Volume 4, Issue 6 – December, 2001

John Rhys-Davies: Traveling the Great Circle

Actor and raconteur John Rhys-Davies quickly transforms an interview into a conversation that ranges from ’70s British television to the nature of heroism to what he really planned to do when he left university. In part two of his Crescent Blues interview, Rhys-Davies focuses on his work in Lord of the Rings.

Crescent Blues: Did you choose Gimli or did Gimli choose you?

John Rhys-Davies: [Laughs.] I wanted to be Barliman Butterbur. I wanted to go to New Zealand (a country I’d never worked in before) spend maybe two, three, four or five weeks, maybe a couple of months, on the film, have a jolly nice time and get back and get on with other things.

In fact when I was offered Gimli by my agent, I said, “You’re joking. I’m not going to spend six hours a day in make-up.”

“Oh, no, they’ll get it down to an hour. They promise that.”

I said: “A: they are not promising that. B: if they did they would be liars. And C: you have no idea what’s involved to do this properly. This is just a nightmare job.”

My agent turned around and said, “Well, if you’re going to turn this down, I don’t think I can be your agent any longer.” Which is ironic, because he was fired from his agency within six to eight weeks of me starting the job.

But my son — my eldest and beloved son, Benjamin — said, “Dad, come on. Are you nuts? You can’t turn this down.”

I said, “Son, why is that?”

He said, “Dad, think about it now. Calm down. Think about it. For the last forty-five, fifty years, almost, in every bookshop in the reading world, there has been a two-foot space dedicated to [J.R.R.] Tolkien. Do you know how many readers that is? Do you know how enormous this is going to be? Come on, Dad.”

[Rhys-Davies growls.]

“Dad.”

That sounds almost Dwarvish.

[Laughs.] I love him to death. He’s such a bright, sweet lad. I love him so much.

Actually, it really was Benjamin that me think, “You know what, you’ve really got to bite the button. How long is it since you took a major studio picture, something that was really quite significant?” Because if you wait for a really good script to come along, you’ll only work once every ten years, and you have kids to feed and other problems to pay for.

In this evening’s panel, you compared [Steven] Spielberg to Mozart and Peter Jackson [the director of Lord of the Rings]. Could you expand on this a little?

Both of them I love. There are times when I’m wholly besotted by Mozart, and years go by, and I really don’t want to listen to anything but Mozart. Then suddenly, I’ll hear a piece by Handel again, and I’m wholly infatuated by Handel.

I guess what I’m trying to say, really, is that at a certain level of excellence, how do you make a choice? You know, when we were teenagers, it was very important to know who was the greatest composer. “It’s Beethoven. It must be Beethoven, mustn’t it?” And your old music master would say: “Bach.”

I was thinking in terms of the way they handled a script, the way they prepared a treatment. For example, I consider Mozart the king of the fast, pointed dart.

Yes.

And Handel as going for exultation. I wondered if that bore any relationship to what you saw on their respective sets — not a judgment call of one being better than the other.

Oh good! I think Steven is the greatest master of telling a story through images. That I’ve ever known, certainly. I think he’s unique in that. He can tell a story with pictures in a way the silent masters would’ve marveled at. I don’t necessarily think he finds it easy to get great words and great scenes written for him to make great movies out of. And P.J., I think, in a way, can.

Mind you, it’s pretty smart starting off with a sort of masterpiece. I mean, you can do a Schindler’s List, because it’s a damn good book. And you can do Empire of the Sun, because it’s a damn good book. So in a way, when you start out with a literary classic, you’ve got 40 percent of your work done anyway.

But P.J. is just a very quiet terrier. You do something, and he’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, OK. Well, we’ll keep working on that.” There’s no confrontation or anything like that. Just, very quietly, P.J. will keep going until he’s satisfied with the performance. And I think that’s true with every department.

And the logistics — the intellectual logistics of holding these three damn films together with all the things that were going on. You should go around the costume department or the armory there. The smithy work, the detailed inlay, the leatherwork, the endless stitching of costumes, the endless creation of these molds for the Orcs and the Uruk-Hai — all slightly different. Sometimes very different.

Were the monsters done mostly with actors or with CGI?

