Cinema Delirium: Do you see a difference between your film and stage work? Are they two parallel careers or aspects of the same one?
Stacy Keach: I teach
acting and I tell my young students that there really is no difference
between film and theatre as far as acting is concerned: you still have to be
real, moment to moment. But I guess on a
larger scale the main difference is when you’re on stage you have to project to
the audience and when you’re working on a film the camera comes to you. But in both cases you have to be believable,
obviously. I think actors mistake being
‘big’, being larger than life, as being the
stage persona and being ‘smaller’ is for film.
I think that’s a distortion in a way because what begins to happens is
that actors start to become self-conscious in front of a camera. Stage actors in particular when they get in
front of a camera are very nervous because it’s not something they’re used to.
I had an
experience, when I was just starting out, with Gordon Willis who photographed END OF THE ROAD [1970]. I was very
nervous because it was one of my first movies and he came up to me – he’d
noticed that I was getting a little self-conscious - and he said, “Stacy, I
want to introduce you to Mitch” and I said “Oh yeah I’d like to meet Mitch” and
Willis said “Here he is!” and it was the camera. People thought I was crazy but I started
talking to the camera: every day I’d come in and say “Hi Mitch, how are you
doing?” to overcome my self-consciousness – and it worked! So Gordon Willis was the one who alleviated
my anxiety of being in front of the camera.
A great man. But no, actors shouldn't think of there being
a difference:just play the character in the moment.
CD: Have
you taken acting techniques from from your film work into your stage work, and
vice versa?
SK: Yes, and vice versa, very much so.
In a lot of ways doing film helps your stage work because you get into the detail, the nuance of
a moment, with greater alacrity when you’ve done a lot of work in front of a
camera because on film it’s all about what’s going on behind your eyes. People think that doesn’t apply to the
theatre but it does, it absolutely does - it’s not just the voice, even though
that’s important – but what’s going on with your face and expressions is also
very important.
CD: It used
to be the case, certainly in the UK, that an actor would train in the theatre
before trying a movie career but I’m not sure that’s still the case. Is that how it works in the US?
SK: Yes and
no. I still think the theatre is the
best training ground for actors learning their craft which applies also to
film. Working in the theatre with a live
audience an actor learns from their response whether what you’re doing is
working. In Broadway, apart from all the
wonderful British imports we get, a lot of TV stars find themselves headlining
Broadway shows because they are a known quantity. Currently I think TV has more application to
theatre than film in a way; when an actor has been in TV for a length of time
and wants something more challenging then we welcome him but. But oftentimes… Shakespeare for example is
something you can’t tackle without training – I don’t think anybody could go
out and intuitively play Hamlet. First
of all you have to learn the language and how to deliver it; it requires
skills. I had the great fortune of going
to LAMDA and learning over there.
CD: The
mid-60s must have been a great time to live and work in London.
SK: It was
a wonderful time, it was great. Olivier
was running the National Theatre and I got see him do many things: I saw him do ‘Othello’, ‘Long Day’s Journey
Into Night’, ‘The Master Builder’. It
was just great being in London at that time.
We could go to the Aldwych theatre and see the Berliner Ensemble, Helene
Weigel; Jean-Louis Barrault came over from France. It was amazing; I was so lucky to experience
those things.
CD: Where
did you live?
SK: Ealing
Common! Took the Piccadilly Line every
day and in those days LAMDA was at Earls Court so it was about 20 minutes on
the tube!
CD: Have
you seen any productions at the RSC?
SK: Oh yes,
many times. One of the greatest
performances I saw was Paul Scofield do ‘Timon of Athens’ at Stratford [in
1965] and I thought my God this is one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays by
virtue of Scofield’s performance. It’s not a great play – it’s a flawed play - but there are good things in it and all those
were accentuated by Scofield. It was
made great by Scofield’s performance. I also had the great pleasure of seeing
him do ‘Amadeus’ because at that time [1980] I was working at the National
doing ‘Hughie’ [a one-act play by Eugene O’Neill] at the Cottesloe, directed by
Bill Bryden, and it was a wonderful time for me.
CD: You
were in the American Film Theatre’s film of LUTHER; had you performed it on stage?
