One writer described American actor Stephen Lang as “an actor of uncommon range and power”. In Barbados last week, the veteran of film and television told EASY magazine:“As I get older, I find I am still excited by it.”
“Who is Stephen Lang” was the question I posed to him. He paused before giving the studied response: “I have been an actor for over 40 years now. I have worked on TV, I have worked on stage. It is kind of who I am. It is my calling. I always wanted to be an actor, I always knew I was going to be an actor which is not to say I ever knew or felt I was going to be a great actor, but I worked at it over the years. I have always loved it, never stopped loving it, except when I hate it.”
Then with a chuckle, he added: “I am Stephen Lang and I have been Stephen Lang for 64 years now and intend to continue to be Stephen Lang, hopefully. I would love to get another 30 years out, if I could.”
To movie lovers, however, his iconic role as Colonel Miles Quaritch in the James Cameron blockbuster film Avatar, identifies him as an actor who plays the role of a villain so well.
Quaritch in the James Cameron blockbuster film Avatar, identifies him as an actor who plays the role of a villain so well.
While he couldn’t single out his favourite role, saying it was “an impossible question for me”, he pinpointed Avatar.
“I love Avatar; I love Colonel Quaritch because he was so good to me. But I also love Stonewall Jackson. I love The Blind Man in Don’t Breathe.”
He added: “My job is always to love these characters because so much of the time the characters I play, if I don’t love them, nobody else will. The truth is, I play a lot of badass people so you need to . . . . I am not sure that love is the right word . . . . You need to defend these characters with everything; you have got to find their rationale for their actions, to give reason why they deserve to carve out space.”
Is there some hidden part of his personality that attracts him to such roles? Prefacing his response with a mischievous laugh, he said: “Well, you know it is good to be bad. I don’t know, but I think maybe that has something to do with it. When I do play a “villain” you never approach him that way. You know villains really see themselves as villains. They have got their agenda and to them it makes sense. Maybe that’s part of it. I think what happens is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to some extent, you get thought of in a certain way, so certain roles come to you.”
The New York–born Lang believes his interest in acting was sparked when he started watching television movies as a youngster. Back then, he would watch film from the 1930s and 1940s. “I’d see Errol Flynn and Bogart and Bogey and Cagney and Betty Davis and Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and the March brothers and I was enthralled with these black and white worlds that they inhabited.
“It all came from loving the adventures that I was seeing in the movies. I wanted to be there; I wanted to do that, so I had a strong sense of pretend, of role playing, whether it was a soldier or explorer or an astronaut and I was fortunate that I was able to parlay that into my work which is something I continue to do.”
The actor did his first feature film in 1983 and he was in Barbados last week for screening of his award-winning Beyond Glory, the film in which cinema and theatre are synthesised with the tracking of the ten-year-odyssey behind his acclaimed solo performance piece about eight American war heroes.
Invited to participate in the first Barbados Independent Film festival, the accomplished actor gave valuable advice to aspiring Barbadian film producers on the festival’s opening night in the new Walled Garden Theatre at the Barbados Museum.
In the pre-festival interview at the Radisson Aquatica Hotel, Lang gushed: “I am looking forward to really kicking this festival off in a way that really sets down some good roots for this festival because I am sure that a lot of filmmakers and Hollywood people, whether they are elite or not, are going to want to come here to be part of it because you can’t ask for a more beautiful spot.”
But a raw nerve appeared to have been touched when the actor was pressed for his views on recent remarks made by actress Meryl Streep about US President-elect Donald Trump when she accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award at the recent Golden Globes Awards ceremony.
“I am really sick and tired of this being labelled Hollywood elitist. We are people who work hard. Sure, there are celebrities among us and so attention is paid to what is said. Many of them say smart things, many of them say dumb things, but we are free to speak our minds, and if we have more of a platform than other people do, then it’s your choice, and don’t listen. But don’t lump us all together as some kind of Hollywood elite.
“I don’t feel slighted at all. I feel like we are in this thing together. I ride the subway in New York City every day and I don’t think there is anything elistist about me. New York is the most egalitarian city in the world. It is where the poorest of the poor rub up shoulders against the richest of the rich.”
The still energetic actor is looking forward to a busy year. A lot of his time, he said, will be taken up with four sequels to Avatar. A sequel to Beyond Glory is also in the works. There is no slowing down for the sexagenarian who remarked with a cheeky grin: “The older I get, the more they want me.”
For Lang, acting remains “a peculiar profession in a way . . . somewhat mysterious . . . this sort of desire or need to be someone else.
“But in the end, it really requires that you be very firmly who you are.”(GC)