Very, very much with actors. There were some CGI things, but some of those battle scenes have nine hundred or a thousand people involved. When you have that many people involved, you can use clever camera placements and really create these massive armies of the bad guys — and the relatively small armies on the side of virtue and good.

What was it like being under all of that make-up and armor?

About three or four hours into the make-up the itch would start. Just there. [Points to his nose.] A tiny itch, but of course, you can’t actually touch it, because that would spoil things. Then it slowly spreads around there, then really starts there, just under the eyebrows.

There’s a certain mask that goes under the thing. Then there’s the make-up that goes on top of that, and then there’s the under-eye bags and the over-eye bags — they were the ones that gave me trouble. Then, of course, you’d have the beard and the wig.

And the trying to be short.

Well, I spent a long time on my knees and, as the gag goes, that was after getting the job.

There were a lot of physical problems. By and large, after the age of forty, most men’s knees are fairly shot anyway from playing rugby and all that sort of nonsense. Not that being overweight has anything to do with it. [Chuckles.]

But you really spent time on your knees.

Yes, a lot of time on my knees. But there are lots of ways you can get the relative difference in heights — forced perspective and things like that. Some of the tricks work so well that you can’t believe it. You do not know how it happens that two people in the same shot can be such different sizes, when you know their true relative heights. They’re holding hands, and you do not know how the hell one is that small and the other one is that tall.

Were you ever in scenes where you were taller than the actors playing normal-sized people?

I think, without exception, that I am the tallest member of the Fellowship of the Ring. I am. Of course, as a dwarf, I’m taller than the hobbits anyway, and shorter than the elf, who should be, theoretically, shorter than the two men. And Gandalf, the wizard, should, possibly, be the tallest of the lot. All those things have to be kept in perspective.

You can deal with the hobbits as a unit, and you can deal with the men as a unit. And the only poor bastard who didn’t quite fit in has got to be the elf. But with the hobbits, because I was taller than them, that sort of worked in a way. But once I was dealing with the elves, either I had to go in a trench or they had to go on a platform. I was constantly spending time looking up, which is unusual.

I bet it was.

I can’t tell you how completely devoted the cast and crew were to the project and to Peter. He did march us up hill and down dale. What am I saying? Up mountain, down valley. Just an extraordinary effort and a marvelous, active leadership. Even at the last day of this very taxing thing, we’re all there going: “Yeah, OK, Pete, we’ll do that.” Great chemistry.

Do you think that chemistry will come across on the screen?

I believe so. The bits that I’ve seen don’t remind me of any other film that I’ve ever looked at. I’ve not actually seen the whole thing yet, but I’m pretty darn confident that episode one will hang together as a film, that episode two will hang together as a film, that episode three will hang together as a separate film. My bet is that, over all, there’ll be an arc that will hold all three together.

The fact that we made them all at the same time really does help, because it isn’t a question of people having grown older in the fifteen years between making the first one and making the second one. An extraordinary experience. Every single department, every single area of this film, in my experience, was of the highest possible quality. I cannot remember any other film that I could, hand on heart, say that. Just amazing.

Given the breadth of your filmography, your stage credits, is there any role that you really want to play that you haven’t had the chance to play yet?

I suppose the glib answer to that is: “The next one.”

There was a marvelous character created by Anthony Burgess in a book called Earthly Powers. It’s the story of a man who marries the sister of an extraordinary Italian priest who ends up becoming a pope. He is the most extraordinary priest that you can ever imagine.

I’m probably too old for it now, but I would love to have a crack at that role. The paradoxes of it and the down-to-earthness of it. Yet at the same time, the priest possesses an absolute iron sense of principle. He is a prince of the church, and he knows what is right and what is wrong, and he will not compromise on those things. Even if he has to sometimes take a man and twist his arm to make him understand that pain is pain.

And spiritual pain is as real as the physical pain you happen to be experiencing now.

A wonderful character. The thing I have noticed as the years pass — which probably just means I’m getting old — is that the textures in film scripts get thinner and thinner, if they exist at all. There’s very little resonance in writing.

When I started my career, there were still writers around who had worked on the stage and read plays and read books and actually came from that sort of background. They had (sometimes) a theatricality, but they also had a sense of theater. I find that less and less.

