Alfred Molina Breaks Down His Career, from 'Boogie Nights' to 'Spider-Man' | Vanity Fair

the first 8 minutes or whatever it is that sequence at the beginning of the film that sets up the whole story so they use that for all the trailers so I'm getting phone calls some friends of mine kind of Going H Fred you're all over the trailer are you're playing a starring part I said if you go to the bathroom after the credit you're going to miss me hello I'm Alfred Molina and this is the timeline of my career [Music] the family Legend goes that I was about 9 years old when I said I want to be an actor and I can't imagine that at the age of nine I actually knew what the heck I was talking about I had a teacher Martin Corbett he had been an actor and he was a huge influence and a bit of a father figure as well and he was also the first person who took me seriously when I said I wanted to be an actor I remember saying quite clearly I'll do everything I can to help you but the minute you drop the ball I'm washing my hands of you and I can remember at the time feeling rather rather shocked by the kind of the abruptness of that but in fact he did me a huge favor because it it really made me focus on it and he gave me books to read he G he gave me a whole list of plays to read and he he took a real interest many many years later when I did my first play on Broadway he came over to see it he happened to be there the same night that a friend of mine had come over to see the play also and my friend Andy said to Martin so Martin when FR was at school was he was he a good actor and Martin said no no no he was a terrible actor but he was a marvelous showoff and very enthusiastic not time to argue throw me the idol I throw you the whip give me the whip Ador when I first got the call to come and meet Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall in in London for a car in session for Raiders I was on tour with a production of Oklahoma I dashed back to London to do the interview you can imagine I mean Steven Spielberg was already a huge big star director I'd be working with Harrison Ford who was also a big star by that time and I went in there very very nervous very excited we kind of got on well he was describing the part and saying look you know it's not a huge part but you're right in the beginning of the movie and it sets up the whole thing and he just made it sound like a great gig which of course it was he then said um so this character is kind of like you know Latin American how do you feel about that and I said oh that's good you know you know my dad's Spanish I was trying to make him feel like I was the only person who could play this part then it was like oh well thanks for coming in handshakes and as I was leaving Steven just said oh Alfred by the way you don't have a thing about spiders do you and I I imagined he meant like those little we call them daddy longlegs in England they those little spindly spiders that come up through the drains in the summertime so I just kind of went um no I didn't think for a minute he meant great big tarantulas the first day of filming my very first day in front of a camera on a movie you can imagine suddenly this guy turns up with this perspect suitcase with all these little toughs of straw in these little compartments and underneath each TFT of straw was a tarantula they started putting them on me and I'm thinking what the and Steven saying look scared Alfred look scared and I'm kind of going yeah yeah yeah I'm I'm scared and they but they weren't moving so Steven said they AR moving They look fake we got to get them to move and the Wrangler the guy who was looking after said well they're all males you got to put a female in there and they'll start to move so he did that and then suddenly I mean I don't know how many there were 20 of them they went bananas and they're running all over my chest in my back at the back of my head and at one point one of them even kind of got like near near my mouth like this it was this is like my first day poison is still fresh 3 days they're following us the week in Hawaii was like my last Chunk on the film and towards the end of that week Steven and Harrison and I we ended up having lunch and at one point I can remember Steven saying oh I don't know what we've got here you know there wasn't that feeling of I think we've got a real winner here there was no he really was genuinely thinking who knows you know and so there was a sense of well yeah it could be this it could be that but I learned very quickly that the level of fun you have on a movie isn't always commen it with the level of success and I came away from that experience having the time of my life on that film not for not just creatively and and working with wonderful people but also practically I mean my daughter was about to be born we were broke this movie kind of paid me like a big chunk of money certainly in my terms and it meant we could have our daughter in a modicum of comfort and and security so that movie saved my [Music] ass John Lions who was one of the producers on the film he called me and said look you know we've got a bit of a situation we're wondering if you might help us out and I said you sure I'm not you I'm not working I'd be happy to do it and he said I'll um I'll get you in touch with the director and he can explain Paul Thomas Anderson said I said so what the character and he said he's a coked up drug dealer on a shotgun rampage now who's going to say no to that come on you puppy PT Anderson wanted that scene to be full of nervous tension and the way he created it was that he had the young actor who was playing