IAIN GLEN ON MANFRED
POWELL
Copyright 2001 www.scotsman.com & John Miller
[ February 7th 2001 ]
Tomb
Raider bad boy Iain Glen talks to John Miller
on his role as the villainous Manfred Powell in
Paramount Pictures upcoming adventure movie Tomb
Raider in this article from Scottish newspaper
"The Scotsman."
Angelina
Jolie walks by swathed in a blue bathrobe, a towel
wrapped in a turban round her head and a pink
water bottle strapped round her back. Iain Glen,
who is more appropriately dressed for the winter
chill in black leather jacket, black trousers
and glistening boots, smiles and exchanges a few
words with his co-star. The smile changes to a
throaty chuckle when I ask the 40-year-old actor
if he too is destined for some wet and icy action
sequences. "No, no. I’m the one who kicks her
in there," grins Glen, indicating the gigantic
artificial lake, which sits beside us at Pinewood
Studios. "I just stay dry and watch her struggle.
I don’t get cold... it’s demeaning." Standing
on the biggest sound stage in Europe, surveying
thousands of gallons of Pinewood water racing
down thousands of feet of Pinewood waterfalls,
Iain Glen is in buoyant mood. And who can blame
him?
The slim,
softly-spoken Scot is in the middle of making
the biggest movie of his career: a live-action
remake of the computer game, Tomb Raider, starring
Jolie as virtual reality icon Lara Croft and 50
million dollars-worth of special effects. Glen
plays the villainous Manfred Powell who battles
with Lara Croft in a series of adventures that
takes them from Siberia to Cambodia. Today, they
are filming some of the stuff that gives the film
its title, and the same sound stage that has seen
James Bond save the world over and over again
has been transformed by a team of 160 Pinewood
craftsmen into the Far East. There’s too much
detail to take in but a quick look around reveals
an 11th-century Cambodian temple, a massive Buddha,
statues of monkey warriors and a series of swords
embedded in stone.
This
is the Temple of Ten Thousand Shadows and the
adjoining area with the very impressive artificial
lake is the Chamber of Dancing Light, where, looking
like a huge, metallic octopus complete with tentacles,
a model of the sun and its orbiting planets revolve.
It’s stunning and Glen admits that this is filming
on a much grander and more epic scale to what
he has been used to. "This is a different form,
that requires other things from you as an actor,"
he says, as director Simon West and his team busily
prepare for the next shot. "We are surrounded
by glorious, awesome sets which take time to build
and time to light. So you have to wait a bit.
You need to be patient. It may be a lot easier
just to have a kitchen sink behind you but these
settings will look fantastic." With his hair slicked
back and his chic black attire, Glen looks every
inch the movie star, but it hasn’t always been
so. While the likes of Ewan McGregor, Robbie Coltrane
and John Hannah have all thrown themselves into
high-profile film careers, Glen has always pursued
his own agenda: plenty of stage work peppered
with the odd TV drama and high-profile Broadway
run.
The result
is a lower profile than one might expect from
one of the country’s finest actors. But that’s
not something that bothers him one bit. "There
are certain frustrations perhaps about the things
that have passed you by which, had you been more
commercially known, might not have… but personally
I can well do without the Hello! magazine type
of thing." Born in Edinburgh, Glen headed north
for Aberdeen University and a degree in English
Literature before throwing all that away (along
with his punk rock band) in favour of acting.
At RADA he found himself in the same year as Ralph
Fiennes, Alex Kingston and Jane Horrocks. Looking
back he recalls how he and Fiennes were involved
in some determined cut and thrust during the pursuit
of their studies. "I spent three years fighting
with Ralph Fiennes for one of those pathetic prizes
that RADA was obsessed with giving out best snotty
nose prize, best dialect prize, best everything.
One of them was best sword fighting.
"Most
students spent five days desperately preparing
for this part of the course, having forgotten
all about it. Not me and Ralph, we had been at
it for three years solid and I’m glad to say that
we walked away with our prizes. Thank God, otherwise
it would have been embarrassing." That RADA rivalry
came in useful during the filming of Tomb Raider
when Glen had to act out a spot of flamboyant
sword action all flashing sabres and nimble footwork.
"It was a happy coincidence," he says. "At some
point I said to Simon West that I love all that
sword fighting stuff. When he discovered that
I really could do it he said he would incorporate
more of that into the film." Fresh out of RADA,
it was not his Errol Flynn impressions that first
got Iain noticed, however. It was his breakthrough
role in David Hayman’s Silent Scream. His gritty
portrayal of convict Larry Winters earned him
an award at the Berlin Film Festival. More plaudits
followed for his RSC performance as Henry V, and
an Olivier nomination for his starring role in
hit stage musical, Martin Guerre.
These
days, of course, Glen is known less for his acting
trophies than his trophy co-stars. With a razor-sharp
talent to match his cheekbones, the unassuming
actor who always avoided the LA commute, has somehow
ended up starring opposite some of the most glamorous
women in Hollywood. In Gorillas in the Mist Glen
appeared alongside Sigourney Weaver. In Sam Mendes’
scorching 1999 production of The Blue Room, he
stripped off on stage with Nicole Kidman. Now,
after some "curiously relaxing" screen tests,
Glen is sharing a screen with Angelina Jolie.
In real life he is married to actress Susannah
Harker whom he met when they starred together
in gangland TV drama series The Fear. The couple
have a five-year-old son, Finlay, and are based
in London.
More
recently, Glen tackled the small scale, Glasgow-based
black comedy Beautiful Creatures, on which he
renewed a friendship from university days when
he teamed up with writer Simon Donald. Iain confesses
that although he and Simon were mates at Aberdeen
University, he’d also tried to steal the writer’s
girlfriend. "Unsuccessfully," he says with a chuckle.
"Simon had taken a year out in Sardinia and I
spent that time trying to woo his then girlfriend."
Glen is no stranger to the cinema’s action genre.
Back in 1989’s Mountains Of The Moon he played
John Hanning Speke, the tragic explorer who, with
Richard Burton, tried to discover the source of
the Nile. But he admits it’s been a while. "That’s
why I was so pleased to do Tomb Raider really,"
he says. "I have been a bit shy of the milieu
because I haven’t seen scripts that I have been
drawn to. But I loved this when I read it. It
has great variety, wonderful dialogue and the
character is a fully realised role to play. The
action’s also incorporated into a story that’s
worth telling.
"It’s
also been a good few years since I did an adventure
picture and now I am going into an area that I
have not been in for some time and I like that
contrast." When I point out that the release of
Tomb Raider this summer will mean that British
film audiences will have seen Glen as two consecutive
baddies, he gives a ‘so what’ shrug. "I don’t
mind. There is something seedy and very Scottish
about Beautiful Creatures while this villain is
a very sophisticated, urbane, intelligent man.
There is a great dry wit as he plays psychological
mind games with Lara Croft. It is quite an intellectual
journey on this one, there’s nothing gross or
earthy about it." Warming to the subject, Glen
agrees that it is certainly more fun to be given
the villain’s role. "I’m not sure why, maybe there’s
an in-built duality in most villains that you
don’t often get in straight roles. As an audience
you can try and work out their motives. You can
also, usually, enjoy their come-uppance. "
"In real
life, baddies - whether they’re politicians, fraudsters
or adulterers - often go unpunished. I suspect
what’s exposed in the newspapers is the tip of
the iceberg. So as a screen villain you have always
got a few things to chuck around subtextually."
While he can chat happily and enthusiastically
about how and why an actor explores the dark side,
Iain Glen is on less certain ground when our conversation
turns to the computer game that has inspired the
making of Tomb Raider. "Before I was asked to
do the film I did not know the Tomb Raider game,"
he admits with a sheepish grin. "I suppose I am
out of the age group when it became terribly popular.
"But people have come into this film from all
sorts of different angles. There are those who
are very aware of the game and others, like myself,
who aren’t. It was good and quite healthy to analyse
this script purely from a feature film point of
view."
Naturally,
of course, Glen has not been able to remain completely
ignorant of the workings of the game that has
sold millions of copies around the world. After
he was cast as Manfred Powell the producers made
him a gift of the game. "I dipped into it... but
didn’t fare very well. My five-year-old did much
better but it was interesting to see what makes
it so addictive. It’s a very sexy game, I think."
It’s almost time for Glen to be nasty again to
Angelina Jolie. Before he returns to the camera,
I wonder whether he has any idea why so many men
are infatuated with a computer graphic like Lara
Croft? Some actors might fudge that one or not
have a clue, but it’s something that Iain Glen
has obviously considered and he has an answer
ready.
"Men
really do like strong women and I think that is
part of the attraction of Lara Croft," he says.
"She is a very powerful lady. Her physical prowess
is plausible. It doesn’t go into the realms of
deeply silly. But it is funny. How can you have
a computer image that is that sexy? I don’t know.
But it is. I find it sexy."
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