Tim Roth Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

So I was sitting there

and Sam Jackson, Samuel Jackson sitting just in front

of Quentin.

Just before my category was announced,

Sam turned around to me and went,

Tim, when you lose alright, say mother

[soft rock music]

Reservoir Dogs.

I think my agents kind of initial impulse

was to look at Mr. Pink or Mr. Blonde

which were you know Madsen and Steve Buscemi.

They felt that I'd me more interested in that.

But I wasn't at all, I 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 would make me go through.

I also thought it would be hugely more challenging.

And so I was intrigued by it,

and then when I met with Quentin that was that.

[Interviewer] What was working with Quentin like

as a first time director?

Same as now.

It feels the same.

It feels that the atmosphere on set

is fun and excitement and enjoyment

and you know 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 something comes to you and you do it,

it's there and he can go cut no, no, no, no and I've seen

him do it and he said it to me and all of his actors,

it's on the page, give me what I wrote.

They can smell it, sure as that fucking doc can.

they can smell it on me.

He's already done so much for you.

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 I think five weeks and

I think very little money involved.

I remember Harvey Keitel saying to me, What do you think?

I said, I think this is really good.

he went, Yeah, me too. Don't jinx it.

But we had that feeling that we were in something great.

A lot of that obviously had to do with the script, but

a lot of it had to do with Quentin too.

And we were at the beginning of something grand.

You know in the not pretentious way, but in something great.

[slow rock music]

Pulp Fiction.

He read me the whole script one night or

as he was working on it he would do that a lot.

So I had an inkling of what the film was going to be

and what is was going to 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 it had a lot to do with Amanda Plummer because,

I knew Amanda, we were off to

a premier of Fisher King,

which she was in.

And I knew she was always late for everything

and scatter brains and stuff.

So I said send the car to my house,

pick me up first, cause I was going to take her there.

It was going to be a date or whatever.

And then we'll come around and we'll get you.

Came around and got her, she was fast asleep.

So we load her into car, got her there 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 fucking gun in her hand.

And he went, Done.

The event those two characters

which I love those characters, I absolutely love.

I love you pumpkin.

I love you honey bunny.

[slow rock music]

Made in Britain.

That was my first job with cameras involved.

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.

[Interviewer] Do you want to tell us

what those are?

I met with Alan Clark, who is one of the best,

who was one of the best directors

of actors I've ever worked with.

I was supposed to meet them I think about noon

or something like that.

So I turned up at eleven thirty,

like about half an hour early.

So and they said, Oh, you're early.

Come back in 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 a huge peacock hair do came through the park.

And me and him started mucking about.

And then we got stopped by the police

and searched in all the usual.

Then I went in and did the audition and got the job

and then we went off.

And on the last day of filming,

Alana said to me you know where you got the job.

I said, Oh yeah, oh yeah.

You were watching me out of that window.

And he went, You bastard.

I said yeah.

And then he got me on my next job.

So it's good.

You go off, you go, you know keep your wits about you.

What I would say.

[slow rock music]

The Hit.

It was complicated because Joe Strummer

from The Clash was going to play Myron

and then he couldn't do it because it was,

he had 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 told me about

from the World War II,

which was where all the razor blades in the collar came from

and little steel blade keys

which we used to have when we were kids

which they'd put all around their shoes

and sharpened them so they take your skin off.

It's all about street fighting and about football hooligans.

So that with some really bad fashion thrown in

and a very bad dye job.

That was his character.

It was my first time an aeroplane.

I've traveled there with John Hurt.

I was working with John and Ladadel 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'd drive around a windmill,

pull up on the top of a kind of mountainous hill.

It's windmills in distance, all very sort of Spanish.

And we get out and have a conversation.

I take a pee and then we have a little moment

and then get back in the car and drive away.

That's me and Terence and John pull out,

they go cut, fantastic.

Someone gets in the car drives it back around

to the other side of the windmill,

puts on its marks, drive back in again.

And after about three or four takes,

Terrance sits in the back.

Terry says something, You're doing really good.

Put it on it's marks.

Yeah all right.

So we drive around the windmill

and I put it on its marks

and I hit the accelerator instead of the brake.

I went straight into the camera,

knocked the camera off the dolly.

The camera went down the side of the mountain.

I carried on down the side of the mountain

with Terence Stamp and John Hurt cracking up in the back.

But I thought I was gonna, we were all gonna die.

