Meetings of fascists, young skinheads, Elvis, experiences with such legendary directors as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino and Werner Herzog, and the media circus around Oscar nominees — those were just some of the topics addressed by British actor Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Rob Roy, Lie to Me) during a masterclass at the 15th edition of the Luxembourg City Film Festival on Wednesday.
The crowded session followed Tuesday night’s Luxembourg premiere of independent movie Poison, directed by Désirée Nosbusch (Bad Banks), in which Roth stars opposite Danish actress Trine Dyrholm as a couple that meets again years after tragedy drove them apart. Roth also received a festival honor on Tuesday evening.
In his wide-ranging masterclass, he also discussed working with the likes of Charlton Heston, and, to the surprise of some in the audience, Tupac Shakur.
And he shared insight into how he portrayed a 16-year-old racist skinhead in his 1982 TV debut in Made in Britain, written by David Leland and directed by Alan Clarke, sharing that Clarke’s prison drama Scum was one of the reasons he became an actor. “We grew up in a very left-wing household,” he explained. “There was a tradition in Britain that posh people [meaning members of the upper-class] were actors.” But Scum showed him “that working-class people can be actors, too,” he said.
So how did he approach his character Trevor in Made in Britain? “I knew this [kind of] guy. The white kids that I went to school with were kind of like that. So the job then became to portray them accurately and to do them justice. But there were elements that were missing in my education on it,” Roth explained. “So I went to a few fascist meetings. I went to British Movement meetings. What’s interesting about this character is he’s incredibly articulate, which is not how the middle classes portrayed people like this in film. They got it wrong. This guy had an intellect, an IQ and a sense of humor, all of which were incredibly dangerous when applied to a fascist. And so that was what was interesting to me about making him come to life.” He concluded: “They didn’t make the mistake of making him stupid.”
Discussing Tupac, Roth recalled meeting the music star after signing on for Vondie Curtis-Hall’s 1997 crime comedy film Gridlock’d about HIV and drugs, which was set to feature Laurence Fishburne. “But he dropped out, and he was really a big part of the reason why I wanted to do it,” Roth recalled. “So then the director came to me and said, ‘There’s this rapper.’ And I went, ‘No.’ He said bear with me. I said no. I was such an asshole.”
After a round of laughs from the audience, the star continued: “I didn’t know anything about anything, right? So there was this guy who was on billboards all over L.A. and was double platinum. There was this beautiful guy. The director persuaded me to have a meeting with this fellow. So I went to this quite fancy pants bullshit restaurant that I liked in L.A. which had a garden at the back, and I’m sitting there with the director, and the back of the restaurant has been sectioned off.” In walked four bodyguard types, after a pause, four or five women, who went and sat at a table in the corner. “Then there’s another healthy pause. And then in walk two guys,” the Brit recalled. “And then in walks Pac. And I have all of this loaded ‘the fucking guy’s not an actor’ in my head, and he knocked all this bullshit away in the first second.”
Roth said he learned that Tupac was an actor before being a rapper. “He sat down and started talking character with me,” and within five minutes, he had changed Roth’s mind, he recalled. “We connected from that moment on. What I loved about it was the rapport that me and him had — we would improvise and play around and be back and forth.” Concluded Roth: “I loved him, and he was a comedic genius. His timing was immaculate. Way better than mine, that’s for sure.”
Meanwhile, Roth met Heston on the 2001 movie Planet of the Apes, in which the latter had a cameo appearance as Zaius. Calling it “the monkey movie,” Roth shared: “He was the president of the NRA, so I was always against him, moaning and whinging about it.” As a result, director Tim Burton “was always having to deal with me and all of that. It was weird.”
But then things changed. “I’m not sure, but I think that they were his last ever lines, and he had Alzheimer’s at that time, so it was very difficult,” Roth recalled. “He couldn’t keep the lines in his head. And so in his last cinematic moments, I’m sitting off camera, and I’m saying the lines to him, and he’s repeating them, and then I would say his next line, and he would repeat that. I couldn’t separate the political from the actual cinema. I learned that later and put that aside.”
