excerpts from articles about and interviews with tim roth
culled from tim-roth.com. longish. i tried to credit, but lost some of the titles/authors/magazines. also, i tried to date, but again... yeah.
Tim Roth Interview Excerpts
NC: Now is the head-butt just something you learn on the street in Britain when you're a kid?
TR: (smiles big) It's a tradition! They call it the Docker's Kiss, and...yeah, it's a tradition. Just good fighting.
NC: I actually was at a friend's place this past weekend and we saw State of Grace again...
TR: Oh, yeah!
NC: Yeah, and Oldman's in peak form in that one...
TR: Oh, absolutely. He puts that in, too.
NC: Now, I saw Little Odessa in a film class, and I remember the opening scene, that shot...
TR: The one with the eyes?
NC: No, the whole scene really -- you walking up, plugging the guy and you're gone...
TR: (laughs) Okay, yeah. Bang -- off!
NC: Yeah! For a moment, in the screeing, there was a silence in the room and then...this little giggle.
TR: Oh...
NC: Yeah, but not really a reaction to the scene as much as, everyone looked at each other and went, "Yep, that's Tim!"
--Nicole Campos, The Daily Trojan, 1996
Question: Tim, My cousin thinks that your performance is Four Rooms was influenced by outside substances, we both thought you were great, but how do you go back and forth between your characters so well?
RothTim: The more varied the characters, the better, as far as I'm concerned. I swear to god I was clean at that time.
...
Question: Who is the most beautiful co-star you've worked with, in your opinion?
RothTim: Steve Buscemi.
AOLiveMC5: GR8Dane16 asks:
Question: Mr. Roth, Are there any projects you regret working on?
RothTim: Plenty...next question...
...
Question: Tim, I love you. I love you. You are a smoldering actor, and have you had any formal training, or do you generate heat naturally?
RothTim: Looks like Cooki's running interference in row 16. Why thank you, why thank you. No, it's just built in. It comes with the package.
...
Question: Is it flattering to know that you have a mailing list on the Internet dedicated to following your every move?
RothTim: In truth, it's a little worrying.
...
RothTim: I try and take the family with me everywhere I can. It's getting harder the more kids I have. But celibacy sucks.
...
Question: Did you enjoy doing "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?" Do you plan on doing more movies with Gary Oldman?
RothTim: Some of the best dialogue that I have ever spoken. I'd love to work with Gary again, but he seems to moving towards the studio system a little more than I am. Maybe I'll meet up with him on one of those somewhere down the line.
--AOL chat
BOBYBGRIGR: (2)do you have a big house
RothTim: (2)big enough.
Satiria: (2)do you have a brain?
RothTim: (2)Satiria: It's questionable.
--another aol chat. Ahahahahahah.
Tim Roth: It's amazing how quickly you build these relationships and how quickly they fade. I miss Tom and I love him, anytime he wants to come by for a pint, I'm ready.
--John Pierson, Sundance, 1999
nb_luvstim asks: Ray what are the similarities/differences when working w/ Tim or Gary (oldman)?
RAY: The differences are that they are totally different directors. And the similarity is that they are very talented people. And neither of them is as good looking as me.
...
CHAZ_IOM asks: when are we going to see the ultimate movie starring tim ray and gary??
RAY: If I were to say anyone I'd love to work with, it would be the 3 of us together. And Bobby Carlyle again.
TIM: We are all ugly. We have that in common. We are the strangest looking fuckers.
RAY: Yeah, yeah. It's called interesting. A well lived in face.
TIM: It's called, you are going to be around a long time
--with Ray Winstone, who starred in both The War Zone and Nil by Mouth. 1999
Like Gary Oldman before him, Tim Roth has discovered that being able to cut it as an American has increased his job prospects dramatically. While Sean Connery can rely on his grandee status to assure that his peripatetic accent never receives too much attention, Roth has instead had to rely on rigorous authenticity. "Before Dogs I did a thing called Jumpin' At the Boneyard," he recalls, "and people from the Bronx came up to me and said 'I love that film you did' and then they would hear me speak and say 'Where the fuck are you from?' They kind of get pissed off that they've been deceived, and then they love it."
Last year marked Tim Roth's tenth anniversary as an actor, an occasion for reviewing and taking stock. As with much of his life, however, it is difficult to trace an upward curve of linear development in Roth's acting career. Nothing so calculating. Although recent years have seen him establish a seemingly unstoppable momentum, 'twas clearly not always thus. Indeed, after two years of unemployment in Britain in the late '80s, his move to L.A. was, he claims, not to seek fame and fortune, but simply to pay the rent. In this he has certainly succeeded, although his determination to work with material he believes in has kept him will clear of any earnings superleague.
...
"No, not professionally. My only regret is that I've missed the chance to work with Alan Clarke again (the late director of Made in Britain). He was the British Scorsese. He was my hero, and still is. When we did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, me and Gary were saying, 'We've got to go back and do one together with Alan.' But we blew our chance."