I find immense technical competence. Take a film that I hate — American Beauty. I hate everything in that play. It’s brilliantly directed. It’s pretty damn well scripted. It’s wonderfully acted. I hate it with a complete passion. It seems to me false in every way that a story can be false. The only couple who are really happy in their marriage are the two gay guys. This doesn’t fit the gay couples I know, who are endlessly, seriously fighting, and are frequently very mean and very nasty towards each other.

The American Marine colonel is not only a homophobe, but he clearly knocks his women around and hurts people. Not only that, but he’s secretly gay himself. He just doesn’t want to recognize it. Again, the American men I’ve known who have been gay seem to have a pretty firm grasp of the fact and what it means. And I haven’t met very many of those, I have to tell you.

The kid who’s the drug dealer, he’s going to be all right. Not in my experience. The little West Indian kid that I remember babysitting actually died of an overdose of heroin two weeks before he was scheduled to go before the court on a charge of dealing heroin.

All the values seem to be wrong, and because of that, I wouldn’t have given it Best Picture. I loved the acting. I thought it was superb. And that was really one of the best pictures of that year. But what happened to The Patriot? Did they even include The Patriot in the running, for God’s sake? We all got very pissy in England, because once again it was the Brits being the bad guys.

But that gets you a lot of work.

Well. Yeah.

The scope of your background and reading is immense. Tonight the conversation’s gone from Stone Age burials to space cadets. Do you ever find that the breadth of your background interferes with your pleasure in acting a script?

There are one or two scripts that are so blatantly wrong — generally, in terms of class. Americans have no idea of class or status in earlier societies. They regard “Hey, we’re all equals here” as self-evident in every society and try to insert that into the convicts of the Irish Famine or something like this. What you end up with is a contemporary little fable that allegedly is set in the past. It has no real depth or power or resonance. Yes, that does irritate me sometimes. Then, on the other hand, sometimes you see things and go: “Wow. I didn’t know that.” Then you go off and read something about China — of whose history we know nothing, for God’s sake.

I did a wonderful series called Archaeology on The Learning Channel, and it gave me a splendid overview of history. It was like a grand crib of world history. It left me with some very unfashionable views. Oh God, if I open my mouth now, I’ll be condemned forever. I ended up, actually, sort of agreeing with the Inquisition.

[Yelps.] No!

I agreed that the gods and demons of Meso- and Central America were devils. I think [Aztec society] was the most monstrous and vicious and cruel and sadistic society. I wholly understand why those Dominicans came and looked around and thought, “These people are in hell. They’ve got to be delivered from hell.” Because it was hell.

However, I do argue with the Inquisition going after “lapsed” former Jews and Moslems, confiscating their property and, in many cases, their lives.

Well, of course. Moving Islam out of Europe was a pretty important thing to do, but the dispersal of the Jews was a radical and awful thing.

But you have such a polarization of faith. There are two problems we’re going to face in this century. One is coming to terms with the emerging great power of China and doing so amicably and peacefully. Actually, I’m pretty sure it can be done. The second is how we come to terms with Islam, and I do not know that we have an answer for that.

Extremists are the problem.

And perhaps the only way you can counter extremism. In the siege of Montrieux in 1570, the Muslim forces captured one of the outer castillians and caught three Knights of Malta, crucified them and floated the crosses into the harbor at Valletta on the tide. And the response of the Grandmaster [of the Knights of Malta] was to behead three thousand Muslim prisoners and fire their heads back in cannons to the enemy. The only way you come to terms with absolute extremism is by becoming more fanatical yourself. The knock-on effect is that the whole world becomes warped with that fanaticism. But if you do not… Remember, Roland of Ronceveaux and Charlemagne are guys who stopped a very violent and convulsive transformation of Europe.

Do you direct, and is that an area you’d like to explore?

I’ve done a bit. And I’ve done a bit of writing, but not enough. In truth, I would just love to be able to take six months a year and do what I originally set out to do. I didn’t really want to become an actor.

What did you want to do?

I wanted to be a writer.

Then how did you become an actor?