Roth also talked about his love for David Lynch. “I was a huge fan,” he explained, adding he was ready to say “when do you want me?” when getting a call to be in a Lynch film. “But he cast myself and Jennifer Jason Lee in this Twin Peaks [revival 2017] he was doing,” without knowing that they had just worked together in The Hateful Eight. “He thought it was really funny when we told him that later during the shoot, but he was an extraordinary, fascinating director to watch. I would watch and take pictures of him throughout, and then put the camera down and go to work.”
Roth also shared that “one of the best notes came from him. There was a scene where I’m getting shot to pieces in the back of a van. He opens the back door of the van, and his note to me, before we did the scene, was: ‘Think ragdoll Elvis!’” The actor described his thoughts this way: “What the fuck did he just say!? And then, sure enough, he started counting, and then all hell breaks loose, and ragdoll Elvis came into service. He was very happy with it. We did it in one take.”
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Roth said he can have big expectations for certain directors, with some living up to them, and some who don ‘t. “I don’t have any except when you go to work with somebody who has a huge history,” he said. “I have expectations in my head that they often don’t live up to, but sometimes do. I did a very obscure little film with Werner Herzog [Invincible], for example. And I love Werner’s movies, and always have. And it was absolutely fantastic. It was incredibly difficult and extremely fulfilling at the same time. So yeah, he was one that lived up to it. He didn’t share the names of directors with whom his experiences didn’t match his expectations.
One of the things he touted about Tarantino was that “he writes for you.” Roth mentioned the example of the opening scene he played with Amanda Plummer in Pulp Fiction, explaining that it was him who made the original suggestion to the director to cast Plummer opposite Roth and let her hold a gun. “Holy shit!” was the director’s reaction, according to Roth.
Similarly, Roth recalled that Tarantino tailored the actor’s The Hateful Eight role to him after hearing the Brit “making fun of posh people.”
Will Roth take the director’s chair again after his 1999 film The War Zone? “I got it out of the system in one go, and I’m done,” he replied. “I loved it but I like the acting game.”
Asked about his decision to not only do movie work but also TV, Roth explained: “Fear of unemployment drove me.” After expressions of surprise from the moderator and audience, he added: “I always have fear of unemployment. It’s very healthy.”
The Oscars were also a topic of discussion in Roth’s Luxembourg masterclass as he shared his experience of getting a best supporting actor nomination for his role in Michael Caton-Jones’ Rob Roy. “The Oscar thing is weird. I got a BAFTA for it. It wasn’t as heavy in the British tabloid world. The American stuff was weird. It’s nonstop, 24/7, press, press, press, press. Constant. It all comes down to the night when it either pays off for the company that’s paid for all the stuff or not, you win or you don’t.”
Oscar night started well for Roth. “So I sit in the audience. I had just met Bruce Springsteen. Awesome! So I won,” he shared. Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson were sitting right in front of him. “And just before my Movie News is about to be announced, Sam Jackson turns back and looks at me and goes: ‘Tim, now when you lose, say ‘motherfucker!’ The lights go down, I lost, and I didn’t say it. And I have regretted that for all of my career, because it was such smart advice. They had that thing on the TV screen where all of the contestants were in a box there, and it would have been ‘and the winner is,’ and just me going ‘motherfucker!’ So I missed my opportunity.”
The final question of the masterclass was whether Roth takes into account the political opinions of directors who want to cast him. “I don’t get asked by fascists much to be in their films,” the star joked. He then shared that he shot an independent movie about the Croatian War of Independence [called 260 Days] in that country last year. “My question straight away was, ‘Are you pro-Ukraine or pro-Putin?’ They said: Ukraine. I said: ‘OK, I’ll see you there.’ You don’t want to be a propaganda unit for those who don’t need you.”
Roth wrapped up addressing the political state of the world. “There are a couple of films that I’m working on at the moment that are very political,” he said without sharing any details. One of these films “we’re moving ahead of the game,” he shared. “Because we feel that it needs to be said now with the current climate, with what’s happening in America, what’s happening around Europe, and so on. So we’re pushing that to the front as much as we can.”