Borgia’s Jeremy Irons has perfected role of being bad

When Showtime’s The Borgia’s returns to TV on Sunday night, Jeremy Irons will return to his role as the bad guy patriarch of ancient Italy’s Borgia family.

But Irons says being the bad guy isn’t as simple as just being a big jerk.

“You can’t play a bad guy thinking, ‘I’m a bad guy,'” Irons said. “You’ve got to say, ‘Why does he make that choice to behave in that way?'”

It’s all about playing the gray areas, he added.

Irons knows despicable; for 40 years, he’s been our best bad guy — the possibly murderous Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune, the deranged twins in Dead Ringers, the fratricidal Scar in The Lion King as well as his latest role, Rodrigo Borgia, a pope with mistresses and illegitimate children.

And for those who appreciate Irons’ particular skill at being bad, it’s a good thing Irons was bad at science.

“I wanted to be a veterinarian,” he said, “but I didn’t show any signs of a scientific mind.”

His school’s headmaster thought he should join the army; his mates thought he’d become an antiques dealer. But neither of those wound up being the right path for him, either.

Instead, at 64, Irons is as busy in film as ever.

But Irons insists he doesn’t ever agonizes over the roles he takes in TV and film.

“I’m pretty sanguine about that. I sort of know what I want to do and it comes just through appetite,” he said. “I mean you see a bacon sandwich on a full stomach you think, ‘I don’t want it.’ And then, you know a day later you look at it and think, ‘I’ll eat that.’”