BEST OF BRITISH VILLAINY

by Steve Goldman

 

By the late 1930's evil incarnate had come to the screen cloaked in, the guise of a German army officer. At the height of the cold war, it was the Soviets who inherited the dubious mantle of most favoured villain status. True to form, in 1991 Hollywood has again seen the enemy. And he is undeniably:. . British?

The three adventure films released by Hollywood this summer - The Rocketeer, Hudson Hawk and Robin Hood Prince of ThievesÄhave a marked common feature: each presents as its nemesis a dastardly British villain. In the Rocketeer (opening in London on Friday), Timothy Dalton plays the sinister Neville Sinclair, a swashbuckling actor in the Errol Flynn mould, out to steal a prototype flying machine and the heart of the innocent Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connally) from hem Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell). In Hudson Hawk, Richard E. Grant appears as the monomaniacal Darwin May, the globes wealthiest robber-baron, hatching a scheme to turn lead into gold. In Kevin Costner's largely American-cast Robin Hood, the English actor Alan Rickman features as an endearingly outrageous Sheriff of Nottingham.

These are not the sole represent of British screen villainy in recent months. They arrive in the wake of critically acclaimed performances by Anthony Hopkins as Dr Hannibal Lecter in Silence of The Lambs and Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune And these in turn are only the latest Britons in the cinema's rogues gallery, joining the likes of Charles Laughton's Captain Bligh, Basil Rathbone's Guy of Gisborne, Raymond Massey in The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sidney Greenstreet's Caspar Gutman and even the manifestations of the Dulwich-born Boris Karloff. If the paradigm of the wholesome American screen hero is traditionally based in the provinces of Rockwell, Twain and Capra, what better foil than the decidedly urbane Britain of lore?

But why the sudden cluster of films this summer with British villains? "The numbers this year, I think are purely concidental," says Howard Feuer, a casting director involved with the production of both Reversal of Fortune and Silence of the Lambs. "We never set out with the specific intention of getting English actors per se" (according to Feuer, the German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer was a first choice for Claus von Bulow; a number of American actors, including Dustin Hoffman, were initially considered for the role of Hannibal Lecter). "Things sort of led us there.

"My gut feeling points to the training of the stage, which has been sadly deteriorating in this country. British actors can do a bravura performance and yet still fit into an ensemble. There is also the intelligence necessary to a true villain which British culture lends to project

"I don't know that any of us sets out to cast British as opposed to American," says. Nancy Joy, who recruited Timothy Dalton for The Rocketeer. "Specifically, the role of Neville Sinclair was conceived as a kind of Errol Flynn character. That's why we looked at British actors and why Timothy Dalton was so right for the part."

Of course there's always the that many British actors are virtual unknowns outside the UK, which is a boon to casting directors. "Every time You get a script that calls for a heavy, you're always looking for a new face," notes a prominent casting director credited with signing Richard E. Grant for Hudson Hawk and Alan Rickman as the sadistic German terrorist in the original Die Hard. "British actors can handle these kinds of roles, and since the US audiences have never seen them before, it makes the movies more interesting."

Have you also noticed that they're much sexier?" asks Universal Pictures' casting executive, Valerie McCaffrey. "I think Alan Rickman played a very sexy Sheriff of Nottingham. Same goes for Timothy Dalton. Even Anthony Hopkins as Lecter had a certain lsexiness about him. To my mind, the American actors have the scariness, but not the sexiness."

"He's a two-faced snake," says Timothy Dalton when asked whether he found his character in The Rocketeer appealing "But as a part to play, he's very attractive. A bad guy is a bad guy, but a villain implies something a little larger than life and hopefully a little amusing. That's a nice sort of problem to work with, how to make a bad guy someone you love to hate, which I guess is what every great screen villain should be.

"I don't think British actors have a hold or monopoly on personifying evil, though," he laughs. "We do tend to get cast as foreigners and outsiders but it could be just coincidence. I don't know I'm chancing my arm here, but maybe there is a feeling among American actors - and I say this hesitantly - maybe it has to do with some sort of image consciousness.

"Personally, I don't give a damn. I'm a working actor and the more variety the better. What I care about is if I can do it well enough, if I can pull it off. To me, it is reward enough to hear an audience clap and cheer when Neville Sinclair goes, because you know they had fun watching him."

Richard E Grant is equally enamoured of Hudson Hawk's Darwin May, "a mega-billionaire yuppie brat", according to the actor. "At the time there was a lot of press about Donald Trump. I read about him and what he was doing. But the character is more of a cartoon. It's not deadly serious I mean, I didn't go to a billionaires' club to do any research."

Grant attributes his casting in the film to his favourally received performances in Bruce Robinson's Withnail & I and in How to Get Ahead in Advertising. "It kind of establishes within the industry how people see you for parts," he explains. "I guess I have been playing odd people.

"But there is something in the way that the English speak which can also sound terribly sinister to an American ear. I mean. I have no muscles to speak of, no lurking crocodiles, and yet I find that I have a kind of authority because I can sound so arrogant."

The British star-villain is unquestionably in the ascendant. As well as the acclaim for Hopkins' Lecter and Irons's Oscar for von Bulow, Rickman, Dalton and Grant have won praise where the films' leads have garnered criticism. Their characters may not shine in the films of 1991, but they have truly stolen the show.

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page - now not accessable