I figured I could earn my keep as an actor, and we all know all actors spend at least half the year out of work. So, I learned my craft as an actor, figuring that I’d practice it and write in the six months of the year I was out of work.

I had seven weeks off work in the first five years and made the discovery that, market forces being what they are (and there being a scarcity of large, ugly old men with loud voices) I could work. That and laziness.

One of the evil effects of the guy that taught me philosophy was that when I did read my own stuff, it was completely banal. You could use it for nothing. It drove me almost to the point of nervous breakdown. In the end, I could not write a sentence that had meaning. What do you mean that men have been writing about the drama of Ibsen? What is drama, to begin with? It is the immaturity of the inferior mind that troubles itself about questions that are way to big for it to be troubling itself with.

Like “What is success?” Forcing your audience to answer that was evil. That was downright evil.

What makes a success? There must be a list of ingredients that you could actually look down and say, “All right, being in the right time…”

Being in the right place at the right time with the right idea and the right communication skills, and having a hell of a lot of luck.

That’s a pretty good recension. I may give you an uncredited quote on that one.

I’d be enchanted if you actually chose to quote it. I have no doubt you will remember this interview at least as well as the tape recorder. Do you attribute your ability with accents to your — I would almost say “bipolar childhood,” but it involved three places…

Tri-polar…

Is such a thing possible — tri-polar?

“Schizophrenic” is probably the word you’re looking for there. It’s baffling, because children like that never really settle in and are never really comfortable, anymore, in any of those particular niches. You are always slightly an outsider, and that’s a wonderful thing, because being an outsider, you can observe.

That is so true of so many actors of my generation, particularly the ones that grew up in the colonies. Mostly majors’ daughters, by the way. Actually, that was the case with that glorious actress, Julie Christie. (I saw her, once, in the flesh. It was the only time in my life where my throat has gone dry; she was so beautiful.) So many actors and actresses of that generation came from a different background and never really fit into the society that existed in England or, in fact, outside of it. Therefore, they made huge efforts to imitate and work their way into society by being entertainers.

Be charming, and they will take you in.

That’s right.

Considering how critical the English are of Americans doing English or Scottish or Irish accents, you’re working a tough crowd when you do a Scottish accent at home. Was it ever a problem?

Oh yes, of course. Sometimes when I’m really good, and I put the effort in on it, I’m quite good at it, but I’ve gotten very lazy with accents. But Americans tend to be better at accents than, I think, a lot of English. When I saw This Is Spinal Tap, I said to the person I was with, “These guys are English.” And she said, “No, they’re not. They’re Americans.” I said, “Listen, I will give up acting if these guys are Americans. No American can be that good.” Americans can, to my chagrin, I discovered.

Two questions left. The first one is, what do you want to do with the next two-thirds of your life?

Do a bit of serious writing, and being able to afford being a bit more choosy. Not to be quite so totally foolish in my grand investments. They generally come to no good. To avoid con men. This largely consists of people whose last name is “Morgan.” I have encountered two Morgans who were not up to any good — and another one who was absolutely wonderful.

The descendants of Morgan le Fay, perhaps.

The Glamorgan were the sea people. You can’t trust them. It goes back to the sixth century. Perhaps before then.

Bad geography is an American trait. Where is Glamorgan?

[In deep Welsh accent.] Glamorgan? God, it’s a little bit of the Holy Land itself, where the language of God is spoken. Wales. Of course “wealas” is an Anglo-Saxon word for “foreigner.” The Welsh were actually the Cymbri or “the Folk” in their own terms. After the Romans went back to Rome in 410, there came a relatively peaceful period, then the Wales and the Saxons moved in and pushed the Britons right out of the central lands into the marsh areas. North Wales at that time was actually the area called Northumbria. West Wales was Cornwall.

But it’s not the people of Glamorgan. Just the Morgans.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

John Rhys-Davies: Do not take advantage of a man who’s talked all day, largely nonsense, frequently designed to provoke a response and get people thinking. Please, do not treat it as if I regard my pontifications as Holy Writ. There are so many finer minds than mine. And what a crazy world that it is that anyone would listen to any actor. Thank you for your enormous patience.

Jean Marie Ward and Teri Smith