like my kid letting off these firecrackers and they were full bore they were very loud and he told that young actor just like them whenever you want don't worry about sound or continuity just do it whenever you want because he wanted John C Riley and Tom and Mark to genuinely feel that they didn't know when it was coming but it would have meant I would be kind of reacting to them as well so he came up with this brilliant idea I had earplugs so all I heard was a kind of very dull sort of muffled but I also had the dialogue coming into my ear so I could hear the dialogue so I was able to just wander through this noise without reacting to it at all and then the three of them on the sofa genuinely kind of getting freaked out cuz it was loud if you wanton don't worry about yeah the one line that I improvised that you know stayed in the movie the young actor he lit one of them it went really loud and I just turned around and went that's Cosmo he's Chinese I think I said it because I actually forgot the line that I was supposed to say but they kept it so I was I was I was rather proud of that bells are not intended as entertainment Madame they are a solemn call to worship for the Bigg a pardon mm moiselle I've never been married but feel free to call me Vian we're always keeping things under a lid somehow you know otherwise there would be chaos you know so I think that feeling is very human and then if you add to that a character who is socially morally repressed dealing with a very negative situation his wife has just left him there's tension in his life and somehow it it it boils over and has to to come out somewhere and it comes out in this almost kind of Quasi racist attitude towards Juliet Bosh's character cuz she represents freedom she represents sensuality and joy of Life which he has denied himself it was just a feeling of what would it be like to just say no all the time to yourself the lon fast Madame R are you not supposed to eat something how would that make you feel I just kept thinking about that and then of course you know the big the big scene at the end when he finally [Music] explodes Lassa hrom our director very wisely realized that we're going to do a few takes of this cuz we want to recover it you're going to be eating a lot of chocolate so I'm going to shoot this on the last day cuz there's a chance you may not feel very well and he was right eating that amount of chocolate I woke up the next morning with a hangover cuz all the sugar as you know the sugar in in alcohol is what gives you the hang of it so I felt like I'd been like on the binge All Night Long at the end of the day I asked the prop master I said how much chocolate did we eat he said you ate about4 I couldn't believe it you know but it was uh it was delicious I have something important to discuss with you I don't have time to chat with school girls I'm not a school girl banson Salma hyek who I'd only met once before when she first arrived in Hollywood we did a reading and I happened to sit next to her and she saw my name on the cards you know Molina so she thought oh well maybe he speaks a bit of Spanish and we got on great a few years later she says to me I want to do this movie it's about frao and Diego Rivera here's the script I'd love you to play Diego and then she said but this isn't the finished version over the next year Salma was working on the script trying to raise money and so on and she very very nicely and very loyally really kept us all in touch here's the latest development here here's where we are now I hope you're still in with this and and I kept writing back saying yeah I'm I'm still I'm there I'm there and she had her dream cast of who she wanted in the movie she wanted me and she wanted Jeffrey rush and she wanted Roger Ree and she wanted saffron barus but then when when Harvey Weinstein got involved he he he wanted bigger names and she dug her heels in and said no no these are the people I want this is my movie in order to stay loyal to us all she ended up having to sign some kind of deal where she had to make all these movies for the Weinstein Company the Loyalty she showed to us all was really remarkable and so you know I won't hear a bad word about her and in fact one of the big glossy magazines they did a big cover story on her when the movie was about to be released and they interviewed you know all the actors that were involved in and I said that Salma was in a sense a victim of her own Beauty because if she was white and male given what she's done in the industry she'd be bigger than Harvey Weinstein that's what I said and they used that as a quote and the next time Harvey Weinstein saw me he blanked me like I had cancer I mean I couldn't believe it so you know he he I pissed him off I wear that as a badge of honor but uh it was she was incredible she was loyal to the nth degree to and not just to me to everybody everybody involved in the movie what will people say about such a bear they'll have never seen a better match I read every book I could find about him about his work I went out and looked at every piece of art that was available I went to look at the murals I tried to absorb as much as I could about him I even read the book that he wrote his own autobiography which is very much a fable in the sense that not a lot of it is accurate he bullshitted about himself a lot and so you had take it with a pinch of salt he was clearly a man of great appetites not just food you know but sexual appetite he was he was very knowledgeable about art he was a consumer artist in that sense he knew his history he knew his place in the world of art he understood