Even with the silver whiskers, it isn’t difficult to recognize Ian Holm as he enters the restaurant of the Four Seasons Hotel. Having appeared in no less than five films in the last year, the 66-year-old British actor suddenly seems to be everywhere.
“The beard . . .it’s from `Lear,’ ” he feels compelled to explain, upon taking his seat.
In addition to accepting supporting roles in “Big Night,” “The Fifth Element,” “Night Falls on Manhattan” and “A Life Less Ordinary,” and the lead in Atom Egoyan’s stunning “The Sweet Hereafter,” Holm had enough energy in reserve to tackle one of theater’s most daunting assignments at London’s National Theater.
Known mostly in this country for his work in such disparate films as “Chariots of Fires”–for which he won an Oscar nomination–“Alien,” “Brazil,” “Dance With a Stranger,” “Dreamchild,” “Naked Lunch,” “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” and “The Madness of King George,” the diminutive Essex-born student of the classics keeps coming back to Shakespeare.
“In my time, I’ve done Richard III, Henry V and a rather elderly Romeo,” as well as appearing in film versions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Hamlet,” he recalls. “I haven’t done Iago, and I’d like to have a go at `Anthony and Cleopatra,’ which is a really difficult play.”
With all of this on his resume, it comes as something of a surprise to find out three things about the man.
One, Holm is coming off a 17-year hiatus from the stage, resulting from a breakdown suffered during an engagement of Royal Shakespeare Company’s “The Iceman Cometh.”
Two, even though he’s appeared in more than four dozen movies since 1968, Holm claims not to have set foot in Hollywood in more than two decades.
And, three, his deeply felt portrayal of lawyer Mitchell Stephens in “The Sweet Hereafter”–one critic here described it as “volcanic,” for its submerged intensity–represents his first leading role in films. The movie opens Christmas Day.
“I’m a small, stumpy guy who came to movies a bit late. . . . Not that I would have been a leading man in my younger days, I don’t think,” said Holm, recharging his batteries with a large helping of pasta, after a morning of interviews. “The early part of my career–13 years–was all in the classics, on stage. Then, after John Frankenheimer came up to Stratford once, he suddenly thought these actors were all quite good, and put us in `The Fixer’ (1968).”
Egoyan cast Holm even though he was nearly the physical opposite of the lawyer described in Russell Banks’ heartbreaking novel. As the story goes, the Canadian director was “obsessed” by Peter Hall’s 1973 adaptation of Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” (for the American Film Theater Production series) and couldn’t get the Tony Award-winner’s work out of his head.
“It’s one of the most remarkable performances . . . I keep watching it,” said Egoyan. “To see Ian Holm as Lenny is just to see a character who is so compelling, so seductive, yet very menacing. He embodies all these contradictions.
“I saw Mitchell Stephens as being this person who is, at once, very compassionate and gentle, yet very insidious, discreet and conniving. . . . You’re always left wondering if he’s someone who’s really evil or someone who is speaking from his heart.”
The big-city lawyer arrives in the remote community of Sam Dent (British Columbia in the movie, upstate New York in the book) not long after a school bus inexplicably crashes into a frozen lake, killing all but one of the children on board. In the course of Stephens’ efforts to promote a class-action lawsuit, we not only are confronted with the conflicting dilemmas of the victims’ families but we also are made aware of the lawyer’s own personal tragedy–a daughter’s refusal to deal with her addiction to drugs.
“In the book, the lawyer was more of an ambulance chaser, but I didn’t want to reduce him to that,” explains Egoyan, in a phone conversation. “While Mitchell is trying to pursue the truth about what happened that morning, he’s also trying to find a way to ease his own feelings of loss, misgiving and regret. We have to feel that his pain is genuine.” And, we do.
In preparing for the role, Holm avoided “being distracted” by Banks’ award-winning novel–in which Stephens is consumed by anger–and, instead, drew his motivation from Egoyan’s insightful adaptation. With the author’s approval, the filmmaker added a sadly moving subtext that incorporates symbolic references to Robert Browning’s poem, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and another key expository scene.
