Tim Roth Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

just sitting there and Sam Jackson Samuel Jackson sitting just in front and Quentin just before by category was announced Sam turned around to me and went Tim when you lose write say 'mother Reservoir Dogs I think my agents kind of initial impulse was to look at mr. pink or mr. blonde which were you know Madison and Steve Buscemi's they felt that I'd be more interested in that but I wasn't at all it was interested in mr. orange because I would be an English actor pretending to be an American playing a cop who was pretending to be a robber so I liked the four levels of deceit that that that would make me go through I also thought it would be hugely more challenging and and so I was intrigued by it and then met when I met with Quentin that was that same as now it feels the same it feels that that the the atmosphere on set is fun and excitement and enjoyment and you know very very creative but the one thing that Quentin has that I find is not necessarily true of a lot of writers directors is that he's already done your improvising for you I mean if someone comes to you and you do it it's there and he can go cut no no no no no and I see I've seen him do it and he said it to me he says through all of his actors it's on the page give me what I wrote they can smell it sure is that dark he's already done so much for you you know that you know when your phone rings and it's him on the other end you just your fingers crossed you know so we've shot the thing and think five weeks you know and I think the very very little money involved I remember Harvey Keitel saying to me what do you think I think I said I think this is really good yeah me too done Ching said and but we had that feeling that we were in something great and made a lot of that obviously had to do with the script but a lot of it had to do with Quentin - and we were in we were we were in a big we were at the beginning of something grand you know in the in a not pretentious play been something great Pulp Fiction he read me the whole script one night or as he was working on it he was he would do that a lot so I had an inkling of what the film was gonna be and what it was gonna be about and the layering of it and the structure of it and so forth I think he came at me for a different character initially and then he switched tracks I think had a lot to do with Amanda Plummer because I knew Amanda we were off to a premiere of Fisher King which she was in and I knew she was always late for everything and this scatterbrained and stuff so I said send the car to my house pick me up first because I was gonna take her there I was gonna be a date or whatever and then we'll come around and we'll get you came around got her she was fast asleep so we load her in into the car got her there and and she was so dizzy but it was her night and then Quentin was there and I said I'd like to work with Amanda as long as she's got a really big gun in her hand and he went done did he built those two characters right I love those characters absolutely love them [Music] made in Britain that was my first job with cameras involved here originally the way I got the job I was working I was calling myself an actor and which is hilarious and selling advertising over the phone to people who couldn't afford it and cycling back and forth to where I was staying in the middle of the night and I got a flat tire and went to a theater to see if I could get a tire repair kit or something and they told they didn't have that but they told me about these auditions and I went in I got it through nefarious means I met with Alan Clark who's one of the best who was one of the best directors of of actors I've ever worked with it was I supposed to beat them I think of her and noon or something like that so I turned up at 11:30 left out half an hour early so I and they said oh you're early come back in a half an hour and I went oh okay I'll just go wait in the park across the road and I went over into the park and I knew that their windows looked down into that Park and I kind of I did a bit just got into character a little bit and then luckily a mate of mine from a band who had a huge peacock hairdo came through the park and me a name started mucking about and then we got stopped by the police and searched and all the usual then I went in and did the audition and got the job and then we went off and in the last day of filming Alan Hart said to me you know why you got the job at oh yeah oh yeah you were watching me out that window anyway you passed it I said yeah and then he got me my next job so it's good do you cough you gotta you know keep your wits about you a lot well I would say the hit it was complicated because Joe Strummer from the clash was gonna play Myron and then he couldn't do it because there was here to be with the band for some reason the character was based on bullies that I'd known at school bullies that I'd known outside school and polish commandos who my dad had told me about from the second world war which was where all the razor blades in the color came from and little steel Blakey's which we used to have when we were kids which they'd put all around their shoes and sharpened them so they'd take your skin off it's all about street fighting and about football hooligans so that with some really bad fashion thrown in and and a very bad dye job that was character it was my first time on an aeroplane I've traveled there with John Hurt I was I was working with John and Lauda del Sol and Terence Stamp it was crazy and I couldn't drive and I was playing the driver they were trying to teach me how to drive and there was one particular scene where I Drive around a windmill pull up on the top of a kind of mountainous hill it's windmills and distance all very um sort of Spanish and we get out I have a conversation I take a pee and then we have a little moment and I'm get back in a car and drive away that's me and Terence and John pull out like a cut and test it someone gets in the car drives it back around to the other side of the windmill puts it on its mouth drive back in again and after about three three or four takes Terence who's in the back Terrace it's um you're doing really good put it on this marked yeah sure right so drive around with Milt and I put it on its marks and I hit the accelerator instead of the brake and went straight into the camera not the camera off the dolly the camera went down the side of the mountain I carried on down the side of the mountain we turn turn it's damp and John hurt cracking up in the back but I thought I was gonna we were all gonna die I went all the way down to the bottom of this mountain and managed to get it to to a hole the first thing at my mouth was I'll never work again and they will piss themselves laughing in the back and then everyone signed the car and still it was trashed signed a car stood around it and took pictures and the producer said sure every time said insurance and we moved on it and that was one of my first experiences of filmmaking [Music] plan of the apes one of the first things I did when I was trying