Playing the title role in Guy Green's LUTHER with Patrick Magee |
SK: No, I’d
done scenes from it in class but I hadn’t done the play. I saw Albert Finney do it brilliantly and I was
thrilled when they called and asked me to do it - and surprised actually. That experience was a bit of a
disappointment, I’ll be honest with you, because I was concerned whether we
were doing a movie or were doing a movie of a play – and really it never got
out of the proscenium arch. It was very
much a movie of a play rather than a ‘film’ film. I remember talking with Guy Green the
director at the beginning of the shoot because Luther had these interior voices
and I thought this would be good to do as voice over - rather than see an actor
soliloquising on film - but I lost that battle.
CD: I believe the purpose of that AFT series was
to preserve outstanding productions on film.
SK: Yes and I think the most successful of those
was THE ICEMAN COMETH [1973]: it was
one of the best because it really was a movie. It was a play obviously but Eugene O’Neill
lends himself to the way characters interact and it was very ‘movie friendly’.
CD: That
had an amazing cast: Robert Ryan, Jeff Bridges, Lee Marvin…
SK: Oh yes. Fredric March. Robert Ryan became a good friend of mine in
his later years; we were in ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ together [in 1971]. I was getting ready to do FAT CITY [1972], the
boxing movie, and he had been in THE SET
UP [1949] and he gave me tips on how to move my shoulders and look like an
authentic boxer. He was great, he was
just wonderful. When I was in ‘Hamlet’
[in 1972], he was very ill - he had just finished shooting THE ICEMAN COMETH - and he came to see me in
rehearsal and that was the last time I saw him.
CD: I love THE
SET UP. It’s one of the great sports
movies and also one of the great film noirs.
SK: Yes
it’s an amazing film, just extraordinary; in real time too.
CD: Another
theatre to film transfer was CONDUCT
UNBECOMING [1975]. I watched it last
night; was very difficult to get hold of.
How did that come about?
As Captain Harper in Michael Anderson's CONDUCT UNBECOMING with Michael York |
SK: That
one was very simply a call from my agent to say they've offered you this
part. But when I arrived on the set I
was so thrilled: I got to work with Trevor Howard, Christopher Plummer. Just thrilling to me to work with these great
legends.
CD: That and LUTHER was the cream of British character
acting talent.
SK: Oh yes: Hugh Griffith, Alan Badel, Leonard
Rossiter.
CD: …and
Patrick Magee
SK: Yes, amazing, he played my Dad! He was my hero. I’ll never forget the first time I saw
Patrick Magee, he was playing the Marquis de Sade in ‘The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat’ – Peter
Brook’s production – he just knocked me out.
And then of course I saw him in lots of pictures too: THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, a great great
actor.
CD: He had such an eccentric screen persona… how
was he off screen?
SK: Delightful!
He had a great sense of humour, he told wonderful stories and I just
loved being around him.
CD: In a totally different form you made END OF
THE ROAD, a good example of the more experimental, or at least unconventional,
approach to film-making which really flourished in the US in the late 60s /
early 70s.
SK: Aram Avakian was the director and his
background was editing – he edited a number of great films: MICKEY ONE [1965] with Warren Beatty
was one [he also edited THE MIRACLE
WORKER [1962], LILITH [1964] and
THE COMEDIANS [1967] among others]
. I think really he took lots of chances
in END OF THE ROAD – that abortion scene is something to this day is one of the
most horrific scenes. Dorothy Tristan, who
was Aram’s wife at the time, was playing Rennie. Life magazine did an 8-page spread on END OF
THE ROAD and when the movie came out people were up in arms, I mean they were
walking out of the theatre, throwing up – it was awful – and the poor journalist
got fired.
CD: It’s what I call the last golden age of US
cinema because it’s hard to imagine films like END OF THE ROAD being made
today. Was there a sense then that
absurdity was a way to convey the turbulence of US life at that time?
SK:
Yes. Absurdist drama was flourishing
then in those days as well, I mean Arrabal and Ionesco and Genet; the theatre
was using humour as a way to convey certain political and cultural
sentiments. I think one of the things
that Aram was concerned about… he wanted very much in my scenes with James Earl
Jones to have images that flash around the room [the slides feature fast,
almost subliminal images of violence and conflict]. That was something
revolutionary at the time – I remember Gordon Willis having to get the lighting
exactly right for the slides. Today
that’s passée, it’s been used and overused.
You make a
good point in terms of how films of that time used absurdity. Terry Southern wrote the screenplay and he
had a wonderful quirky sense of humour.
