When Jude Law turned 40, he knew things needed to change. He’d had an impressive, varied life onscreen, from his Oscar-nominated breakout in The Talented Mr. Ripley to his acclaimed roles in Steven Spielberg’s AI Artificial Intelligence and Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator to his $1 billion-grossing Sherlock Holmes franchise. But for the art house heartthrob who’d spent much of his career pushing against being labeled a “pretty boy,” a new set of challenges awaited. “I certainly wasn’t the young guy on the block,” he tells me. “When there’s a whole herd of interesting, beautiful young men coming up, you’re trying to readjust and assimilate who you are.”
Now the 51-year-old has found what he calls his new “sweet spot”: chameleonic performances befitting a character actor who’s been steeped in 25 years’ worth of stardom. In projects like HBO’s The Young Pope and the indie darling The Nest, we see the suave Law we’ve always known, only for him to subvert that image scene by scene. These transformations mark new territory, though they aren’t typically physical. That changes in Firebrand, the historical drama (in theaters June 14) helmed by Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz, which finds Law unrecognizable as Henry VIII. The actor captures the monarch’s venomous desperation at the end of his reign, as well as his turbulent marriage with his sixth wife, Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander).
The role feels, in many ways, like a destination point for Law. So over our wide-ranging conversation, the actor arrived ready to talk through it all: His first big movie as Oscar Wilde’s snaky lover, the real reason he initially turned down The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first time he felt his career adrift, and how he’d sum up this latest chapter. “It feels to me like the end of a long journey,” he says of Firebrand. He’s ready to begin a new one.
Vanity Fair: By the time you filmed Wilde, you were already a Tony nominee in your early 20s. Did that give you a certain degree of early confidence?
Jude Law: I’d reached a really exciting point as an actor on stage. I’d worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company at the National Theatre, having had a career in off West End shows in London. I’d been brought to Broadway, got a Tony nomination. So yes, I was in a wonderful, delusional, euphoric state any 23-year-old could be in, thinking, “This is it. This is my career.” But equally, I hadn’t really done movies. Film for me was always this other—sort of a dream world.
This was a serious film about a serious subject, and it was really important. I felt like it was the first time I was on a cerebral, adult movie set with a director who was demanding in the most beautiful and generous way—Brian Gilbert is the most gentle man, but demanding of me and pushing me. It was also in and out of my comfort zone. There were sex scenes in it, pretty explicit, that I wasn’t fearful of or scared of, but it was a demand.