That man Oldman again. Ever since they both appeared in Meantime, his and Roth's careers have been intertwined. Recently Roth said that Oldman's success was good for him, suggesting that he was more than happy to wear Gary's cast-offs. Was this still the case?
"No, you can't say that anymore. He makes big, big studio films. I don't."
--GQ, 1995
You come from a background different from that of Kenneth Branagh or Hugh Grant. Are the class distinctions just as strong in the theater as in other parts of British society?
There are certain plays and films on TV that I would never want to watch, and they tend to involve the upper-class actors or upper-class issues. What was exciting to me about American cinema was that filmmakers like Scorsese set their films in working-class New York. Those were the characters he followed. That's sadly missing from British films--the Merchant Ivory or Kenneth Branagh kind of films are about wealthy people and their problems. I don't really give a fuck about their problems. Let them hire a shrink.
--Premiere, 1995
Whether or not audiences will ever see Roth play a homosexual, the actor's next starring role is in a spring release, Captives , in which he plays a prison inmate who falls in love with the prison's dentist. These days however, Roth's dance card is filled with more than acting gigs. In addition to his increasing number of feature film roles, the actor can be found sporting a host of fabulous outfits as a Prada model in several men's fashion magazines, including GQ and Esquire. "I don't know fashion stuff," says Roth, grinning. "I didn't even know what Prada was, but they phoned me up and asked me to do it. And once I said the word 'Prada', my wife started yelling, 'Do it, do it!'"
It's no surprise that Roth, as an actor-turned-model, is gay friendly. In fact, he's articulate about the struggles that gays and lesbians face working in the entertainment industry. "I understand why people don't want to come out of the closet if they're involved in the entertainment business, because there's a lot of homophobia here," he says. "And that homophobia exists with gay casting directors and producers as well. They are afraid to hire people because of their own sexuality."
But Roth's concern for lesbians and gays is not limited to the entertainment business. After participating in a February dinner in Los Angeles jointly hosted by the Human Rights Campaign and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Roth says he has definate opinions about politics and how they affect homosexuals. "I think this government would be much happier if they could still gas people for being gay," he says. "And the idea of registering with the government in Colorado because of sexual deviance makes me think that persecution is going to get worse. So make your presence known," he advises, adding, "I think gay people need to scream."
--The Advocate
More recently, he's worked with Woody Allen and even found time to rack up some modeling work--a recent campaign for Prada. "I didn't know who they were at first," he smiles. "But it was a laugh. It only took an afternoon's work and they've been really sweet. They made suits for me, when I got the award. So I've picked up lots of freebies and, yes, I'm up for more work. In the long run, I can see myself taking over from Kate Moss."
...
It reminded him of another slightly daft cover shoot he did about ten years ago for a Face story celebrating the Brit Pack, a posse of young home-grown actors (Roth, Gary Oldman, Paul McGann, Daniel Day Lewis, Colin Firth) who were, apparently, gunning for Hollywood, on the verge of kicking the Brat Pack's ass. All of the actors involved have done fine since, then, though if you're keeping scores, Daniel Day Lewis has come out on top. He's the one with the Oscar, the one who pulled off a credible stab at an action film--Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans--and also worked with Martin Scorsese. But Roth isn't too far off.
He does own up to being a little surprised by how things have worked out. "It's weird. There was a bunch of us who all came up together. I suppose it started with Phil Daniels, who was the bee's knees, then a whole slew of us came up behind him--me, Gary, Danny, Paul. When I was coming up, I thought Paul was going to be it. He'd done The Monocled Mutineer (the controversial Alan Bleasdale TV series about a WWI deserter), he was the sexiest fucking man on earth and all that, but it never quite happened for him in America, which was weird."
Still, if you'd been taking bets ten years ago, your money would have been on Oldman. Perhaps because they shared the same son of lower-middle-class south London background, Roth and Oldman have always been lumped together in the public imagination. Certainly, they broke through over here doing the same kinds of parts--young men slightly out of place, out of kilter, with too much energy to quite know their place, young men pushing at the hierarchies and class barriers of Britain.
They worked for the same people. Roth's first role was as the rabidly desperate skinhead teen Trevor in Alan Clarke's Made in Britain. Clarke also gave Oldman one of his best ever roles as the mouthy estate agent/football hooligan in Al Hunter-Ashton's The Firm. They also worked together in Mike Leigh's wonderful study of estate survivalism, Meantime, with Oldman this time playing the skinhead (famously going nowhere in a concrete barrel) and Roth as the gonky loser Colin, sniffing and shambling under a hale of fraternal abuse from elder brother Phil Daniels.
