Rhys Meyers reveals Henry fatigue

Jonathan Rhys Meyers has admitted he got bored playing Henry VIII for so long in TV drama The Tudors.

The Match Point actor, 36, starred as the monarch for three years from 2007 in the historical drama, which was broadcast in the US as well as on BBC2. But he said that he was not happy in the role, particularly because he did not have the Tudor king’s physique.

“I signed on for The Tudors thinking it was only going to be one season,” he told the Radio Times.

“I didn’t want it to be four seasons. I was slightly horrified. By season three or four, I wasn’t happy doing it.

“Psychologically, I had to be 6ft 3in and I’m only 5ft 10in – and Henry’s size was a huge element of him.”

He added: “Doing a series is like making four movies at once: you have many more opportunities to fall on your backside. There are days when going into work in the same studio with the same people, uttering your lines in the same costume…”

The Irish actor is returning to TV to play Dracula in a new Sky Living series.

He said that he was often cast as ” bad guys because I look like one”.

“I can convey that sense of conflict, I suppose, because I’m a guy who lives in conflict a lot of the time,” he said. “It’s not something I have to search for: that sense of looking for some sort of peace or balance – it’s evident in me regardless of what I do.”

But he said that these days he likes to spend his time reading, painting, playing the flute and guitar, writing music and “really bad poetry” and spending his money on his family and his collection of 16th and 17th Century Japanese art.

Rhys Meyers reveals Henry fatigue