Kate Winslet (Iris)
NY Daily
BBC Online
Aussie Telegaph
The Weekender

Judi Dench (Iris)
Chicago Tribune

Jim Broadbent (John)
Times (with Hugh Bonneville)
The Times

Hugh Bonneville (John)
The Guardian

Richard Eyre (Director)
The Times
Guardian (Diary)

The Iris Soundtrack. According to Tracksounds James Horner's Iris is a "must have" and you will find it an "irresistible treat to play over and over".

The Iris Soundtrack

'Elegy for Iris' by John Bayley. This book featuring the Iris movie poster is available for a limitted time only making it "great for collecting".

'Elegy for Iris' Movie Poster Edition

This page contains all of the quotes supplied by Miramax Films. These are included in the Iris press kit and were (in some cases) done on the set of the film close to its completion in May 2000.

Our thanks to Miramax for sharing this information with Discover Kate.

Kate Winslet (Young Iris Murdoch)

"John Bayley has written three very good books on his life with Iris that pay a lot of attention to the later periods in her life and their relationship throughout. I read those books and I did a lot of research from people who were involved with her and with this project. Everybody was very helpful."

	Miramax has a video extract of this Kate on-set interview on the official site.
	View Quicktime Clip.

"I'm always extremely conscious of getting as close to reality as possible for the people who knew her and loved her. In the case of Iris Murdoch, nailing the part was extremely difficult. Her dialogue is so highly intelligent and complex that the night before filming Hugh and I would ask each other if we were having trouble memorizing our lines. Iris and John Bayley were on an intellectual plane that no else could really reach."

"Iris and John were sort of like big children in a way which is so wonderful. It's quite difficult to portray how jovial and fun they were, while also allowing the undercurrents of their incredible intellects to bleed in and out of the story. Especially considering that I could never be as bright as Iris Murdoch."

"I've watched the documentaries that were made on Iris Murdoch again and again. During filming I tried to watch them everyday because her style of speech pposedly didn't change much throughout her life. Her speech was quite posh. Sometimes she spoke very fast and sometimes she spoke slowly but it was always well measured and assured."

"I feel really lucky to have played this part because Iris was such an interesting character. She was widely known to have been rampantly bisexual, and a fiercely intelligent philosopher who believed in truth, honesty, and being real. She wasn't the type of person that you could have a normal conversation with. She would pick up on some flippant comment in your speech and then she'd be relentless in analyzing it down to nothing. Its role in which I very much had to be on the ball. The one thing that people have said about her across the board is that she just had the most incredibly free spirit. A real liver of life."

"John and Iris gave each other a great deal of strength. In many ways theirs is a true, true love story. I think she just found him very amusing, and challenging, and exciting, and fun to be with. Sort of kindred spirits you could say."

"The movie does feel like a love story. But I was very aware at all times of the history of the story, and the fact that these things really did happen. I think we all tried to be very respectful and mindful of that history because we wanted very much to do these characters justice. I think its one of the best love stories I've ever read."

Judi Dench (Iris Murdoch)

"I think it was nearly three years ago when I was first approached about playing Iris. I've been a tremendous fan of Iris Murdoch, of her books and of her plays, and so I thought it would be a great challenge to take on this role. I didn't know quite how hard it was going to be but it wouldn't have mattered because I was very keen on the project. I'm terribly pleased that we've made it. We've had a really good time. Everybody tells you something different about what she was like and I found myself playing a kind of insight crossword game. It was extremely hard work, the hardest work I've ever done."

"There's something about Iris's manner, and the way her words are delivered so precisely, that is incredibly striking. She doesn't underly or overstress words like we might. She uses no gestures and is totally undramatic. She just chooses the words that she wants and leaves it like that. That was the kind of mind she had. And in a way it gives you a hint of the kind of philosopher she was."

"I think the relationship between John and Iris is really amazing. I do really think of this film as a love story. The two of them were curiously put together in a kind of wonderful miracle."