CD: Yes he was behind a lot of the absurdist /
counter-culture films of the 60s…
SK: CANDY
[1968]…
CD: … THE
MAGIC CHRISTIAN [1970] [Southern also wrote or co-wrote DR STRANGELOVE [1964] and EASY RIDER [1969]]
SK: Yes, The Magic Christian, that was the one. That off-handed sort of humour was
refreshing.
CD: Are films that are made in that form more difficult to act in that more conventional, plot-driven films?
SK: No I don’t think so. What I do find difficult, in today’s world,
is acting in front of a green screen.
Like in SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL
FOR [2014] you’re literally on the sound stage surrounded by this green
tarp and that’s it! Just you and the other
actor, there’s nothing. That I find very
difficult because you don’t get a sense of the environment; the environment is
created in post-production and that’s hard for an actor.
As Wallenquist in Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez' SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR with Eva Green |
CD: You have a number of scenes with James Earl
Jones whose character is very intimidating.
I imagine he is an actor you enjoyed working with.
SK: Oh yes he is a great great actor. I had the privilege of doing a number of… in
fact my very first summer as a professional stage actor [in 1964], he was
playing the lead and I was carrying a spear in ‘Othello’ in Philadelphia at the
Playhouse in the Park. And then of course
we did END OF THE ROAD, and subsequently he played Claudius when I played
Hamlet.
CD: In that period you worked with several actors
on more than one occasion: I’m thinking of Harris Yulin, Bud Cort, Scott
Wilson, Susan Tyrell, M. Emmet Walsh.
There really was an amazing bunch of actors around at that time.
As Doc Holliday in Frank Perry's DOC with Harris Yulin (R) |
SK: Yes I
really was very fortunate. Harris is
still a very good friend of mine; we did a lot of theatre together as
well. Aside from END OF THE ROAD and DOC [1971] there’s an obscure film – I
think they changed the title about 15 times – called WATCHED [1974] about a lawyer in San Francisco who gets involved
with drugs himself and Harris played the narc officer, but that’s really
obscure.
CD: Even I haven’t been able to track that one
down!
SK: Yep,
that’s a tough one!
CD: I did see THE TRAVELING EXECUTIONER [1971] and that one has been difficult to
get hold of here too.
As Jonas Candide in Jack Smight's THE TRAVELING EXECUTIONER |
SK: That was a fun movie, I like that movie. Yeah I enjoyed that but at the time it didn’t
do very well at the box office because a black comedy about putting people in
electric chairs was not – at that time – something that people considered very
commercial. But I loved working on that
film and I think there are a lot of wonderful things in it. And it was my first big role in a movie so it
was very important film for me.
CD: I was
thinking that I couldn’t name many actors equally comfortable playing heroes,
villains, academics… con men – you’ve covered all the bases there.
SK: Well thank you, it’s my job! That’s why I was so keen on getting educated
and going to LAMDA as a young actor because I felt that English actors had much
more accessibility to a variety of
roles. It’s very true of the great
English actors: they can do it all: Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen, both masters
– they can do anything.
CD: It’s
said that comedy is difficult to do well.
Did you find that challenging on THE TRAVELING EXECUTIONER?
SK: No, not at all. The difficult part was being in that
environment. We went to Kilby Prison in
Montgomery, Alabama which had been closed a week before. The deal was we could use the prison if MGM
agreed to tear it down when we’d finished the film. When I arrived I went through the prison and
of course every cell had letters and artefacts – it was a blitz, they had moved
out so quickly. I went back after we’d
finished the film – the prison hadn’t been torn down yet – to shoot a documentary
called THE REPEATER [1971], which is
a little 20-minute movie I made right after THE TRAVELING EXECUTIONER, a short
film [about recidivism] which won some awards, and there were portions of the
wall that were totally broken down and I was wondering whether MGM did that or
the explosion at the end of the movie did that!
CD: Have you ever shot a film in sequence? I’ve always had the impression that it rarely
happens.
SK: Oh yes but it is rare. What with locations and actors’ schedules and
so on it’s very unusual to shoot films in sequence but I have done a couple of
times.
CD: Have you found that more conducive to good
work?
SK: I don’t know.
You know many times I’ve had to shoot the final scene first and if it’s
a death scene you then have to think ‘How did I get here?’ and you have to sort
of back your way into the rest of the film.
But sometimes I think that’s a virtue because you have to make some big,
definite decisions about what you’re going to do with the character as you’re
at the end of the journey before you start.
It’s challenging.