Went all the way down to the bottom of this mountain

and managed to get it to a halt.

The first thing that my mouth was I'll never work again

and they will piss themselves laughing in the back.

And then everyone's signed the car

and stood there, it was trashed.

Signed it, coasted around it and took pictures

and the producer said, Jeremy Thomas said insurance.

And we moved on.

And that was one of my first experiences of film making.

[slow rock music]

Planet 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 you know a secondary movement guy from,

he was a catcher, a flyer and a catcher in de Soleil.

They brought him in and he was my height.

Built like a brick shit house.

And me and him just got carried away

with the movement.

We started just, because I could, you know

there's plenty of downtime on any movie.

So we just went for it.

Just having the best time off camera,

all the time.

I got that guy in to do, to be my, to stunt me,

my character Fade.

And so I would come in in the morning,

we'd both be fully in makeup.

Go with Tim, go this would be the scene.

I said, What about if he came up off the back of a horse,

up through the window, into there.

You know and we would just make makes shit up you know.

And Terry's, name's Terry Notary could do it.

It's extraordinary.

Also he was my stunt double

but he didn't need the muscle suit.

Me and Tim really wanted from.

I saw him recently by the way,

Tim Burton just you know crossing

at the airport type situation

but we were still talking about

the movie that we wanted to make was so dark and twisted

but unfortunately we weren't allowed to make that one.

[slow rock music]

Vincent and Theo.

When they told me what it, who it was to play.

Because I'd been at art college,

I had studied him and he was my father's favorite painter.

I felt I was too young to play it.

When I went to see Bob in his hotel in fancy pants London

and said I think I'm too young.

And he said in that case you've got the job.

And I couldn't really fight him on it.

We went to Holland first.

Myself and Paul Rhys, who was playing Theo,

Vincent's brother and we arrived

and there was a big party

and we were a bit bored and we didn't have any money

so we went to Bob and said 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 license to improvise

but and play with the dialogue

and then gradually Bob said, Okay,

you go away as a group of actors you go away

and work the dialogue.

What you want to do.

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.

[slow rock music]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

I was away.

I was gonna 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 canceled.

So, but while I was there I got the script

and it's Rosencrantz.

And I knew the play and I was very keen fan

of Tom Stoppard's.

I knew it was an extraordinary thing.

So I was incredibly nervous and so I went over

to Tom's place in London when I got back

and Gary opened the door.

I was like, Oh shit.

So we went in, me and him.

And we were just sitting with Tom and mucking about

and catching up really.

And Tom was just like, Okay, there they are.

Do you want to play questions?

How do you play that?

You have to ask questions.

Statement, one lap.

Cheating.

How?

I haven't started yet.

Statement, too long.

And then Tom said I can't give you a lift anywhere.

And I said, Oh yeah, I'll go 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, Daniel Day Lewis

is being offered it ahead of you

and it was he said I'm afraid you're not.

It's not going to be for us

but yeah thanks for coming in all of that stuff.

And 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 owed Danny big time

which of course he doesn't need me.

But I've always owed him for that

because he that's how I got the job.

[Interviewer] Would you do it again on the stage?

I have terrible stage fright, so I'm probably not.

[slow rock music]

Rob Roy.

I actually thought I was gonna get fired.

It was something I had not, I had no experience

of that kind of class and that you know that world

and that kind of effete upper class ness,

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.

Can you find me another job

because they're going to fire me.

And it was my first real payday on that movie.

That was, from that movie I managed to buy a house

which was awesome.

They kept me on.

And while Liam was you know 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 a school gym, sword fighting.

And I 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 moving sword.

Liam's character sword, Oberoi was a broad sword,

maybe not broad sword but very heavy.

I'd kill him in a second.

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 that.

Me and his stunt double.

[Interviewer] For Rob Roy, you were nominated

for an Oscar and won a BAFTA after that.

How did that affect your life?

It was totally unexpected and funny.

Me and the Mrs got to go to the Oscars.

And you got you got free frocks,

so no it was actually terrific

but this is my fondest memory of it.

Just sitting there.

And Sam Jackson, Samuel Jackson just in front, Quentin.

Just before my category was announced,

Sam turned around to me and went, Tim, when you lose,

alright, say motherfucker.

Like that.

And I was, I cracked up but didn't do it

and it's my only regret because of course

you'd be in the frame and the idea of sitting and going,

mother fucker and cut.

