As the only child of (1) a Dutch expat theatre producer/director who heralded in a new generation at the Royal National Theatre in his adopted hometown of London, and (2) a poet lauded as one of the dominant voices in Ireland's contemporary literary landscape, Julian Andriessen is as close to being a scion of literati royalty as one gets in the British Isles. He was from birth deeply immersed in literature and the arts, raised in a household where contemporary greats were not distant names but occasional presences at the dinner table, and no stranger to open doors: if he wanted to take advantage of them, opportunities were his. If he wished to read (and he did) then he had the chance to meet the authors themselves; if he wished to act (and he did) then he had the stage. The full support of his parents was behind the various artistic pursuits of their high-spirited boy, and they encouraged his precocity perhaps a little too much. Julian was bitten by the acting bug while still quite young, and he was very much that child who always without fail stole the spotlight in school plays -- not because he was going to turn in some terribly wonderful performance at eight years old, but because he took to the stage like he was born for it.

He took advantage of every chance he had to get in front of audiences and into the heads and mannerisms and cadences of characters; like many young actors based in the UK, the stage would ultimately become his first and dearest love. As the years passed Julian became a perennial fixture in school productions (yes, he did play Lear's Cordelia before his voice had cracked) at Eton College (yes, he was in Manor House with Prince William, but two years above), even as he became an increasingly moody and difficult teenager. The continuously escalating explosive fights with his parents (especially his father) eventually led Julian to entertain the idea of dropping out of school after his A-Levels in order to get an early start in his pursuit of an acting career. He was caught in an attempt to hitchhike from Eton to London to attend an audition, and that was the end of that.

But Julian did manage to wrangle his way into a compromise despite being barely on speaking terms with his father: he would not burn the bridge to his educational pursuits in a way that he would inevitably come to regret when he was older and arguably wiser, and in return he could forego university to instead apply to the old prestigious drama schools wherein he could get properly educated. After the nasty little shock of not bagging offers of admission to everywhere that he applied, and after the intense three years he spent at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), he would be inclined to agree with the idea that training will show: while raw talent he had in abundance, the beginnings of an ego had been fanned into existence by unqualified praise as well. He learned humility and had his work ethic sharpened, and gained an indescribable amount from the rigour and discipline that became as ingrained as second nature.

While the training process was tough and humbling, his drama school years were also indisputably Julian's wildest years. His life was an incredible whirlwind, divided between never-ending parties, workshops and classes, and auditions. Success came early: he acquired an agent halfway through his second year, and before the end of his third, he was making his first professional role with the Royal Shakespeare Company. More jobs came readily and steadily after that, though it would not be until 2004 that it became clear just how far ahead of the curve he was thanks to his own dogged efforts and indefatigable ambition (as well as his father's implicit influence, loath as he was to admit that name recognition played any role in his career). He paid his dues with being typecast in period dramas and did his best to avoid the gruelling and humbling process of padding his credentials with bit television roles, and was thankful for every chance he had to step outside of the proverbial box.

Between lead roles in the wildly disparate BREAKFAST ON PLUTO and THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY, 2006 was a breakthrough year. By the end of it, Julian had become a familiar name in the UK and a bona fide star in Ireland, readily recognizable as one of the generation's bright young talents. There was something that showed his immaturity, however, and that was his very bad and very public pattern of becoming tabloid fodder, mostly when evidence of romantic entanglements with costars get caught on camera. While he was by this point already aware of the paparazzi and its ubiquity through peripheral exposure, he had not been prepared for the intense scrutiny he would face as a film actor and a bona fide target in his own right. As such, it became increasingly easy to track the progression of his always too-rash too-public relationships: sparks would fly, photos would emerge, things would eventually and inevitably go sour, and Julian would retreat to the West End where professionally he always felt the safest.

The most infamous of these public relationships eventually devolved into a spectacular flame-out of a breakup in early 2007, culminating in a humiliatingly public final fight that took place quite literally while the cameras were rolling on the BAFTA red carpet. It was also over the course of this relationship that Julian got into his first physical altercation with a paparazzo: hounded past the point of endurance, he punched a photographer in the nose, broke said nose along with a camera, got arrested for assault, and settled out of court. This marked the beginning of his tense and antagonistic relationship with the British tabloids: invasions into his private life became very well-known as his berserk button, one which was repeatedly pushed by photogs with the express purpose of eliciting a reaction from him.

In the more mainstream and respectable press, however, Julian remained a golden boy: effortlessly charming, accumulating critically well-regarded roles on both screen and stage, perpetually under-awarded for these roles. In this light, he is the portrait of the artist as an intelligent young man, who is not afraid to let fly the bitingly sarcastic bon mots in one sentence and then advocate passionately for the arts in the next. However unruly his personal life might be on occasion, his professional life is fairly remarkable: in a career that has spanned a decade and a half, the number of notable missteps is glaringly low. With the double-punch of exposure from INCEPTION and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES added to his resume, Julian found himself courted by major Hollywood studios, while the ever-evasive North American market seemed to hover just outside of his grasp. Yet before he has even had a chance to delve into the typical Hollywood movie star lifestyle, he had already turned his back on it: the glitz and glamour he can only take in small doses, the awards campaigns he finds banally political, and he has no intention of taking his chances with American paparazzi. At heart, Julian is still the West End boy he always was, more at home beneath a proscenium arch than caught in the crossfire of the long-zoom lens.

Still, nothing is going to stop him from taking risks that challenge himself, sometimes past the point of endurance. He will always care more about a new Tom Stoppard play than the latest franchise out of Hollywood, but he might just have to learn how to endure Hollywood and how to wear the mantle of a 'leading man' that he'd avoided for so long, if it means a chance of doing BLADE RUNNER 2049 with Harison Ford...