CD: I wanted to ask you about John Huston, who
directed you on FAT CITY and THE LIFE
AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN [1972] and with whom you later worked alongside
as an actor. I watched THE BIGGEST BATTLE [1978, an Italian
WW2 movie] last night…
SK: Oh my God!
That is a piece of work! Umberto
Lenzi. He always wore blue jumpsuits, he
couldn’t speak a word of English – he had a translator for everything – but he
was always very excited. But that blue
jumpsuit, I still have images in my mind.
That was a very dangerous film.
CD: Yes I imagine they have a rather more
cavalier approach to health and safety.
SK: We were running out of light and I had a scene
where I was in a foxhole, tanks were coming towards me and we didn’t have a
chance to rehearse it – “We are-a losing da light! Pronto, pronto!”. The camera was right behind me and I was
looking out of the foxhole at this approaching tank coming right towards me and
it was supposed to turn off to the side but it rolled over the foxhole, I
backed off, knocked over the camera – we came very close to losing it right
there.
CD: Wow.
It has always struck me that they’re kind of flying by the seat of their
pants in Italian exploitation films.
SK: Yeah, that’s very true. I did another Italian film as well with Roger
Moore called STREET PEOPLE [1976]
and we literally got in the car – I was playing his driver and I was supposed
to be test driving this car – and they had no permits to shoot in North Beach
and I had to drive against the traffic
weaving in and out of cars and they wanted me to be talking during all of
this. So I said, “Well what am I
saying?” and they said “I don’t-a know, just-a talk!”. So there I am driving against the traffic,
weaving in and out, saying “One, two, three, four.”
CD: I heard a story about, I think, Steve Reeves
who was working on one of those Hercules films in Italy and he had these chains
around his wrists and was flailing them around knocking over extras. They weren’t metal obviously but still thick
wood painted to look metal and apparently Reeves said, “You know I could really
hurt that guy with these if we’re not careful.”
And the director said, “If he doesn’t get hurt he doesn’t get paid!”
SK: Ha!
Yes exactly. But even so it was
good fun making those Italian films.
CD: Yes they don’t seem to take it quite so
seriously. Everybody just seems to be
having fun.
SK: Fun, yes that’s the word.
CD: So at the other end of the scale, when you’re
working with legendary figures like John Huston or Orson Welles it there a
temptation to do exactly what they tell you or do you think ‘I’ve got to hold
my own here’?
As Jess Tyler in Matt Cimber's BUTTERFLY |
SK: No.
Whatever they say goes [laughs].
You know I worked with Orson as an actor [on BUTTERFLY [1982]] and the director Matt Cimber hadn’t had much experience as a director of mainstream pictures, and I was playing this
incestuous father and I wanted some pointers.
So I went to Orson and I said “Excuse me sir, forgive me but I just
wanted to get your impression on how I’m playing this scene – I’m not getting
much from the director,” and he said [puts on very deep voice], “You’re doing
just fine, you’re doing just fine.” But
if he’d said anything to me I would have said “Yes sir!”
He was an
amazing guy. He didn’t trust his memory
so he had all of his lines written on cue cards – Barney was the guy holding
them – and Orson would say “Barney, move closer to the camera!” But when they rolled the camera he didn’t
need the cue cards at all, he knew his lines perfectly. He wore a fake nose that looked exactly like
his nose!
CD: Were people like that happy to share their
tales of old Hollywood?
SK: I had the great privilege of having dinner,
just the two of us, Orson Welles and I, at the MGM Grand Hotel Restaurant and
he didn’t want to talk about his films.
He was aware I’d directed a couple of things – INCIDENT AT VICHY [1973] and SIX
CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR [1976] – and he kept asking me questions.
When he
ordered – and at this time he was enormous, he must have been close to 300 lbs
– he asked for two sides of roast beef and a baked potato… because he was on a
diet. A little old lady recognised him
and came running over and she said “Mr Welles, Mr Welles, would you sign my
napkin.” He said “Not while I’m eating
dear” but she waited around and when he’d finished he did go over and give her
his autograph and was very gracious. He
was an amazing man.
Actually a good friend of mine Peter Jason, a character actor who I have worked with many times, he was very close with Orson, in fact drove him around in the latter years of his life, and was very involved in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND [1974, Welles’s famously uncompleted project] which I believe they are now trying to put together.