It would've been, but only Sam could get away with that.

[slow rock music]

Funny Games.

I read it and said no.

I don't wanna 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 he already sent it to me said, look at this.

And I saw it and went ooh, shit.

And so I said yes.

Doing a shot for shot remake

of a film has been made before it's 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 around.

But you had to portray that

within a set of circumstances that were years past

and in a different country

with a different group of people.

It was very hard to do.

Very disturbing.

Plus the boy that was in it, the little boy played our son,

it was very hard for me cause he looked just

like 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 just sticking her fingers in your sandwiches

and stuff.

She's a very weird human.

I adore her.

[slow rock music]

Lie to Me.

When I was in England when I first died,

I wanted to experience different things.

So even after I was doing after the hit,

I would do a small part in a television thing

that was shot on the floor 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 happened 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, 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.

A 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 a long form kind of network series.

And I had a really good time.

I worked with incredibly creative people.

It was a difficult thing to keep

that science being interesting.

It was based on Paul Ekman studies.

It's about the language of lying.

The language of deceit.

He'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 there are certain things that across all cultures

are tells and he can spot them.

[Interviewer] Did you learn any

of those techniques, that is really actually helpful?

No, you could do the course

like the actors were given a shot,

at least some of them did it.

And I said no way.

I don't want to know when my kids are lying to me.

I don't want to have any effect.

[slow rock music]

The Hateful Eight.

It was like a theatre 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 build.

And so when we didn't have good enough snow,

we'd go inside and start those scenes.

And then we came down to L.A.

and it was 90 degrees and we,

and he refrigerated the studio.

It was colder in L.A. than it was up in the mountains

to be honest.

So we could see our breath.

It was great.

I mean it felt like we were in a play.

We did a long run of the 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 Eight was already on.

He was you know getting ready.

He was pulling all these people together.

He was doing his casting.

And then it went, it got leaked out

and and I got a call from him at the theater.

I was in rehearsal and he was scrapping it.

He was saying, I'm done.

Screw this.

And he was really angry.

I told 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 upset and then he did a rejig of it.

And then we did this great reading in Downtown

which was just a fantastic night.

Well he did that say goodbye to it

because that was the script.

He did that of the original script.

And because he couldn't do that ending,

so he said goodbye to it that way.

[slow rock music]

Tin Star.

We found very quickly with the Cole family.

Genevieve O'Reilly plays my Mrs.

And Abigail Lawrie 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 and that just

it made sense.

So we'd improvise.

And it was encouraged.

It was it was encouraged that we would,

and only in the scenes that we were,

only in the scenes that we were in.

You know I was in with other actors.

We would play around with stuff

and it was like go for it guys, it's great.

And so I 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 be 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.

The young direct we got him out and we put him on it

and it was a kind of flashback episode,

a standalone episode.

So we improvised the entire thing.

We would meet as actors in the same way

that I did with Altman and with Mike Leigh

when I worked with them 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 so and then the following day

you would shoot it and still,

it would be flexible when you're were on the floor

as long as we deliver the episode was good.

And I, and it was one of the better episodes in the season

and 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 up still plays.

So and you can change on the day

what you're going to do and so much.

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 know, 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 know or you get there early in the morning

and you get.

We generally meet in my trailer for coffee and go

what would you do about it.

What about if you did this?

And then I would be meeting with Alison Jackson, producer

and Jesse Cornels, script supervisor in my flat

and we come up with ideas

and then we take them into the actors.

And it was wild.

It never stopped.

[slow rock music]

Twin Peaks.

When I was a kid and wanting to be an actor

I went to see Eraserhead about 25 times.

Yeah I was very keen.

Yeah I don't know.

How did you fake David?

We would get on the phone every night,

me and his producer and stuff we had

because we had the best time working with him

and we were sad it was coming to an end.

And we know when I was on the phone with her,

I said can we have some more?

She went, I'll pass that along.

Next day there's another scene.

And so we had to learn it on the hoof.

There's one spoiler alert scene, spoiler alert

where I get shot and he had me in a van

and the note that he gave me.

And I was completely laced up with scripts.

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 ragdoll.

Locked you up, okay.

And that's what it was.

And he was thrilled we did it in one take.

And it was you know had to be Elvis

but it had to be a ragdoll Elvis.

And that was the movement,

the physicality that he wanted.

He's so funny.

I loved him.