The link with this Lewisham-born mate hasn't always worked in Roth's favour. For a while, he was almost in Oldman's shadow. Just before the release of Reservoir Dogs, I remember a Spanish journalist at a film festival near Barcelona suggesting to Roth that he could be the next Gary Oldman. Certainly, it always seemed as if Oldman was going to do the business in Hollywood. But since the relative failure of Dracula, he seems to have gradually lost his way, winding up recently in spectacular clunkers, like the vaguely barmy Beethoven bio-pic Immortal Beloved or Demi Moore's slice of silicone-injected Hot Gothic, The Scarlet Letter.
In retrospect, Roth seems to have been cannier about it all, though he denies ever calculating things much. But by not attempting to "take Hollywood," he has gradually carved himself out the sort of career enjoyed by the likes of Harvey Keitel or Steve Buscemi, a career in which he can balance more interesting work in the independent sector, films he really wants to do (e.g. James Gray's ferociously downbeat Russian-Jewish gangster flick Little Odessa) with the odd low-key studio picture to pay the rent and keep his profile high (e.g. Rob Roy).
...
For what it's worth, it's clear that his past contains a measure of everyday sadness that somehow feeds into his work. "I suppose you could say I had an absent father," he says. "My parents split up when I was pretty young. We visited all the time and spent time with him, but I never really got together with him. I think I loved him always and forgave him. I think that's one of the most basic things about children--that they're prepared to forgive anything. But when I was in my twenties, I realized how wonderful he was and that, for all his mistakes, I loved him; and then he died, so it was all kind of too late. That kind of residue is . . . there. You don't realize it, but the incredible effect they have on you . . . a male figure in your life. He was the male figure in my life . . . for good or for bad."
Divorce doesn't just cause psychological pain for the kids involved. It also dislocates them socially. Family can slide down the social scale, find themselves shunted out of the comfortable life they were living. You wonder whether Roth didn't experience something like that. Clearly, things didn't quite turn out as planned. He failed exams for the grammar schools in his area and wound up at a seriously hard Brixton comprehensive.
...
Roth obviously used his experiences at school and the rage that built up inside while he was there in his debut, Made in Britain. Even now, well over a decade on, it's still a blistering performance, a superbly controlled study of youthful energy blocked and frustrated so that it turns sour and self-destructive. All that was a long time ago, but clearly Roth is still affected by his experiences.
...
When you get Roth on to politics, it can feel as though you've started up some kind of old Eighties loop. Perhaps because he got out at the start of the Nineties, he has the kind of vehemence you remember having, but have somehow lived through. He fulminates about "Lady Di" ("she was always a fucking right-wing bitch") but saves the bulk of his scorn for Margaret Thatcher. "She's being treated like Nixon was over here--they ask her opinion on things, but this woman was a fucking disgrace. She should have been jailed for what she did, sinking the Belgrano. But she gets millions for writing her memoirs--I wouldn't piss on her memoirs."
--Arena, 1996
When was the last time you were naked in the open air?
My God. Oooh, I had sex in a park when I was in art school. A little private garden in Dulwich. I got naked and it was great.
Ever urinated in a public swimming pool?
Yes. It's a thing you take great pleasure in when you're a kid.
How much is a pint of milk?
Over here? Too fucking much. You don't buy it in pints and I certainly don't buy them in my house so I couldn't say.
...
What's your favorite hangover cure?
Drinks. Alcohol. It always works.
First thing in the morning?
It has been known.
...
What phrase do you most overuse?
I don't know: "I don't know".
Have you ever been arrested?
Yes I got arrested once for threatening behaviour, but actually I didn't threaten anybody, it was the guy I was with. I was framed. But we all got arrested. He got charged and we got let go.
Where was this?
Just off Trafalgar Square and we got taken to a police station just off Downing Street. They kept us in a cell and let us out at about three in the morning.
--Empire, 1997
"I took the challenge of directing and then I made it as difficult as I possibly could," he says. "If I didn't work I could always bugger off back to acting."
This is a typical Roth riposte, reactionary glibness concealing the depth of his motive; a snarl, a smile and (once) a song. But I know, and he knows, it's not quite good enough.
--Neil Norman, This is London, 1999
*****"My mum was a teacher and my dad was a journalist. She came from a middle-class family and he came from a working-class background. They were people you would put in the professional bracket, but we weren't well off. Not as badly off as some people in that part of south London but we weren't particularly well off." Maybe not so well off, but certainly too middle class for a school catchment area that bordered the urban blight of late '60s Brixton. Of course, it didn't help matters that he was called Tim. "It was tough enough being a little kid, but I was at a working-class school with a middle-class name. I'd have liked something a bit harder, like Jack. That's what I called my eldest boy. I didn't have the accent that was required and I got beaten up a lot. So I changed my accent pretty sharpish, got very sarrf London very quickly. My mum was like, 'Why are you talking like that?' And I thought, 'If only you knew, mum. If only you knew.' It was a pretty good acting lesson."