“Mitchell Stephens was angry, of course, but he also was an actor–because lawyers are actors–and you cannot just blunder into any situation, and say, `OK, I’m a lawyer. What the hell is going on here?,’ ” Holm emphasizes. “What he’s doing in the movie is giving a performance. It’s not an easy role, and it’s not particularly sympathetic.”
Mitchell’s soul-cleansing delineation of his daughter’s agony–and his own–takes place on an airplane, where he is seated next to a young friend of the family. It is a shatteringly emotional exchange.
“Jimmy Stewart said that movies, to him, are made up of moments,” Holm says. “When you read a script, you’ll see a moment and say, `I can do something with that,’ then, you expand on it. To me, one of those moments was when he confides in the young woman.”
Proud to point out that he was able to get through the lawyer’s harrowing story in one take, the actor reads from memory, “Mitchell said, `You can only go on for so long, giving, giving, giving, giving, and your love turns into something else. What does it turn into? Steaming piss.’
“That’s an extremely tough thing to say.”
Despite universally ecstatic reviews, Holm fears the often painfully sad “The Sweet Hereafter” may not find the large audience it deserves. He’s afraid people who are aware of the bus crash may avoid the film, without also knowing of its message of redemption and integrity.
“I think it’s close to being a masterpiece,” he declares. “Atom has an awesome intellect. He’s very ambitious and this is the stage of his career where he knows exactly where he’s at.”
If, in fact, academy voters choose to honor Holm with a nomination–and his name also has been mentioned in connection for his supporting role as a retired New York cop in Sidney Lumet’s “Night Falls on Manhattan”–it could require another rare West Coast appearance.
“My son is manager of the House of Blues in Hollywood, but I’ve never made a movie here,” says the father of five children, who range in age from 17 to 37, and a 19-year-old stepdaughter. “The American films I’ve made have been shot in New York, while most of the films I’ve made in Britain were shot in Shepperton Studios.”
The last time he was in Los Angeles, it was part of a barnstorming tour of America that required traveling 40,000 miles in nine months. The actors performed “Peter Pan” and “Henry VIII” to audiences from Brooklyn to Boise.
“I think we came down here to finish off an unbelievably appalling movie called `March or Die,’ about the French Foreign Legion, starring Catherine Deneuve and Gene Hackman,” he said. “I’ve not been back since. I wish I could stay longer, but my wife–Penelope Wilton–has to start work on a movie in Britain.”
When Holm and Wilton aren’t working, they spend much of their time together in their Wiltshire cottage, near Windsor Castle.
When asked what brought him back to the London stage, years after a breakdown–caused by “domestic upheavals and exhaustion”–left him unable to face audiences.
“I got so tired of making excuses, I ran out,” he says. “Someone asked me, `What will it take for you to come back to the stage?’ I said, `Well, maybe if Harold Pinter wrote a new play and asked me to be in it, it would be an offer I couldn’t refuse.’
“He did, `Moonlight,’ in ’93. There were no problems and I couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about. I just did it. Then, two years ago, Richard Eyre asked me to do `Lear.’ “
Holm is very fond of “Big Night,” in which he plays a nightclub owner who promises to bring Louis Prima to the struggling gourmet restaurant owned by Italian brothers, Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub. In a strange coincidence, he also appears with the two actors in Danny Boyle’s not nearly so enchanting “A Life Less Ordinary,” although they didn’t share any screen time.
“Why Stanley wanted me to do `Big Night,’ I have no idea.” He liked my work, but to cast me as a lunatic. . . . He’s the only director I’ve come across who’s said, `Do more . . . be more evil.’ It’s the most unusual role I’ve ever assayed.”
When Holm was offered the leading role in “The Sweet Hereafter,” he says he jumped at the opportunity.
“I have more screen time in this movie than anything I’ve ever done, so I wasn’t going to pass that up at the age of 66,” he says.
