William Goldman\u2019s<\/a> brilliance. He put more memorable lines in one movie than any other in cinema history.\u201d<\/p>\nGo Westley \u2026 Cary Elwes with Robin Wright in The Princess Bride. Photograph: Pictorial Press\/Alamy<\/p>\n
In the decades that followed, Elwes stayed in touch with Reiner who also directed This Is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally \u2013 and who was found dead in his home last December along with his wife, the producer and photographer Michele Singer. The couple\u2019s son Nick Reiner was later charged with their murder and is set to stand trial later this year. Elwes and Rob Reiner would often appear together at anniversary events for The Princess Bride where they would regale audiences about the non-stop silliness and laughter on set. \u201cHe was a very dear friend and I miss him terribly,\u201d he says now. \u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy, an absolute tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Elwes was on stage at the Oscars alongside a number of Reiner\u2019s friends and collaborators including Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Meg Ryan, Kiefer Sutherland, Demi Moore, Kathy Bates and John Cusack to pay a warmly received tribute to the late director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.<\/p>\n
Elwes, 63, is talking from his home in Los Angeles where it is early morning and where he has declined to turn on his camera: \u201cI haven\u2019t shaved. Is it OK if we do audio? I just prefer it,\u201d he says in his transatlantic accent (Elwes grew up in London but has lived in the US since he was 18). He keeps his answers short but is courteous, calling me by my name at intervals in the way that celebrities do to signal they are paying attention.<\/p>\n
We are here to talk about his latest film, Gus Van Sant\u2019s Dead Man\u2019s Wire, which tells the real-life story of Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd), an Indianapolis businessman who visited his mortgage brokers in 1977 and took one of their executives Richard O Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage. Kiritsis attached a sawn-off shotgun to Hall\u2019s neck using a piece of wire and took him to his apartment. There he invited the media to camp outside while he publicly delivered his demands to the company he said had short-changed him over a piece of real estate; those demands included cancelling his debt and an apology from the company boss.<\/p>\n
Case history \u2026 Cary Elwes in Dead Man\u2019s Wire. Photograph: Stefania Rosini\/Row K Entertainment<\/p>\n
That boss is played by none other than Pacino, with whom Elwes has been friends ever since that first meeting. It\u2019s a smart bit of casting that nods to Dog Day Afternoon, the Sidney Lumet classic from 1975 in which Pacino\u2019s small-time crook tries to rob a bank and soon finds himself in over his head. Both Dog Day Afternoon and Dead Man\u2019s Wire feature working-class men struggling to make ends meet and who commit crimes out of desperation.<\/p>\n
Elwes had no recollection of the case when he read the script but says the moral \u201cgrey area\u201d around Kiritsis\u2019s actions caught his attention. The film shows what happens \u201cwhen people feel pushed to the edge and sometimes make decisions they regret later. More people [today] are feeling as if they\u2019ve been marginalised or put in a corner. We\u2019re not advocating resorting to violence but just trying to show that this is what can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markAs a kid, I wanted to\u00a0be in the entertainment industry. And I just manifested it<\/p>\n
Elwes plays local cop Mike Grable, who also worked as an undercover narcotics detective. Grable, who died in 2016, was a master of disguise, which seems apt because Elwes is barely recognisable in the role, sporting a beard, long brown hair and looking ineffably cool in a terracotta roll neck and brown leather jacket. \u201cThat sweater is what Mike wore. Not the actual one, but I met his kids who showed me pictures, so we just tried to recreate it. We wanted to give it that authenticity, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dead Man\u2019s Wire is visibly in thrall to many of Elwes\u2019s favourite directors from the 70s, the ones he was reared on as a child growing up in London. \u201cBilly Friedkin, Scorsese and Sidney Lumet, obviously. The plan was to try to make a film that evoked that era in cinema.\u201d And how does a boy from Paddington make it all the way to Hollywood? \u201cI dreamed big, Fiona!\u201d Elwes replies. \u201cEven when I was a kid, from the moment I discovered television, I wanted to be in the entertainment industry. And I just manifested it. I really believe in that. I read a bunch of autobiographies of my favourite actors: Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers, Peter O\u2019Toole. I was absolutely focused on doing everything I could to get into the business.\u201d<\/p>\n
War story \u2026 Cary Elwes (right) with Matthew Broderick in Glory. Photograph: Cinetext Collection\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t hurt that Elwes\u2019s stepfather, Elliott Kastner, was a hotshot film producer from America whose credits included Where Eagles Dare and The Long Goodbye. It was through Kastner that the 15-year-old Elwes spent a week working as Marlon Brando\u2019s personal assistant, after the actor\u2019s regular PA called in sick. Brando was shooting Superman: The Movie at Shepperton Studios and Elwes had to \u201canswer his trailer door, get his meals, get his new pages for him \u2013 and make sure he got on set on time\u201d. That sounds terrifying for a teenager, I say. \u201cI was a little nervous,\u201d Elwes replies, serenely. \u201cHe was a legend and I looked up to him.\u201d He pauses and adds: \u201cSo I had two godfathers influence me in my life, which is pretty strange.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Elwes decamped to the US he studied acting at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Not long after graduating, he auditioned for the 1984 movie Another Country, starring Rupert Everett and Colin Firth, and got the job. \u201cSo I got it from my first audition, which I don\u2019t recommend because after that I thought it was too easy.\u201d Next, he played the chiselled Lord Dudley, opposite Helena Bonham Carter\u2019s queen, in Lady Jane, a role that set him up nicely for the part of the heart-throb in The Princess Bride. When the latter flopped, it was a wake-up call for Elwes. A new approach was needed.<\/p>\n
Brace for impact \u2026 Cary Elwes in season three of Stranger Things. Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n
Of the scant job offers that came in during his year of unemployment in New York, he says, all involved swords and princesses. \u201cSo even though The Princess Bride was not a success at this point, casting directors wanted to pigeonhole me [as the romantic lead] and I didn\u2019t want that. I wanted to play character roles.\u201d His stint at the Lee Strasberg Institute solved the problem, allowing him to show off his versatility as an actor. Since then, he has appeared in war films (Glory), horror movies (the Saw franchise), thrillers (Twister, Kiss The Girls, Mission: Impossible), comedies (Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Liar Liar) and in popular TV shows including The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Stranger Things.<\/p>\n
When choosing the next job, he says, if he comes across \u201csomething I\u2019m a little bit scared of, then that\u2019s usually the thing I gravitate towards\u201d. Yet it is his role as the floppy-haired hero of The Princess Bride for which he remains most recognised and celebrated. Rare is the day when Elwes steps out and isn\u2019t asked to repeat Westley\u2019s immortal line: \u201cAs you wish.\u201d If he finds that tiresome, he is too savvy to say so. \u201cThis film brings people and families together,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel I have a responsibility to it, but it\u2019s a wonderful responsibility. You\u2019re lucky as an actor to have your work resonate with anyone, so I don\u2019t take that for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dead Man\u2019s Wire is in cinemas on 20 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1988, the actor Cary Elwes\u2019s career had taken a nosedive. His latest film, a fantasy in which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-339534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}