So how did this art school dropout, this man who once studied pottery, become confused with the band of "pasty-faced hooligans" he evokes so fondly when he remembers the Brit pack of '82? Messrs Oldman, Winstone and Daniels -- Gary, Ray and Phil -- were, quite literally, Roth's role models. Genuine cockney "lemon squeezers" who burnt up the filaments of TV sets the length and breadth of Britain in the late '70s and '80s, before, with the exception of Daniels, heading for Hollywood to make their names on the big screen. It was a time when the people at the BBC, the newly-launched channel 4, Granada and even Central TV were taking risks, commissioning not "Stupid Vision" rubbish like Big Brother, but internationally acclaimed directors such as Alan Clarke, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. And then leaving them alone to do their stuff. Mainly coruscating critiques of Ms. Thatcher's Britain, as it happened, but together these men inspired Roth to take up acting and provided him with the stage on which to strut.
"Ray Winstone is a hero to me. He's a heroic character, but he's also the reason I am in the business. After I saw him in Scum [where Winstone specialized in stuffing billiard balls into a sock and swinging it repeatedly against people's heads] I wanted to be an actor. I remember seeing Phil Daniels in Quadrophenia and thinking he was a god. When I ended up working with him on my second film [Mike Leigh's Meantime], playing his brother, he asked me one day, 'Do you want to go down the pub?' The next thing I know I'm sitting on the back of his scooter and we're weaving down the road just like on Jimmy's scooter in Quadrophenia and I'm screaming, 'I can't believe I'm on Phil Daniels' scooter. This is the best day of my fucking life!' I became an actor because of Phil, I became an actor because of Ray. I thought they were beautiful. The beautiful people. But they gave me a sense of the possible. 'If they can do it, I can do it too.'"
...
"Someday, what I'd really love to do is a film of Paradise Lost," Roth enthuses, "though I'd have no idea of how to do it. When I read Milton as a kid, it seemed like the greatest piece of science fiction ever written. The story made total sense to me: I mean, there's the Devil and all he's really trying to do is get back home. But whenever I've mentioned the idea about adapting it to the screen, people look at me crosseyed." He pauses dramatically, then lights up another cigarette, squinting through the smoke.
--Maxim, 2001
It was just a few years ago that you directed your first film, The War Zone. That deals with some heavy issues -- abuse and incest. What drew you to that project?
I have a personal connection with that subject matter -- I was a victim of abuse. It was a family thing -- not my father, not my immediate family, I hasten to add -- so I felt qualified. That doesn't mean to say someone who hasn't been abused can't make a very good film about the subject, though I just felt I could bring something else to it. But I wasn't actually looking for a film about that subject. It was pure coincidence.
Was directing harder that you thought?
It's the best job in the world -- making The War Zone was the best time I've ever had with work on every level. I'd love to direct another one now . . . But raising the money is very difficult. That;s the hardest thing about being a director.
...
Were you equally attracted to Helena Bonham Carter's ape?
No. I was never drawn to her as a monkey. Funny that. I think I found Pal Giamatti more attractive as an orangutan . . . Though I never told him that.
--2003
One of the original Brit pack bunch -- which includes Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis -- Roth, with his tensile sensitivity to the psychologically twisted, in even the most "normal" of characters, has established himself as a chameleonlike performer with an ability to disappear into almost any kind of role. It's a gift, which Burton certainly called upon when he cast Roth in Planet of the Apes.
It's not Shakespeare, agrees Roth, but especially as it is Burton's world, it is still its own very wonderful beast. "Besides, it's very easy for the Brits to come over and be cynical about 'Hollywood' and all that, but we love getting paid, and we love being in the movies. Yeah, I get tired with it occasionally. And sometimes when I'm doing a scene that's not so challenging, I'll be thinking about something else, like what's for lunch or a fight I've just had. You can put it aside or use it. Sometimes that can work to your advantage and become interesting for an audience. That's usually the one," he teases, taking another pull on his beer, "that will become the Academy Award nominated role."
...
Roth's mother was a teacher and his father, who passed more than ten years ago, a Fleet Street journalist, which is perhaps where Roth acquired his well-documented, outspoken political opinions [at an awards ceremony, he once referred to Tory leader Margaret Thatcher as a 'cunt'], as well as his interest in character detail. When he was younger, he said he became fascinated by American film actors. Although he is a fan of physical comedy, what he found remarkable was their quality of stillness. "I don't think I ever took on any of their characteristics, but I used to love to watch the way certain actors would stand or walk or use their hands. And even though they were beautiful, they were still considered 'a man;' Cary Grant, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, all stunning looking, but they could also act. I don't think it's necessarily what people are into or what sells. Nowadays, film is the land of the model."
Some clearly disagree with Roth's assessment. In Paris, recently, he relates he was literally chased by both fans and paparazzi. "I was on the phone to my wife Nikki, cellphone in hand, running down the streets of Paris trying to lose them. Thankfully, this kind of thing is rare. The people who see my work, well, it does tend to be more obscure. I mean, it's not like I'm Brad Pitt."
