Neil Mockford/FilmMagicJude Law may have played a suave Casanova in Alfie, but the actor wants to make it clear that in real life he's no womanizer.
The Side Effects star shot the breeze with Shortlist magazine about his supposed reputation in the press—a persona seemingly amplified by his notorious 2005 cheating scandal in which he jilted then-girlfriend Sienna Miller by hooking up with his kids' nanny.
It's a perception, he says, that has readily blurred the line between fact and fiction.
"Certain parts of the media have written things, sometimes true, mostly untrue, about me that have portrayed me in a certain way," he explains to the mag.
"People assume that I'll be like that." he adds. "You have to separate it and say, ‘Well I know it's not me.' You learn to live with this dichotomy of who you are and who they're saying you are."
The fallout from the tabloids' appetite for fodder about his cheating scandal, however, still riles up the actor whenever he looks back on that time.
"That period was horrible," says the 40-year-old, who has a young daughter with model Samantha Burke as well as three children with ex-wife Sadie Frost. "It was just boring. Boring, shallow and infuriating, because I couldn't get my revenge."
He adds, "I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the swamp, the mire. To me it's the shallowest form of judgment and analysis."
The solution, Law deduced, was to just soldier forth and tune the nonsense out. "I realized quickly I'd have to keep my head down and hope that the work would win out. It seems to have so far."
With well-received back-to-back turns in two big-budget Sherlock Holmes movies and last year's high-concept Anna Karenina redux, he certainly seems to be doing something right.