to be an actor was I went and did some movement classes with the guy who was the one of the apes and also in charge of the ape movement on Greystoke the Tarzan movie a million years ago Planet of the Apes came up they'd brought in and not you know a second second movement guy from he was a catcher flier and a catcher insert de soleil and they brought him in and he was my height built like a brick and me and him just got carried away with moving we started just because I could you know there's plenty of plenty of down time on any movie so we just spent four it was just having the best time off camera all the time I got that guy in to do to be my stunt me my character fade and so I would come in in the morning we both be fully in makeup go with Tim go this would be the scene I said what about if he if he came up off the back of a horse up through the window into there you know and we would just make make up you know and Terry his name's Terry notary could do it it's extraordinary also he was the he was the might of my stunt double but he didn't need the muscle suit me and Tim really wanted to me I saw him recently by the way Tim Burton it's just a you know crossing at the airport type situation but we were still talking about it's like the movie that we wanted to make was so dark and twisted but unfortunately we weren't allowed to make that one [Music] Vincente the fear when they told me what it who it was to play I because I've been at art college I had studied him and he was woman he was my father's favorite painter I felt I was too young to play it I went to see Bob in his hotel fancy pants London and said I think I'm too young and then he said in that case you've got the job and I couldn't I couldn't really fight him on it we went to Holland first myself and Paul Reis he was playing fear Vincent's brother and we arrived and there was a big party and we were bit bored and we didn't have any money so we went to Bob and say give us some money we're going to go into Amsterdam proper he gave us a wad of cash and said come back with characters which we did so he'd spent a couple of days roaming around in Amsterdam completely out of our depth with the whole place and then came back with ideas about what our character should be and then launched into it and it was quite a long shoot during we were given licence to improvise but we're and play with the dialog and then gradually Bob said okay you go away you've got as group fact as you go away work the dialogue what you want to do what how you would play a scene about such and such an event and then come back to me in the morning and we'll shoot that it was actually one of the most fun times I've had as an actor I mean I've been fortunate because I've had a lot of them [Music] Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead I was away I was going to do some crap movie and I was in Dubrovnik not making a movie with my girlfriend at a time we were just hanging about and then the film got cancelled yes so but while I was there I got this script and it was raising her and I knew the play and I was a very very keen fan of Tom starts and you know it was an extraordinary thing so I was incredibly nervous and I went over to Tom's place in London when I got back and Gary open the door I was like oh so we went in me and him and we were just sitting with with Tom and we were mucking about and catching up really and tom was just like okay they are questions that you have to ask questions and then Tom said can't give you a lift anywhere and I said I'll yeah I gotta get to the station to get a train home so he took me to the station and on the way to the station he said listen I have to say I would love to give you this job but the powers that be Danny day-lewis is being offered ahead of you and it was he said I'm afraid you're not it's not going to be for us but you know thanks for coming in and all that stuff I was gutted that night Danny was doing Hamlet and he had a bit of a meltdown on stage and he thought he saw his father and all of that stuff for real and took a break from acting so I got the job so I've always odd Danny big time which of course he doesn't need me but I've always owed him fig and for that because he that's how I got the job I have terrible stage fright so probably not Rob Roy I actually thought I was gonna get fired it was something I had net had no experience of that that kind of class and that you know that world and you know that kind of a feat upper class honest the FOP thing which was very much a thing in the United Kingdom whatever you may call it at that time anyway I started doing it and you know within it within a week you couldn't get me out of a room without bowing 25 times you know I was having a fine time but I got on the phone to my agent I said the Americans are coming over I'm gonna get fired can you see if there's something that I can go on to if can you find me another job because they're gonna they're gonna fire me and it was my first real payday on that movie I that was from that movie I most buy a house which was awesome they kept me on and well Liam Liam was you know the the star of the movie and he was off in the hills with his kilt on while they were off doing that I was working with Bill Hobbs and his guys down on the lower level in in a school gym sword-fighting and fell in love with that and one of the hardest things that we had to do on that was I was with a lightweight fast fast moving sword Liam's characters saw Rob Roy was broadsword not maybe not a broadsword but very heavy I kill him in a second yeah so the idea was that I was stinging him and that I was around him and embarrassing him and bringing him to a point where he's on his knees at which point he has to cheat to win and that's not what I'm expecting and that's what gets me we spent months working on on that me and his stunt double it was totally unexpected and funny um me and missus got to go to the Oscars and you got you got free frocks so no it was it was utterly terrific but this is this is my fondest memory of it just sitting there and Sam Jackson Samuel Jackson sitting just in Quentin just before by category was announced Sam turned around to me and went Tim when you lose right say like that and I was I connect up but didn't do it and it's my only only regret because of course you'd be in the frame and it with the idea of sitting the game cut and it would have been but only Sam could get away with it funny games I read it and said no I don't want to go through that I didn't want to have that experience at that time and my agent said to me get the previous one I think you've already sent it to me to look at this and I saw it went oh okay and so I said yes doing a shot shot remake of a film must be made before is complicated there's a 12-minute take in there that is exactly the same beat for beat the same as what was originally shot you had to not only suffer the circumstances that the family were under but you had to portray that within a set of circumstances that were years past and in a different country and with a different group of people it was very very hard to do very disturbing