--Sari Roman, 2001
Tim Roth Interview Excerpts
NC: Now is the head-butt just something you learn on the street in Britain when you're a kid?
TR: (smiles big) It's a tradition! They call it the Docker's Kiss, and...yeah, it's a tradition. Just good fighting.
NC: I actually was at a friend's place this past weekend and we saw State of Grace again...
TR: Oh, yeah!
NC: Yeah, and Oldman's in peak form in that one...
TR: Oh, absolutely. He puts that in, too.
NC: Now, I saw Little Odessa in a film class, and I remember the opening scene, that shot...
TR: The one with the eyes?
NC: No, the whole scene really -- you walking up, plugging the guy and you're gone...
TR: (laughs) Okay, yeah. Bang -- off!
NC: Yeah! For a moment, in the screeing, there was a silence in the room and then...this little giggle.
TR: Oh...
NC: Yeah, but not really a reaction to the scene as much as, everyone looked at each other and went, "Yep, that's Tim!"
--Nicole Campos, The Daily Trojan, 1996
Question: Tim, My cousin thinks that your performance is Four Rooms was influenced by outside substances, we both thought you were great, but how do you go back and forth between your characters so well?
RothTim: The more varied the characters, the better, as far as I'm concerned. I swear to god I was clean at that time.
...
Question: Who is the most beautiful co-star you've worked with, in your opinion?
RothTim: Steve Buscemi.
AOLiveMC5: GR8Dane16 asks:
Question: Mr. Roth, Are there any projects you regret working on?
RothTim: Plenty...next question...
...
Question: Tim, I love you. I love you. You are a smoldering actor, and have you had any formal training, or do you generate heat naturally?
RothTim: Looks like Cooki's running interference in row 16. Why thank you, why thank you. No, it's just built in. It comes with the package.
...
Question: Is it flattering to know that you have a mailing list on the Internet dedicated to following your every move?
RothTim: In truth, it's a little worrying.
...
RothTim: I try and take the family with me everywhere I can. It's getting harder the more kids I have. But celibacy sucks.
...
Question: Did you enjoy doing "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?" Do you plan on doing more movies with Gary Oldman?
RothTim: Some of the best dialogue that I have ever spoken. I'd love to work with Gary again, but he seems to moving towards the studio system a little more than I am. Maybe I'll meet up with him on one of those somewhere down the line.
--AOL chat
BOBYBGRIGR: (2)do you have a big house
RothTim: (2)big enough.
Satiria: (2)do you have a brain?
RothTim: (2)Satiria: It's questionable.
--another aol chat. Ahahahahahah.
Tim Roth: It's amazing how quickly you build these relationships and how quickly they fade. I miss Tom and I love him, anytime he wants to come by for a pint, I'm ready.
--John Pierson, Sundance, 1999
nb_luvstim asks: Ray what are the similarities/differences when working w/ Tim or Gary (oldman)?
RAY: The differences are that they are totally different directors. And the similarity is that they are very talented people. And neither of them is as good looking as me.
...
CHAZ_IOM asks: when are we going to see the ultimate movie starring tim ray and gary??
RAY: If I were to say anyone I'd love to work with, it would be the 3 of us together. And Bobby Carlyle again.
TIM: We are all ugly. We have that in common. We are the strangest looking fuckers.
RAY: Yeah, yeah. It's called interesting. A well lived in face.
TIM: It's called, you are going to be around a long time
--with Ray Winstone, who starred in both The War Zone and Nil by Mouth. 1999
Like Gary Oldman before him, Tim Roth has discovered that being able to cut it as an American has increased his job prospects dramatically. While Sean Connery can rely on his grandee status to assure that his peripatetic accent never receives too much attention, Roth has instead had to rely on rigorous authenticity. "Before Dogs I did a thing called Jumpin' At the Boneyard," he recalls, "and people from the Bronx came up to me and said 'I love that film you did' and then they would hear me speak and say 'Where the fuck are you from?' They kind of get pissed off that they've been deceived, and then they love it."
Last year marked Tim Roth's tenth anniversary as an actor, an occasion for reviewing and taking stock. As with much of his life, however, it is difficult to trace an upward curve of linear development in Roth's acting career. Nothing so calculating. Although recent years have seen him establish a seemingly unstoppable momentum, 'twas clearly not always thus. Indeed, after two years of unemployment in Britain in the late '80s, his move to L.A. was, he claims, not to seek fame and fortune, but simply to pay the rent. In this he has certainly succeeded, although his determination to work with material he believes in has kept him will clear of any earnings superleague.
...
"No, not professionally. My only regret is that I've missed the chance to work with Alan Clarke again (the late director of Made in Britain). He was the British Scorsese. He was my hero, and still is. When we did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, me and Gary were saying, 'We've got to go back and do one together with Alan.' But we blew our chance."