his responsibility but I wanted to look like him as well when Julie tamore met me she said how do you feel about putting on weight and I said well I'm fine with it you know I can do it and I checked with my doctor and I got I got found out how to do it properly without kind of doing yourself too much damage and my doctor had said if you want to bulk up for the movie do it with carbs not protein cuz it will be easier to lose pasta and rice I'm eating loads of risoto and so I'm in this restaurant I treated myself this gorgeous bowl of pasta really and I had it was delicious the waiter comes and asks me if you know if I wanted some dessert and I said no I'll have another bowl of the pasta and he kind of looked at me a little a scance and then he kind of went away and then he came back with the second bowl of pasta and as he put it down he said there you are Mr Molina preparing for a roll but it was uh it was fun putting it on took me 10 years to lose it but never mind ladies and gentlemen fasten your seat belt it was a big surprise to me because it it's not the kind of movie that I imagined myself to be qualified for you know you always think of these big action films as being kind of certain actors who are known to be you know kind of physical types and I've definitely never been that The Story Goes that Sam ry's wife happened to say to him there's this actor in Freda you know he looks interesting and Sam being a smart man listened to his wife and as all smart men do and uh he called me in and we had a great meeting and I kept saying look I'm up for it but I I got to be honest with you I've never done anything like this before and I've certainly never worked on a film with all this technology you know I've never done much green screen or anything like that but what swung it was we did a screen test where they gave me an approximation of the costume the big leather thing with the big trench coat you know I'm doing all the usual things that you do at screen test you know giving them different angles and then arv Arad who at the time was head of uh Marvel takes off his glasses and goes put these on and so I put the sunglasses on and the whole room just sort of went oh this could be the image and I think that's what swung it I will not die a monster the beautiful thing about a lot of the Marvel villains and in fact a lot of the Marvel heroes is that they're all they all become so reluctantly Otto Octavius has this terrible tragedy in his life which changes things and so they become these monsters these villains almost against their will and what that does it gives those characters a real level of humanity it gives them kind of moral dilemmas to deal with and there's always a moment when they're struggling with that dilemma should I carry on doing this should I pull back am I being a bad person these monstrous thing should be at the bottom of the river and that was all in the script and Sam wanted to develop that it gave the character a kind of depth and a and a and something that we that the audience can hang on to because it's no longer a two-dimensional character he's not just the bad guy he's actually the bad guy with a kind of emotional life and that just I think makes them just so much more interesting people would ask me at the time you know what was it like doing a gay love story I said well no it's a love story it it's very human just happens to be two guys but it it's it's not there's nothing that they're going through that doesn't happen to anybody in any kind of relationship that's close losing the job looking for health insurance we need a breather yeah believe me moving out of here is the last thing we want to do loss bereavement Financial pressure the pain of Separation all of those things everybody in any kind of relationship could very easily go through the same thing good night Georgie at the time my late wife was going into the throws of her Alzheimer's and so there was a lot of um kind of a lot of pain involved in in that period so and like a lot of actors you kind of uh part of you wants to kind of use it and so I I kind of Lent into that a little bit you know I and I and I didn't feel guilty about it cuz I think my my late wife was an actor and I think uh she would have approved and also John had had some experience of loss and so we we knew what we were talking about in a sort of very kind of personal way hello Peter hi coming back 17 years later to play the character again no one was more surprised than me and when they asked me I said you realize I'm quite a bit older I've got crow's feet I've got a wle you know double chin I've got bad knees and John wats and Amy Pascal they said no no it's your role we want you back and we can fix all that you know we'll Dage you you all that we've got the technology we can change everything so I was delighted obviously I mean apart from the fact that it's great fun to play playing that part in all honesty completely changed my life I mean it did just took everything to a not just to a different level but also to a whole other group group of Cinema fans there's a fan group that loved all the movies like shock alad and Enchanted April and freed and all those movies and now suddenly the children of those people are kind of digging Fred Molina cuz he's playing Dark AR I'm grateful Dear Boy truly yeah you're welcome how can I help the original deal I was signed up for with an option for two more movies and when he dies in Sp Spider-Man 2 I kind of went well I guess that option's no longer relevant and it was a Arvy who said oh no one dies in this universe which was intriguing at the time but by the time 