"Jim and I worked very well together. When you're first working with someone its always very interesting. Not only are you trying to assimilate this person to the place where they ought to be but you're also sensing out the way that that person is going to work, or wishes to work. And so we were pretty quiet the first week or so and then quite suddenly we realized that we both have a kind of absurdity about us, and an absurdity about the way we work, too. We did match very, very well after that initial stint."

"I feel very pleased that I've played Iris. I wouldn't exchange the last five weeks for anything. I understand Iris now. I can hear her voice all the time."

Hugh Bonneville (Young John Bayley)

"It's a challenge to portray a character who is living. It's interesting because he's such a vivid character and he has written so beautifully on his relationship with Iris. They were an extremely eccentric and vibrant couple. John's speech rhythms are so fascinating that I've studied tapes quite diligently in order to get them right."

"When we first meet John he is quite gauche. Like many academics he is intensely intelligent yet at the same time sort of lost in his own world. John Bayley describes them as two rabbits living in a borough, which goes halfway towards describing their rather strange lifestyles. When we first find John he is naive to the ways of the world, and I think Iris gave him a huge amount of confidence. He always admired her enormously. In many ways he was a blank canvas on which Iris wrote and sketched."

"The cruelest irony of their story is that John was always reaching out to Iris for reassurance and for fulfillment and in the end, due to her Alzheimers, it is Iris who needs John. Its crucifying for him because her need takes him to a point where he isn't interested in the attention anymore. She gradually becomes completely dependent on him yet she is never quite capable of understanding that need. This is one of the great ripples in their story that Richard was able to successfully explore in the script."

"The whole world of sex is like a desert for him. John said in his own writing that he picked Iris to fall in love with because he didn't think there would be any competition for her because she wasn't a natural beauty, and he thought sex was totally off the agenda because it was her mind he was in love with. Then to discover that she not only had sexuality, but a voracious appetite, and numerous lovers, was a bit of shock to his naivete. On the other hand he accepted it because he completely adored her."

"At one point in his writing he speaks of him and Iris growing closer and closer apart. Which John defined as the basis for a great marriage. John and Iris spent enormous amounts of time apart. She had a place in London where she often went off to work on her own, as did he. They simply submitted to the solitary nature of writing. I think the great joy of their relationships was that they just talked bollocks to each other, and lived in their funny little fantasy world all the time."

Jim Broadbent (John Bayley)

"I like character acting challenges so I took it on. It's a lovely, lovely script. Just beautiful and very carefully written, and extremely accurate in terms of the history that John Bayley has written about their lives. The fact that I'm playing a real person makes my job much more complex. The extensive contradictions that one builds up in a long lifetime will always be more than in a fictional character who is drawn in broader strokes. Creating this sort of fuller character is very exciting for me."

"It's quite a famous relationship between John and Iris that ignited in the academic world of Oxford. For forty odd years they were together. John has an air of disbelief that he is actually with Iris. It was obviously a very enduring relationship, and happy by all accounts. The Alzheimer's disease is what ultimately drew them tightly together in a way they had never been able to before. This pure mutual dependence that is a result of her disease gives a purity to their relationship that hadn't been there before."

"I think John was in total awe of her his entire life. He's totally in love with her with a sort of enduring surprise and passion. The excitement of just being in her presence, and how that balance changes for him after her illness sets in, shows how their relationship remains equally strong if not stronger."

"I'd never worked with Judi before and it was really exciting and very, very stimulating. It was fun being with her and we definitely worked in the same way. I think we have a similar nose for when things don't quite seem right, or when we struck a false note in a scene. We both seemed to find the humor and emotion in the same areas."

Robert Fox (Producer)

"Playing Iris really puts Judi in a position where she can do everything. I mean she's funny, and healthy, and then sick. And she just does an amazing job. What she brings to the role is truly remarkable."