That man Oldman again. Ever since they both appeared in Meantime, his and Roth's careers have been intertwined. Recently Roth said that Oldman's success was good for him, suggesting that he was more than happy to wear Gary's cast-offs. Was this still the case?
"No, you can't say that anymore. He makes big, big studio films. I don't."
--GQ, 1995
You come from a background different from that of Kenneth Branagh or Hugh Grant. Are the class distinctions just as strong in the theater as in other parts of British society?
There are certain plays and films on TV that I would never want to watch, and they tend to involve the upper-class actors or upper-class issues. What was exciting to me about American cinema was that filmmakers like Scorsese set their films in working-class New York. Those were the characters he followed. That's sadly missing from British films--the Merchant Ivory or Kenneth Branagh kind of films are about wealthy people and their problems. I don't really give a fuck about their problems. Let them hire a shrink.
--Premiere, 1995
Whether or not audiences will ever see Roth play a homosexual, the actor's next starring role is in a spring release, Captives , in which he plays a prison inmate who falls in love with the prison's dentist. These days however, Roth's dance card is filled with more than acting gigs. In addition to his increasing number of feature film roles, the actor can be found sporting a host of fabulous outfits as a Prada model in several men's fashion magazines, including GQ and Esquire. "I don't know fashion stuff," says Roth, grinning. "I didn't even know what Prada was, but they phoned me up and asked me to do it. And once I said the word 'Prada', my wife started yelling, 'Do it, do it!'"
It's no surprise that Roth, as an actor-turned-model, is gay friendly. In fact, he's articulate about the struggles that gays and lesbians face working in the entertainment industry. "I understand why people don't want to come out of the closet if they're involved in the entertainment business, because there's a lot of homophobia here," he says. "And that homophobia exists with gay casting directors and producers as well. They are afraid to hire people because of their own sexuality."
But Roth's concern for lesbians and gays is not limited to the entertainment business. After participating in a February dinner in Los Angeles jointly hosted by the Human Rights Campaign and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Roth says he has definate opinions about politics and how they affect homosexuals. "I think this government would be much happier if they could still gas people for being gay," he says. "And the idea of registering with the government in Colorado because of sexual deviance makes me think that persecution is going to get worse. So make your presence known," he advises, adding, "I think gay people need to scream."
--The Advocate
More recently, he's worked with Woody Allen and even found time to rack up some modeling work--a recent campaign for Prada. "I didn't know who they were at first," he smiles. "But it was a laugh. It only took an afternoon's work and they've been really sweet. They made suits for me, when I got the award. So I've picked up lots of freebies and, yes, I'm up for more work. In the long run, I can see myself taking over from Kate Moss."
...
It reminded him of another slightly daft cover shoot he did about ten years ago for a Face story celebrating the Brit Pack, a posse of young home-grown actors (Roth, Gary Oldman, Paul McGann, Daniel Day Lewis, Colin Firth) who were, apparently, gunning for Hollywood, on the verge of kicking the Brat Pack's ass. All of the actors involved have done fine since, then, though if you're keeping scores, Daniel Day Lewis has come out on top. He's the one with the Oscar, the one who pulled off a credible stab at an action film--Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans--and also worked with Martin Scorsese. But Roth isn't too far off.
He does own up to being a little surprised by how things have worked out. "It's weird. There was a bunch of us who all came up together. I suppose it started with Phil Daniels, who was the bee's knees, then a whole slew of us came up behind him--me, Gary, Danny, Paul. When I was coming up, I thought Paul was going to be it. He'd done The Monocled Mutineer (the controversial Alan Bleasdale TV series about a WWI deserter), he was the sexiest fucking man on earth and all that, but it never quite happened for him in America, which was weird."
Still, if you'd been taking bets ten years ago, your money would have been on Oldman. Perhaps because they shared the same son of lower-middle-class south London background, Roth and Oldman have always been lumped together in the public imagination. Certainly, they broke through over here doing the same kinds of parts--young men slightly out of place, out of kilter, with too much energy to quite know their place, young men pushing at the hierarchies and class barriers of Britain.
They worked for the same people. Roth's first role was as the rabidly desperate skinhead teen Trevor in Alan Clarke's Made in Britain. Clarke also gave Oldman one of his best ever roles as the mouthy estate agent/football hooligan in Al Hunter-Ashton's The Firm. They also worked together in Mike Leigh's wonderful study of estate survivalism, Meantime, with Oldman this time playing the skinhead (famously going nowhere in a concrete barrel) and Roth as the gonky loser Colin, sniffing and shambling under a hale of fraternal abuse from elder brother Phil Daniels.