plus the boy that was in it a little boy played our son it was very hard because he looked just like my one of my sons and it was a bit much I love working with Naomi Watts she has such a wicked sense of humor because she's English Australian kind of thing and she's just you know she was sticking her fingers in his sandwiches and stuff she's a very weird human I adore her lie to me when I was in England I when I first started I wanted to experience different things so even after I was doing after the hit I would do a small part in the television thing that was shot on the floor in in in the studio just to see what it felt like just in case that happened to me then I would go and do a radio play and then I would go you know so I would find out how these things felt so just in case they happen down the line so I kind of applied the same principle to lie to me I'd never done it so I thought I should try that and I really enjoyed it I mean it we did I think in the end we did 58 episodes of it and you know the one thing I did discover because I don't generally watch what I do few exceptions I would dip back into it and go oh my god just so over the top pull it back so you could do that with that with in a long-form kind of Network series and I had a really really good time I worked with an incredibly creative people it was a difficult thing to keep that science being interesting it was based on Paul Ekman's some studies he it's it's about the language of lying the language of deceit it's a body language expert so he can look at you like he could look at me now and tell me and tell you when I'm bullshitting and when I'm not and and there are certain things that across all cultures are tells and he can spot them no you could do the course like the actors were given a shot at it some of them did it and I said no way I don't want to know where my kids are lying to me I don't want to have any of that [Music] hopefully it was a it was like a theater troupe it had that feeling to it so we went and we did this stuff up the mountain all the exteriors that he could grab in the snow and all of that stuff and then we we did that version of the movie and then which was the complete set built and so when we didn't have good enough snow who go inside and start those scenes and then we came down to LA and it was 90 degrees and we and he refrigerated the studio it was colder in LA than it was up in the mountains to be honest so we could see how bright it was it was great I mean it felt like we were in a plane we did a long run of a play well well well looks like Minnie's haberdashery is about to get cozy for the next few days when the first version of it was leaked I was rehearsing a play and hateful it was already on he was you know getting ready he was pulling all these people together as to he was doing his casting and then it went it got leaked out and and I got a call from him at theater I was in rehearsal and he was scrapping it he was I'm done screw this and he was really really angry I talked to him I said you know go shake the trees go jump up and down but you're crazy if you let whoever did this you know ruin such a great kind of party you're about to have he was really really upset and then he did a rejigger of it and then we did this great reading in downtown which was just a fantastic night well he did that to say goodbye to it because he was this he did that of the original script yeah and because he couldn't do that ending so he say goodbye to it that way tin star we found very quickly that with the core family Genevieve O'Reilly plays my missus and Abigail Laurie plays my daughter we found that we connected which was a lot of that was down to the producers casting she put three people in a room that could that just it made sense so we'd improvise and it was encouraged it was it was encouraged that we would muck about and only in the scenes that we were only in the scenes that we were in you know or I was in with other actors we would play around the stuff and it wasn't it was like go for it guys is great and it had so it had a kind of loose quality about it I don't know about other people's stuff but it was what we did when we were together so it might have been a habit that I fell into and then we did one episode in that season episode 9 which with a director that I'd worked with in England young director we got him out and put him on it and it was a a kind of flashback episode of a standalone episode so we improvised the entire thing we would meet as actors in the same way I did with Altman and with Mike Lee when I work with him before and we would what would you do under this circumstance what would you say what would you not say how would you behave and and so and then the following day we would shoot it and still it would be flexible when we were on the floor as long as we deliver the episode it was good and I and it was one of the better episodes in the season in the first season so when we went to the second season with a couple of notable exceptions which were script heavy we took that notion and ran with it so that the that kind of feeling that kind of loose back-and-forth feeling even under the most dire of circumstances as it ratcheted ratchets are still plays so and you can change on the day what you're going to do and so on which so the crew had to be very patient with us and they were it's difficult because your day ends and then your day begins and then it begins again so you that it was it was extraordinary long hours because you had to get ready for the next day's stuff even if you'd finished at midnight or something so you you know all you get there early in the morning and you get we generally meet in my trailer for coffee and and score what would you do how about if the what about if you did this and then I would be meeting with with Allison Jackson producer and just Connells script supervisor in my flat and we come up with ideas and then we take them into the actors and it was it was wild it never stopped [Music] swim Peaks when I was a kid and wanting to be an actor I went to see a razor head about 25 times yeah I was very very very keen yeah I don't know how do you speak David you know we would get on the phone every night me and his producer and staff would be helped because we had best time working with him and we were sad it was coming to an end and we you know when one night I was you know on the phone with her I said can we have some more she went I'll pass that along next next day there's another scene exactly so you look we had to learn it on the on the on the hoof there's one spoiler alert scene his spoiler where I get shot and he had me in a van and and the note that he gave me and I was completely laced up with squibs and the inside of the van was and it was okay and we were actually on the move so you could see that see it through the glass his note to me was Elvis rag doll okay locked you up okay and that's what it was and he was not we did in one take and it was it you know had to be Elvis but it had to be a rag doll or Elvis and that was the movement the physicality he wanted he's so funny I loved him

