London.
‘It takes a lot of effort…’ He catches himself. ‘Well no, nothing about our relationship is an effort, but it takes a lot of effort to keep it that way. Neither she nor I have any desire to make it public property.’ He looks at me as I bite into a chunk of bread, seeing his chance to change the subject. ‘Bloody nice, isn’t it?’ he beams. ‘And the salted butter!’
I say he seems to be having more fun with his job – he is set to play the warlord Vortigern in King Arthur, another Ritchie film, and last year he took on the role of a dashing but ineffectual secret agent alongside Melissa McCarthy in Spy. Snarling paparazzi shots have been replaced with relaxed pictures of him and Coan drinking wine in Rome.
It feels almost as if he is growing into himself, as if he is improving with age. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘In the end it’s about this kind of bizarre balance of what I’m getting out of it, and putting food on the table and also keeping an audience interested – or at the very least curious as to what you’re going to do next.’
Law could not turn down Sorrentino, the Italian film director who won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for The Great Beauty. Sorrentino has almost God-like status in the actor’s eyes. ‘When you can write and conceive, then create something this rich and complex, but also subtle and meandering and generous and heartfelt…’
He is momentarily speechless. ‘He’s just an incredible man, you know. I did it [The Young Pope] because of him first. It was a joy to be able to play someone in such a political terrain, surviving the Vatican, and learning to manipulate and orchestrate all those different influences. It was very fertile soil in which to put a character.’ Law is not a religious man. ‘I went through this phase, I remember, sort of dipping into Buddhism and spirituality, if you know what I mean.’
A self-mocking grin spreads across his face. ‘But it’s very interesting, our relationship with the Church, even if you’re not religious. One aspect of it that I really took away from this experience was its theatricality. It’s like the birthplace of theatre, with its love of costumes and scriptures and lights and sets.’ Has he ever had a crisis of faith?
‘I think in 43 years I’ve had a crisis of everything.’ His brow creases. ‘Being comfortable and happy with who you are is an important thing. And I haven’t always been like that, but I am at the moment, which is a great feeling. ‘Being able to sleep well, knowing that you’re not, you know…’ He starts to laugh. I do not know.
But is he in a happy place? Does he know when he’s in a bad place? ‘I’m quite aware of when I’m in them. I believe that you have to deal with stuff. It’s down to you to sort things out.’ Has he ever had therapy? ‘Yeah, I have a couple of times. It’s interesting, really interesting. Of course, the thing that took me a long time to realise is that you can’t be sure to find the right therapist immediately. It’s a very intimate relationship in a way. You’ve got to be comfortable with them.’
Comfortable enough to say whatever you want without thinking they’re going to call the police, I joke. ‘Absolutely.’ He pauses. ‘Shocking.’ Another pause. ‘Scary.’ Final pause. ‘It’s confession!’ We talk a bit about the extreme version of Catholicism that Lenny practises in The Young Pope. I say that there doesn’t seem to be much difference between his views and those of, say, Isil. Law nods.
‘There is something terrifying about conservative faith, as we all know, as we are all experiencing and seeing. I think it’s important not to lose our heads. But at the same time, it’s certainly moving in a direction that I find distasteful and uncomfortable. Anything that divides as opposed to bringing us together is worrying. I had a couple of weeks of serious depression post-Brexit, if I’m honest.
'I was stunned that I clearly lived somewhere where I didn’t know what half the population felt. And initially, there was a sense of anger at that, then I thought: “This is actually a sad situation, this is something we have to do something about.” How do we understand and reshape this country? How do we move forward? If it becomes an “us and them” situation, it will only underline the problems we already have.
‘I had to reflect on the fact that the country felt so divided, more of a sense of, “Good Lord!” I don’t think anyone saw it coming and it felt suddenly like I was alienated in my own country. I didn’t understand what the country was obviously feeling and going through, that it was in such an extreme state, and that upset me. I think being British is something I’ve always held dear. Certainly being a Londoner.
'I’m not a great patriot, but I’m certainly someone who feels English out there on the international market. And it just left me feeling confused, I suppose. Separated somehow.’ Did he think about leaving the UK? ‘Yeah, that’s always flashing through my brain. But I never have. In my early 30s, late 20s, when my marriage and my family were very young, I remember discussing uprooting and going travelling.
'We always get a bit disgruntled about where we live for a while, but then in reality, where would I go? Maybe in the next 20 or 30 years I’ll find somewhere. At the moment, I’m thinking of moving out of London rather than out of Great Britain. We’ll see; it’s not going to happen at the moment. The kids are still at school.’
The kids – Rafferty, 20; Iris, 15; Rudy, 14; Sophia, seven; and Ada, one – are what he is concentrating on right now. He has had a year off, though this year off seemed to involve a lot of working and plotting new projects with his production company, Riff Raff.
‘I’ve just felt very happy in taking my time choosing what to do next,’ he says (his next project, which starts in April, is playing the lead in Ivo van Hove’s version of Luchino Visconti’s Obsession at the Barbican).
‘I wanted to be at home, because I’d been away filming [The Young Pope] for nearly seven months. I’ve been at home, being Dad. I’ve been reading a lot, cooking a bit, trying to learn a few things around the house. I couldn’t fill my day checking this thing all the time,’ he says, picking up his iPhone.
‘It literally gives me a headache.’ Social media is, he says, ‘the one area that makes me feel a bit old. My kids try to explain it to me. I’m like: “Who is this person? They’ve got a million followers? What, are they religious?”’ Law looks genuinely perplexed. ‘And then it’s: “No Dad, if they wear this everyone buys it!” I get it, but I have no desire to be involved.’
He seems relieved, however, that the hurly burly of social media now exists, because it allows him to switch off and get on with his life. After a decade and more of being almost distractingly good-looking, he appears more comfortable in his body. He is still exceptionally handsome, but it somehow jars a little less; he seems to wear his life in a more relaxed way.
Would he say that, in his 20s and 30s, his extreme good looks were more of a curse than a blessing? ‘Maybe, maybe, maybe.’ He thinks for a bit. ‘Look,’ he says, appearing a trifle embarrassed.
‘Has it encouraged some unwanted attention? Maybe. Has it made some people dwell on things that are not to do with the work? Sometimes. But, in truth, I don’t really feel like I can complain. I feel really pleased and proud of the work I’ve done.’ His voice suddenly drops to a whisper. ‘Well, not always that proud. But I’ve had a very comfortable life and seen some wonderful things. And, as an actor of 43, I couldn’t really have asked for much more.’
The Young Pope is on Sky Atlantic from October 27