Actually, when we were shooting THE BIGGEST
BATTLE, which Orson narrated, what an experience that was. The very first scene – we shot it in Bel Air
at this mansion – there was Henry Fonda sitting at one end of the table across
from me, there was Samantha Eggar sitting next to me, and John Huston. I was concerned about my accent so I went up
to John, we were playing backgammon between takes – which we had started doing
on FAT CITY, and I said “John, I’m very concerned about my accent and I’m not
getting any direction, am I doing it right?”
and he said [put on excellent John Huston voice] “No, no don’t ask me
son, I’m just acting! I’m not giving you
any direction whatsoever!”
CD: Who were your acting heroes when you were
growing up?
SK: Well certainly Brando… James Dean… Albert
Finney… Richard Harris… Tom Courtenay
CD: In the late 70s you obviously worked in Italy
a little bit and also made a terrific British thriller called THE SQUEEZE [1977].
As Jim Naboth in Michael Apted's THE SQUEEZE with Freddie Starr |
SK: Oh I love that film. Michael Apted.
CD: It’s a film that still hits quite hard even
now, nearly 40 years on. Is there a difference
between working on a British set with a British crew and working on an American
set.
SK: I love the tea breaks [laughs]. No, not really no. When I shot LUTHER, Freddie Young the
cameraman, my God I’ll never forget, he was in his late 70s and he came
bounding into the studio one morning saying “I’m going to direct my first
movie”, he was so excited. He was
something else, he never stopped working, he was a genius at lighting, David
Lean certainly took advantage of that.
But no, British crews are great. You know I like
shooting where we’re not taking breaks every half an hour, which happens in
America, I like to just keep moving… keep moving and keep going
forward. You know it’s good for the
actors too because nothing frustrates an actor more than sitting around and
getting ready to go and then being told it’s not time yet because something has
to be fixed. What you learn as the years
go by is that you never get everything on the first take – something’s going to
be off, you just know you’re not going to hit it, but that takes years of
experience.
CD: In THE SQUEEZE one of the particular
strengths of that film I think is the vivid use of locations and that really
gives it a grounding in reality; I
imagine those location shoots were quite lively.
SK: Oh they were indeed yes. Gosh yes – you’re bringing it all back in my
head. Stephen Boyd. He was so great. It was so tragic though he died so
young. He was great to work with. Same with David Hemmings. And Carol White.
CD: It was another film with a superb cast: Edward Fox was also in it. And Freddie Starr of course.
SK: Freddie Starr was great. One day he’d come out and spit on my
windshield, I couldn’t believe it, he thought he was being funny. He is good in the film though, he’s very good. And he was fun to work with… most of the
time! As a stand-up comedian he was…
always on. He was very popular then.
CD: I can’t not ask you about THE NINTH CONFIGURATION [1980] although
I’m sure you’ve talked about it many many times. I watched it again last night and it struck me
that it’s a proper ensemble piece and largely confined by location so was it
like working on a piece of theatre?
About to explode as Colonel Vincent Kane in William Peter Blatty's THE NINTH CONFIGURATION |
SK: In a way it was, yes. Interestingly, last year I was reunited with
Bill Blatty [William Peter Blatty, writer / director on THE NINTH CONFIGURATION]
. I was in Washington, he lives in
Bethesda now, I was doing Falstaff and he came to see me and we
reconnected. I didn’t know it but he’s
written a play of THE NINTH CONFIGURATION which has its original title of
TWINKLE, TWINKLE KILLER KANE so yes the film is very much like a play.
You know
Bill did something I’ve never experienced before, he’s the only director – and
I’m surprised that others don’t – he had Barry De Vorzon write the music, the
score and the theme prior to shooting.
And before certain scenes – in Kane’s office or wherever it was – he’d
play the music, he’d play the theme and get us in the mood. It was unbelievable and I suppose it’s time
constraints which mean other directors don’t so it.
CD: On that film – necessarily so because of the
way the characters are – a lot of the acting is quite ‘big’, to use the word
you used earlier, and yet you for the most part have quite a passive role as
Colonel Kane. Did you find it difficult
to dial it down?
SK: It was so
hard. I constantly wanted to
emphasise certain words and express
myself but Bill said “No, absolutely monotone, no expression whatsoever” and it
was so hard. He [Colonel Kane] reminds
me a little of Jacob Horner [his character from END OF THE ROAD], a kind of catatonic figure.
CD: Yes he’s a person to whom things happen
rather than driving events himself.
SK: Exactly.
CD: But in THE NINTH CONFIGURATION it really pays
off at the end when Kane is in the bar-room brawl.
