![]() First he waited for me for three weeks without knowing me, and now here he is saying that he’ll pay the insurance if anything goes wrong. But I’ll cover you, and I’ll cover the production, if anything happens.” That was a gesture of loyalty and friendship, I can tell you. So Sam told me this, and he said, “Listen, I know you promised you’ll be okay, but they won’t insure you. And as a result of this accident, it was difficult for me to be insured for the movie. If you see the film, I’m on sticks and I have a limp and can’t walk properly. And he said, “You’ll get up and walk.” I said, “Oh, okay, if you’re the director, I will!” Anyway, I was able to hobble. And Sam didn’t really know too much about what was going on, but he offered me a part in Straw Dogs, and I said, “Sam, thank you, but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get up and walk,” and I explained that I’d had an accident. I won’t go into details about it, but I smashed both my feet and was in hospital, and I had a 50/50 chance of whether I’d walk again. You want to know the story about that, don’t you? First of all, about three months before Sam asked me to do Straw Dogs, I had an accident. I immediately felt so at home.ĭW: No, I’m not. Anyway, that was my first meeting with Sam Peckinpah. And he said, “Welcome to the club!” Which I think meant that he didn’t enjoy flying, either. I couldn’t fly, and it took me all that time to get to him, and when I got to this little motel in Echo Bay Resort in Nevada, I went straight to the bar, where I was told that Sam was waiting. So this is what happened, and what I’m trying to tell you is this: with all his reputation, Sam Peckinpah had arranged to wait for an English actor that nobody had ever heard of to get himself to the desert. And they’ll be waiting for you.” I said, “That’ll take about three weeks!” He said, “Yes! They’re going to wait for you!” I said, “ What?” A car will pick you up and take you to near Las Vegas. You’re going to then go across the United States to Los Angeles. ![]() You’re going to get on a train from New York to Chicago. You’re going to catch a ship that’s gonna take two weeks to get to New York. You’re going to stay the night in Barcelona. You’re going to go down to Barcelona in Spain. You’re going to get on a train at Victoria Station in London. He says, “Okay, this is what you’re going to do. I don’t care! I can’t fly!” He said, “Okay, I’ll let them know.” So an hour later my agent calls me back. I can’t fly.” He said, “You know you’ll lose the part, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, I don’t care. ![]() The day before I was due to fly to Los Angeles, I had a panic attack and said to my agent, “I can’t go. All that other stuff has never been a part of my life. I didn’t think about anything else besides that. A lot of people were surprised when it won the Best Picture Oscar of the year… although I have to be honest-when they told me it won an Oscar, I had no idea what an Oscar was! But I just wanted to be an actor. At the time we were making it, to be honest with you, it was a pretty chaotic shoot, so nobody knew how it would turn out. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but the point I’m trying to make is that I got my break in movies from playing a small part on the stage, because the same director was casting Tom Jones.ĪVC: That’s a pretty high-profile picture for your first speaking role.ĭW: Well, it turned out that way, of course. The common quote that people say is that there are no small parts, just small actors. ![]() And that-as is often the case with some actors like me-came to me when all the other actors had turned the part down. Bur after I left drama school, that didn’t mean that I immediately started to really act, since-as you just mentioned-my first job was as an extra!ĭW: I think Tom Jones was my first speaking part in a movie, yes. Those are the two people I remember during my immediate time there. And Ian McShane, who you may know from Deadwood. John Hurt-the great John Hurt-was one of my fellow students. But then I did some amateur theater and decided to try and apply for the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts, and-much to everybody’s surprise-I got in! They just let me paint scenery and stuff like that. I joined an amateur company when I was a teenager in England, and they wouldn’t let me go onstage in the beginning. But I never thought I’d ever become a professional actor or anything. In my Wikipedia entry, it says I had a messy childhood, and that’s the truth! But I sort of drifted into the odd school play, and that was one thing that I kind of felt that I had some enthusiasm for, so I was sort of interested. Academically I was hopeless, and athletically I was hopeless. DW: Oh, that’s all part of a biography in itself, so I don’t want to go too much into that, but I guess it was just a question of needing to find something in myself as a kid that I could do. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |