The telephone ring is loud and shrill, filling the Park City, Utah, hotel room with a piercing blast. And Scottish actor Robert Carlyle is none too happy with the unexpected interruption to his interview.
"That's really fucking annoying me," Carlyle grunts, stomping across the room and slamming the phone down. It's evident that Carlyle is not a man who suffers fools gladly. Of course, anyone aware of Carlyle's behind-the-scenes effort to save his new film Ravenous would have learned that some time ago.
It was chaos when 20th Century Fox fired director Milcho Manchevski from the Slovakian set of Ravenous. Carlyle had been cast by Manchevski to play Colqhoun, a half-starved Scot who survived a snowbound group of travelers by eating his fellow companions. Now, in a desolate military outpost in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, in the years directly following the Mexican-American War, Colqhoun introduces a cowardly army captain (Guy Pearce) to the strange world of cannibalism. Carlyle had never been in such a situation before, losing a director. It was evident that the film could quickly go bad. So he made a proposal to the studio's executives: Bring on his friend and frequent collaborator, Antonia Bird, to direct the film and he would stay.
Carlyle's insistence paid off. He's returned to the Sundance Film Festival to promote this unusual horror/western. His hair shorn short, a heavy sweater hanging loosely over his thin frame, Carlyle is the epitome of Park City ruggedness. For Carlyle, returning to Park City is a sweet homecoming. After all, this is the place where the avalanche of praise first started for his 1997 film, The Full Monty.
"I feel quite comfortable here as a result of The Full Monty, that's for sure," says Carlyle. "It's a nice place to show a movie. It gives it a kind of kudos for a start, and I've been very lucky here."
Life has definitely changed for the Glasgow-based actor. The Full Monty was a worldwide hit. Playing Gaz, an unemployed steel worker trying to put his life together with a striptease act, won Carlyle raves around the world. It also boosted his profile after receiving praise for playing the psychopath, Begbie, in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting, working with director Michael Winterbottom on Go Now and Ken Loach on the films Riff Raff and Carla's Song, as well as his work with Bird in the films Face, Safe and Priest.
But it was Monty that changed Carlyle's career. "I think The Full Monty was one of those kinds of films that you could say this was an 'all round.' You can take anyone to see this thing. It was fun."
Hollywood beckoned, but Carlyle wasn't keenly interested. He didn't care for the parts he was being offered, lots of Monty and Trainspotting rip-offs. "It's certainly not a conscious decision for me to come out and work in the states," he says.
"I enjoy what I do back home in Britain and in Europe. I think there are more opportunities now than there have ever been to try and produce some decent work. That's not to say I'm disinterested, but it would have to be along the same kind of lines as the stuff I'm doing in Britain. The filmmakers out here in America who I respect and admire are people like Jim Jarmusch and John Sayles who have made some fantastic movies. It's that difficulty, isn't it? When people say American films, you automatically assume it's all Hollywood, and nothing could be further from the truth."
So Carlyle stayed in Glasgow, hanging out with his old friends, continuing to work in British films. He wasn't one of the guys anymore. The Full Monty had changed all that, but Carlyle worked at keeping his life as close to how it was as possible. To his colleagues, it's obvious he's succeeded.
"This is a man with a great imagination and a fascinating inner life," says Bird, speaking later that day. "I think, his respect for other human beings and his interest in other people is what enables him to create these very unusual and different characters. One of the things that I admire most about him is that he's been very true to his roots. He's got massive success, and he's still living in Glasgow where he was born and raised, and his friends are still his pals from Glasgow."
His reputation also grew among his acting peers. Ravenous should send more praise his way. In a scene where Colqhoun turns into a madman, Carlyle becomes a human whirlwind, digging at the dirt with a ferocity that is both funny and frightening. It was the fact that Carlyle was already cast, says Pearce, that led him to take the role in Ravenous.
"I'd seen Robert in a film called Safe about five years ago and just thought he was one of the most exciting actors I had seen on-screen," Pearce says. "I like to choose a wide variety of stuff, and I see that in Bobby's work as well. He's just completely compelling and very sensitive, and knowing that he was doing the film was quite a drawing card for me."
But Carlyle's friends are bound to be impressed by his next job. In early February, he starts work on the new James Bond film as the lead villain, Renard. For an actor used to working on British social dramas and TV series, it's an unusual bout of blockbuster moviemaking. But Carlyle couldn't say no to the offer. Playing in a Bond movie was too close to his heart.
"You can say it's a Hollywood movie, but it's quintessentially British," Carlyle says. "I ain't moving too far from home, and I've still got to set foot on U.S. soil to act." Besides, acting in a Bond movie allows Carlyle to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Sean Connery.
"I'd gone to see the Bond movies in the '60s and the '70s when Connery was Bond, and I thought Connery was the only Scottish actor. He probably was at that time. At least he was the only who was around, and he spoke like me. I remember sitting there as a kid thinking 'This is great.' So that link between Bond and Connery and Scots and acting is really quite fundamental, actually. It was an easy sell for me to do this part."
Still, Carlyle insists that the taste of a big-budget extravaganza will not permanently pull him away from the low-budget movies he enjoys. So Carlyle makes Bond and the anticipated adaptation of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and still makes time for an upcoming cameo in one Bird's low-budget films. Variety, he says, is key.
"I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents," Carlyle says. "I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want." Of course, no self-respecting chameleon would have it any other way. ©