SK: Yeah,
it’s a great scene.
CD: Blatty was making his directing début with this film and I think he only made one
other. As a novice did his approach to
directing – particularly to directing actors – differ from more experienced
men?
SK: Well he was very good actually, especially
with the actors. You know he was an
actor, he started as an actor and he was always sharing stories of Cyrano [de
Bergerac] which he and I had both done.
But he wanted his actors to bring their own personality to the
characters they were playing... except me!
But it was a great ensemble, although so many people are now gone. Scott Wilson is still with us, Bill Lucking…
CD: Yes I was thinking about exactly this point
after I watched the film: Jason Miller, Ed Flanders, Moses Gunn, Joe Spinell, Neville Brand.
SK: Yes, Neville Brand would come down and say
“Black coffee! Black coffee!” because he
was a recovering alcoholic but he was very good. He was something; he really had a lot of
stories to tell: nobody could tell war stories better than Neville.
CD: After that you did a lot of work on TV in the
1980s and when you came back to film work in the late 80s / early 90s did you
feel the film business had changed?
SK: Definitely.
I think in some ways for the better and some ways not. The days of dailies have gone. I’m glad we don’t have to go to dailies any
more! One of the things about movies
today is that you know what you’ve got right there. You do it, you replay it, you see it. I think it improves the work, or at least has
the potential to improve the work.
I think
that the advent of reality TV has caused a revolution in terms of behaviour for
actors because we’re competing now with real people. The degree of reality the bar is higher now,
the challenge for actors now is to ‘be’ rather than to act. Which I think is a good thing.
CD: Would you say that while there have been
great technological advances made, films today aren’t as challenging as they
used to be?
SK: You’re absolutely right. What has also happened because of reality TV
is that stories have become too prosaic , there’s no more of that Agatha
Christie type thriller… I love stories that have twists but you don’t get much
of that today. You were right that in
the golden age the stories were the priority, they were paramount. Today I think basically the problem is the
scripts have gotten worse. Maybe I’m
just old-fashioned.
CD: I’m not sure it’s that. I think there are fewer films that are really
aimed at an adult audience these days. I
understand the demographic for most films is something like 16-22 and I’m not
sure that’s conducive to challenging film-making.
SK: You’re right. And that’s one of the reason why I’m
so thrilled when a director like Alexander Payne comes along. NEBRASKA
[2013] was not aimed at that age group –although they still went to see it -
and was a great movie; he’s a wonderful film-maker.
Stacy Keach as Ed Pegram in Alexander Payne's NEBRASKA with David Forte |
CD: There are a few very good young directors out
there with an individual style: Wes Anderson…
SK: I love Wes Anderson. THE
GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL [2014]. I think
the mark of a good film, if you can look at it more than once and still enjoy
it; I’ve seen CITIZEN KANE [1941]
maybe 35-40 times in my life and I can just watch it again and again and
again. That’s the test of a great film.
CD: Is there any chance of you coming back over
to the UK to do some theatre, maybe some Shakespeare?
SK: I hope so.
I’m working on a one-man Hemingway project [‘Pamplona’ by Jim
McGrath]. I’ve got stage reading of it
on September 14th at my old home the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival. And perhaps a production down
the road there, maybe a couple of years.
But I love performing in the West End, I loved doing Art there.
I’ve got
three films coming out, the bizarre thing is that they’re not all just one-word
titles they’re one-syllable titles!
There’s Steven King’s CELL –
with John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, and yours truly – which
will be out in 2016. We shot it two and
a half years ago; it’s about cell phone radiation creating… zombies! I play the headmaster of a school. I believe the film has spent a lot of time
in post-production with the special effects etc.
I also shot
TRUTH with Cate Blanchett – she’s
just the greatest – and Robert Redford that’s coming out in November. It’s
about the Dan Rather scandal – George W. Bush was running for President and his
military affiliations were questioned, the New York Times did a whole piece on
it and Dan Rather at CBS News did a whole expose and got in trouble and had to step
down. I play Colonel Bill Burkett, a
whistle-blower, the guy who said Bush was never in the military.
And then
I’m going off this weekend to shoot Matthew McConaughey’s current project GOLD about gold mining and I play his
boss.
CD: Those all sound like major films so it will
be exciting to see them in cinemas over the next 18 months. You’re obviously a busy man so thank you so
much for sparing the time to talk to me, it has been a great pleasure.
SK: Well thank you for your questions.