The link with this Lewisham-born mate hasn't always worked in Roth's favour. For a while, he was almost in Oldman's shadow. Just before the release of Reservoir Dogs, I remember a Spanish journalist at a film festival near Barcelona suggesting to Roth that he could be the next Gary Oldman. Certainly, it always seemed as if Oldman was going to do the business in Hollywood. But since the relative failure of Dracula, he seems to have gradually lost his way, winding up recently in spectacular clunkers, like the vaguely barmy Beethoven bio-pic Immortal Beloved or Demi Moore's slice of silicone-injected Hot Gothic, The Scarlet Letter.
In retrospect, Roth seems to have been cannier about it all, though he denies ever calculating things much. But by not attempting to "take Hollywood," he has gradually carved himself out the sort of career enjoyed by the likes of Harvey Keitel or Steve Buscemi, a career in which he can balance more interesting work in the independent sector, films he really wants to do (e.g. James Gray's ferociously downbeat Russian-Jewish gangster flick Little Odessa) with the odd low-key studio picture to pay the rent and keep his profile high (e.g. Rob Roy).
...
For what it's worth, it's clear that his past contains a measure of everyday sadness that somehow feeds into his work. "I suppose you could say I had an absent father," he says. "My parents split up when I was pretty young. We visited all the time and spent time with him, but I never really got together with him. I think I loved him always and forgave him. I think that's one of the most basic things about children--that they're prepared to forgive anything. But when I was in my twenties, I realized how wonderful he was and that, for all his mistakes, I loved him; and then he died, so it was all kind of too late. That kind of residue is . . . there. You don't realize it, but the incredible effect they have on you . . . a male figure in your life. He was the male figure in my life . . . for good or for bad."
Divorce doesn't just cause psychological pain for the kids involved. It also dislocates them socially. Family can slide down the social scale, find themselves shunted out of the comfortable life they were living. You wonder whether Roth didn't experience something like that. Clearly, things didn't quite turn out as planned. He failed exams for the grammar schools in his area and wound up at a seriously hard Brixton comprehensive.
...
Roth obviously used his experiences at school and the rage that built up inside while he was there in his debut, Made in Britain. Even now, well over a decade on, it's still a blistering performance, a superbly controlled study of youthful energy blocked and frustrated so that it turns sour and self-destructive. All that was a long time ago, but clearly Roth is still affected by his experiences.
...
When you get Roth on to politics, it can feel as though you've started up some kind of old Eighties loop. Perhaps because he got out at the start of the Nineties, he has the kind of vehemence you remember having, but have somehow lived through. He fulminates about "Lady Di" ("she was always a fucking right-wing bitch") but saves the bulk of his scorn for Margaret Thatcher. "She's being treated like Nixon was over here--they ask her opinion on things, but this woman was a fucking disgrace. She should have been jailed for what she did, sinking the Belgrano. But she gets millions for writing her memoirs--I wouldn't piss on her memoirs."
--Arena, 1996
When was the last time you were naked in the open air?
My God. Oooh, I had sex in a park when I was in art school. A little private garden in Dulwich. I got naked and it was great.
Ever urinated in a public swimming pool?
Yes. It's a thing you take great pleasure in when you're a kid.
How much is a pint of milk?
Over here? Too fucking much. You don't buy it in pints and I certainly don't buy them in my house so I couldn't say.
...
What's your favorite hangover cure?
Drinks. Alcohol. It always works.
First thing in the morning?
It has been known.
...
What phrase do you most overuse?
I don't know: "I don't know".
Have you ever been arrested?
Yes I got arrested once for threatening behaviour, but actually I didn't threaten anybody, it was the guy I was with. I was framed. But we all got arrested. He got charged and we got let go.
Where was this?
Just off Trafalgar Square and we got taken to a police station just off Downing Street. They kept us in a cell and let us out at about three in the morning.
--Empire, 1997
"I took the challenge of directing and then I made it as difficult as I possibly could," he says. "If I didn't work I could always bugger off back to acting."
This is a typical Roth riposte, reactionary glibness concealing the depth of his motive; a snarl, a smile and (once) a song. But I know, and he knows, it's not quite good enough.
--Neil Norman, This is London, 1999
*****"My mum was a teacher and my dad was a journalist. She came from a middle-class family and he came from a working-class background. They were people you would put in the professional bracket, but we weren't well off. Not as badly off as some people in that part of south London but we weren't particularly well off." Maybe not so well off, but certainly too middle class for a school catchment area that bordered the urban blight of late '60s Brixton. Of course, it didn't help matters that he was called Tim. "It was tough enough being a little kid, but I was at a working-class school with a middle-class name. I'd have liked something a bit harder, like Jack. That's what I called my eldest boy. I didn't have the accent that was required and I got beaten up a lot. So I changed my accent pretty sharpish, got very sarrf London very quickly. My mum was like, 'Why are you talking like that?' And I thought, 'If only you knew, mum. If only you knew.' It was a pretty good acting lesson."