17 years had passed I'd completely forgotten all about it but when it came back it was a very pleasant shock getting a chance to work with Andrew Garfield and Toby again and with Tom was a very intriguing idea and then when we were told that there was going to be this thing when these universes all come together I thought this is brilliant but also it was actually quite emotional just you know they're in their costumes I'm in mine and we're just like standing around in between shots just chatting and I remember thinking this is kind of magical you know this this kind of thing doesn't happen to people and I think we were all feeling the same thing we all kind of like took it in and out of that came this very nice little improvised scene which is in the movie when they're talking about their various aches and pains and stuff like that you okay oh my back it's kind of sff from all the swinging I guess oh yeah no I got a middle back thing too really yeah and that came out of a real conversation they were all having about the injuries they' had when they were filming their movies those guys work hard they work hard for those parts I wouldn't dream of selling the estate without Sonia's consent besides I'm proposing to sell it for Sonia's benefit this is insane it's absurd two things were the main attraction one was working with a new director or a director that was new to me certainly and this idea of this adaptation which was both quite radical and at the same time very very true to the original play but this is a completely new take on it it felt like a new play and that was very exciting you know and and I think the great thing about these classic plays the ones that are really good and have earned that status is that they stand up to scrutiny and then of course when I found out the cast this wonderful wonderful cast of actors Steve Carell as van is the most Sensational thing and I know a lot of people in the business know what a wonderful actor he is I think in the public sphere people may imagine him as this wonderful comedy actor but he's got depth and he's got passion and he's got emotion his performance is absolutely stunning and maybe I'm being naive maybe I'm thinking of 13th century feudal law or something but it was my understanding that the estate passed from my sister to Sonia we worked on the backstory of these characters at Great length why does this happen why is he doing that why is he here and all the clues are in the script at one point Alexander says I loved success I loved being famous and now I'm stuck in this this Crypt surrounded by stupid people making worthless conversations his world has been completely taken away and he describes his downfall as being suddenly out of the blue and we were kind of thinking what kind of circumstance in a in our modern sense would create that and we thought well you know highflying academic maybe he got cancelled and the fact that his wife is younger than him uh maybe she was a student of his and the notion that van at one point really looked up to my character thought he was a genius loved his work loved his books worked hard to support him now starts to realize what a waste of time and that has a huge impact on how you play each scene that's like the exciting part of the process and it's constantly changing it's constantly alive when I was very very young my dad got me a job as a as a as a waiter in the restaurant where he was working and if I say so myself I was a good waiter to the point where the management offered me the chance to do a two- we Management training course and I turned it down because I've got I've got an acting job so my father my father says well this acting job how much are they paying you I said well I'm getting Union you know Union get5 a week 15 so how much you making here about 30 35 wait a minute wait a minute you making 30 35 year then you go to do making 15 I said yeah and he looked at me and he had that look on his face that you reserve for the mad and the lost he just like stared at me like like he didn't recognize me and the only thing I could say to him was this is what I love Dad and he never quite got it I did disappoint my dad [Music] yeah I think if my dad had had had lived a little longer I think he hopefully would have realized that um I hadn't wasted my time oh yeah my father and I never really talked about my work he wasn't kind of phoning me up and saying things like so what are you up to what's going on never had that kind of relationship when he passed away I went to Spain for the funeral and I was with his widow my step my stepmom and she drags out this suitcase and it's full of like clippings and photos and bits from magazines and letters from people that wrote to him saying oh I just saw Alfredo in this thing you know and he kept all this stuff but he never talked about it and my stepmom said do you want any of this and I couldn't handle it I I said no that's why I always I've always tried with my kids my my daughter and my stepsons and now my I have a stepdaughter now with my wife all you can do is just tell them how brilliant they are that's all you need to do

Channel: Vanity Fair

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Keywords: alfred molina, alfred molina career, alfred molina movies, best movies, boogie nights, chocolat, entertainment, frida, love is strange, movies, raiders of the lost ark, spider-man, spider-man 2, spider-man no way home, spider-man: no way home, spiderman, tv and entertainment, tv and movies, uncle vanya, vanity fair

Id: nbhHJ9iLrRA

Length: 24min 9sec (1449 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024