Just fancy, they beat Jude Law and Sadie Frost!
'It's terrible,' he jokes, 'I've lost a really good friend now, ha, ha, ha!'
There are a few things, of course, which the media love more than two celebrities together, and next year their fame seems guaranteed to escalate, especially as Miramax are touting Mansfield Park as the next Shakespeare in Love. Natalie is also set for movie- star status in the All Saints film, Honest, which, perhaps inevitably, required her to do a few love scenes - another cross for Jonny to bear.
'Yeah, I'm a jealousy freak. No, I deal with things very well,' he laughs, sounding as if he obviously doesn't. 'But it's nothing at the end of the day. I got wound up over nothing. Horribly wound up. I know she's great and I know I trust her. You have to know, as well, that it's really not an enjoyable experience. Nah, she's the best,' he mumbles nervously. 'We're going to get a tattoo together.'
Still, he is not quite comfortable about it. 'Actors are meant to be a bit saucy, aren't they?' he says, looking troubled by the reminder. 'Let it all hang out for "the craft".'
But it works both ways, of course. In Plunkett and Macleane , he had to kiss Liv Tyler - which is nice work if you can get it. Not that Jonny enjoyed it, of course. 'I honestly can't remember it!' he laughs. 'I'd just been punched in the face by Bobby [Robert Carlyle ] and my face had swelled up. He was supposed to stage-punch me and he punched full-on. He didn't knock me out, I hasten to add,' he stressed, and seemingly relishing the idea of this appearing in print, goes on to say eagerly: 'He hits like a girl!',/p>
This is the first and only time he becomes so animated or engaging that he finally does become the Jack the lad/Charming boy about town, everyone seems to want him to be. But, immediately he blows it, almost visibly deflating and quietly adding: ' . . . not that, er, girls can't hit of course. No. They can.'
The thought of which suddenly reminds him that he 'really must be going'. Natalie - the celebrity rolling pin in hand - is waiting. 'I was supposed to be home 20 minutes ago, 'cos Nat's got to go out at eight o'clock.'
Have the gilded couple talked of marriage? 'Oh, I don't know about that,' he said as he made for the door. 'Never say never.'
He sinks his drink, puts his backpack on and gets going, looking as tough and as confident as Linus in a Snoopy cartoon. Somehow, though, it's not entirely convincing. Besides the assurance of his performances in Trainspotting and Plunkett and Macleane, the whole Natural Nylon set-up seems too dynamic and slick to accommodate anyone so fragile, although Sadie Frost has said: 'Jonny's the one that makes it all tick.'
He seems to want to keep the Action Man side of himself private. Besides the sky-diving and aikido, he runs two half marathons a week. He says of sky-diving: 'If you jump out of an aeroplane, you're gonna die. You will die. If you panic you will die. The buzz is then executing the procedures to prevent your death, using your equipment properly. If you jump at 10,000 feet, you've got about 30 seconds before you need to pull your chord, and then you've got about another 10 seconds before it'll be too late.'
Then there was his passing comment on a photographer for Heat magazine, who snapped Natalie's daughter, Rachel, crying after a fall. 'I was ******* livid. She's seven. If I'd have seen him, I'd have panelled him for being a nonce.'
Add to this the stories of his days in LA - the tattoos, the pet snake and the sex-goddess ex-wife - and a different picture begins to emerge.
This could, of course, have been a phase, his way of reacting against the 'beautiful English boy' reviews he got for Regeneration . Or perhaps Jolie was too much for him and he's just withdrawn into himself in shock, as a defence. He has admitted he 'was nuts about her' when they first met making Hackers, while she is forever saying: 'I always fall in love while I'm working on a film.'
James Purefoy, his co-star in Mansfield Park, is not the only one to regard Lee Miller as 'the most talented actor in this country under 30'. 'He has the deepest, darkest reserve you can possibly imagine,' Purefoy says, and, again, you wouldn't be surprised if his Little Boy Lost routine is an act, just a means of coping with interviews, saving his energies and psychological complexities for his work or his private life. We can't all be Ewan McGregor.
Somehow, though, you don't doubt that, what with the upward arc his career is taking, and the ambitions of the production company, whether it's on Natalie's arm of in his own right, Jonny Lee Miller, with his talent and quiet determination, is going to blaze his way to the top in the end. 'I do enjoy it, yeah,' he says. 'I love it. I'm just, you know, a bit of a tortoise.'
But sometimes, it's the quiet ones you really have to watch.
****PLEASE ASK FIRST IF YOU WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE FOR YOUR WEB SITE. IT TOOK ONE & A HALF HOURS TO JUST TYPE UP THE ARTICLE****
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