So how did this art school dropout, this man who once studied pottery, become confused with the band of "pasty-faced hooligans" he evokes so fondly when he remembers the Brit pack of '82? Messrs Oldman, Winstone and Daniels -- Gary, Ray and Phil -- were, quite literally, Roth's role models. Genuine cockney "lemon squeezers" who burnt up the filaments of TV sets the length and breadth of Britain in the late '70s and '80s, before, with the exception of Daniels, heading for Hollywood to make their names on the big screen. It was a time when the people at the BBC, the newly-launched channel 4, Granada and even Central TV were taking risks, commissioning not "Stupid Vision" rubbish like Big Brother, but internationally acclaimed directors such as Alan Clarke, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. And then leaving them alone to do their stuff. Mainly coruscating critiques of Ms. Thatcher's Britain, as it happened, but together these men inspired Roth to take up acting and provided him with the stage on which to strut.
"Ray Winstone is a hero to me. He's a heroic character, but he's also the reason I am in the business. After I saw him in Scum [where Winstone specialized in stuffing billiard balls into a sock and swinging it repeatedly against people's heads] I wanted to be an actor. I remember seeing Phil Daniels in Quadrophenia and thinking he was a god. When I ended up working with him on my second film [Mike Leigh's Meantime], playing his brother, he asked me one day, 'Do you want to go down the pub?' The next thing I know I'm sitting on the back of his scooter and we're weaving down the road just like on Jimmy's scooter in Quadrophenia and I'm screaming, 'I can't believe I'm on Phil Daniels' scooter. This is the best day of my fucking life!' I became an actor because of Phil, I became an actor because of Ray. I thought they were beautiful. The beautiful people. But they gave me a sense of the possible. 'If they can do it, I can do it too.'"
...
"Someday, what I'd really love to do is a film of Paradise Lost," Roth enthuses, "though I'd have no idea of how to do it. When I read Milton as a kid, it seemed like the greatest piece of science fiction ever written. The story made total sense to me: I mean, there's the Devil and all he's really trying to do is get back home. But whenever I've mentioned the idea about adapting it to the screen, people look at me crosseyed." He pauses dramatically, then lights up another cigarette, squinting through the smoke.
--Maxim, 2001
It was just a few years ago that you directed your first film, The War Zone. That deals with some heavy issues -- abuse and incest. What drew you to that project?
I have a personal connection with that subject matter -- I was a victim of abuse. It was a family thing -- not my father, not my immediate family, I hasten to add -- so I felt qualified. That doesn't mean to say someone who hasn't been abused can't make a very good film about the subject, though I just felt I could bring something else to it. But I wasn't actually looking for a film about that subject. It was pure coincidence.
Was directing harder that you thought?
It's the best job in the world -- making The War Zone was the best time I've ever had with work on every level. I'd love to direct another one now . . . But raising the money is very difficult. That;s the hardest thing about being a director.
...
Were you equally attracted to Helena Bonham Carter's ape?
No. I was never drawn to her as a monkey. Funny that. I think I found Pal Giamatti more attractive as an orangutan . . . Though I never told him that.
--2003
One of the original Brit pack bunch -- which includes Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis -- Roth, with his tensile sensitivity to the psychologically twisted, in even the most "normal" of characters, has established himself as a chameleonlike performer with an ability to disappear into almost any kind of role. It's a gift, which Burton certainly called upon when he cast Roth in Planet of the Apes.
It's not Shakespeare, agrees Roth, but especially as it is Burton's world, it is still its own very wonderful beast. "Besides, it's very easy for the Brits to come over and be cynical about 'Hollywood' and all that, but we love getting paid, and we love being in the movies. Yeah, I get tired with it occasionally. And sometimes when I'm doing a scene that's not so challenging, I'll be thinking about something else, like what's for lunch or a fight I've just had. You can put it aside or use it. Sometimes that can work to your advantage and become interesting for an audience. That's usually the one," he teases, taking another pull on his beer, "that will become the Academy Award nominated role."
...
Roth's mother was a teacher and his father, who passed more than ten years ago, a Fleet Street journalist, which is perhaps where Roth acquired his well-documented, outspoken political opinions [at an awards ceremony, he once referred to Tory leader Margaret Thatcher as a 'cunt'], as well as his interest in character detail. When he was younger, he said he became fascinated by American film actors. Although he is a fan of physical comedy, what he found remarkable was their quality of stillness. "I don't think I ever took on any of their characteristics, but I used to love to watch the way certain actors would stand or walk or use their hands. And even though they were beautiful, they were still considered 'a man;' Cary Grant, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, all stunning looking, but they could also act. I don't think it's necessarily what people are into or what sells. Nowadays, film is the land of the model."
Some clearly disagree with Roth's assessment. In Paris, recently, he relates he was literally chased by both fans and paparazzi. "I was on the phone to my wife Nikki, cellphone in hand, running down the streets of Paris trying to lose them. Thankfully, this kind of thing is rare. The people who see my work, well, it does tend to be more obscure. I mean, it's not like I'm Brad Pitt."
--Sari Roman, 2001