Channel: GQ

Views: 1,504,770

Keywords: celebrity, iconic, iconic characters, tim roth, tim roth interview, tim roth gq, tim roth 2019, tim roth movie, tim roth movies, tim roth films, tim roth characters, tim roth iconic characters, tim roth iconic, tim roth reservoir dogs, tim roth pulp fiction, reservoir dogs, pulp fiction, tim roth mr orange, tim roth rob roy, tim roth hateful eight, the hateful eight, rob roy, tim roth lie to me, lie to me, tim roth film, tim roth tv show, tim roth show, gq, gq magazine

Id: driYdJ95HHs

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/BunyipPouch]

These GQ videos are great.

[u/Kniefaeule]

Love Tim Roth!

As Mobray: "The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck, will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion, is the very essence of justice. For justice delivered without dispassion, is always in danger, of not being justice. "

[u/killowot]

Ted the Bellhop from Four Rooms. Great stuff.

[u/CrunchyNar]

including his roles in 'Reservoir Dogs,' 'Pulp Fiction,' 'Made in Britain,' 'The Hit,' 'Planet of the Apes,' 'Vincent & Theo,' 'Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,' 'Rob Roy,' 'Funny Games,' 'Lie to Me,' 'The Hateful Eight,' 'Tin Star,' and 'Twin Peaks.'

[u/[deleted]]

His Lie to Me show wasnt half bad either.

[u/[deleted]]

Im pretty sure his most iconic role has got to be playing Sepp Blatter in United Passions lol

[u/polyisextra]

Did he mention the hulk, or did I miss it?

[u/Thatoneasian9600]

These videos are so fun. Kyle Maclachlan, Oscar Issac and Willem Dafoe is some of my favorites that they've done

[u/Skavis]

I think four rooms was his best. Loved him in that.