Peter O'Toole, The Tudors
From Lawrence of Arabia to Caligula to Troy, Peter O'Toole has a knack for playing historical figures to the hilt. Now, the eight-time Oscar nominee is robing up as Pope Paul III on The Tudors (Sundays at 9 pm/ET, Showtime) and he's ready to confess.
TV Guide: What made you decide to take this role?
Peter O'Toole: It is beautifully written with some stunning scenes and some terrifying ones. Pope Paul III was the greatest thief in the history of the church. The guy skinned 'em!
TV Guide: You were raised Catholic....
O'Toole: I was reared as a holy Roman acolyte for five years starting when I was 10 in 1943…. Unfortunately, there were some wonky priests who tried to touch you up…. It was abominable. I was lucky; I wasn't touched by it. The hard kids put a nee
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Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Natalie Dormer, The Tudors
In The Tudors' (Sundays at 9 pm/ET, Showtime) steamy second season, Henry VIII becomes a royal pain for Anne Boleyn — and the pope.
King Henry VIII is all grown up and has politics — and sex — on his mind. In the second season of Showtime's bodice ripper The Tudors, Jonathan Rhys Meyers relates to the monarch's new maturity. "I like growing older," he muses, sitting in his trailer at Dublin's Ardmore Studios, puffing on a Marlboro Light. "I just turned 30, and it does inform the way I play Henry, who is much more mature and less erratic. I've changed over the past year."
Ask him how, and the angry young man reemerges: "It's none of your business." True, Rhys Meyers had a rough 12 months, including a drunken brush with authorities at the Dublin airport, days before the death of his mother. And The Tudor
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Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Natalie Dormer, The Tudors
On a sunny September day near Killruddery House, an Elizabethan mansion outside of Dublin, Jonathan Rhys Meyers strides imperiously across an immaculately seeded lawn. Clad in a purple velvet cloak and an elaborately embroidered rose-colored doublet, he looks every inch the king he is portraying.
Relaxing in his trailer later, the 29-year-old actor admits that the spirit of King Henry VIII, his role in Showtime's new 10-part series, The Tudors (Sundays at 10 pm/ET), has inhabited him so thoroughly that his demands — mainly along the lines of "Get us a cup of tea, love," he says — have become more regal, too. "There is a certain level of arrogance that has to seep into your system if you are playing the king," Rhys Meyers says with a smile. "Although I'm sure it was there before."
For those whose memories need
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