For more than 30 years, Tim Roth has been a recurring presence in pop culture, particularly in boundary-pushing indie projects by auteur directors like Quentin Tarantino, Peter Greenaway, Robert Altman, and Michael Haneke. This year has been no exception — Roth was among the galaxy of stars in David Lynch and Mark Frost’s rapturously received Twin Peaks: The Return, and has the lead role in Tin Star, a violent, disturbing, and frankly bonkers modern western that originally aired in the U.K., and now comes to Amazon Prime starting today.
Roth plays Jim Worth, a London police detective who moves his family to the Canadian Rockies for a new job. And then … well, from the opening scene on, the spoilers come fast and furious, as a series of gobsmacking events reveals that Worth is not the morally upstanding lawman he appears to be. Divulging anything more would ruin the singular experience of watching Tin Star, which co-stars Christina Hendricks as a PR flack for an unscrupulous oil company looking to exploit Worth’s community.
Roth, whose career began in 1982 when he starred as a racist skinhead in the Alan Clarke-directed British TV movie Made In Britain, has followed the path taken by many movie stars back to television. (He also starred in the Fox series Lie To Me, which aired from 2009 to 2011.) But he claims to not make a distinction between the mediums.
“I think the real change happened when The Wire came about, and what David Simon did was show that great writing can be anywhere,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “And the actors followed. Everybody wanted to be wherever he was, wherever the good material was, and suddenly you’d see film actors, and so on, on the telly. Me, I don’t [favor] one versus the other, I truly don’t care what format it’s in, as long as it’s good. Given up crap.”
This is a tricky show to talk about, because there are so many twists and turns that you can’t really say too much without giving away spoilers.
It’s been really, really hard going around doing press about it, because exactly because of that.
I do want to assure people though that you drop a lot of F-bombs on this show. I mean this as a sincere compliment: You say the F-word about as well as anybody. Samuel L. Jackson is at the top, but you’re just a few notches below.
[Laughs.] I think Sam’s wrapped up “motherfucker.”
Right.
I think he’s got “motherfucker” and maybe I’ve got the London “fuck.”
So you know that you’re exceptional in this regard?
The first job I ever did was a thing called Made In Britain. And there’s a couple of tabloid rags in England, the uppermost being The Sun, which is a horrendous thing. And they did a swear word count, like a “fuck” count. And then questions were asked in Parliament about whether or not this was appropriate for television. Outrageous behavior. So I think I probably started to get on that road early.
Tin Star creator Rowan Joffe has described his working relationship with you as a “passionate but difficult marriage.” Does that square with your experience?
[Laughs.] I think we came at it from very, very different worlds. There’s a sort of intellect at work with him, I’m more of a blunt instrument. So I think that’s how the two of us kind of came together on it. When I talk to writers in the beginning I want to make sure that we’re on the same page, and you want to make sure that you feel free to go, “Okay, this doesn’t work.” That’s very, very important. So, we both went at it in that way. We started working. As soon as I signed on we started working the scripts — you know, big notes sessions and “What if?” sessions.
Rowan directed the first episode and we started improvising. I started improvising with the other actors and that quickly became our format. You work from the script but you can play around. If something happens make sure the camera catches it. Maybe it sort of was a rocky marriage — it was good but it was tough. You work. You really, really work hard at it. And then suddenly you’re wrapped and then it’s over to him. It’s got nothing to do with me after that. It’s all about whatever they want to do with the material. But while I’m filming you’re just trying to do as good a job as you possibly can before your day is done.
Was there anything in particular that you tried to bring to the character that wasn’t in the original script?
Not really, no. Once he had an actor on board he started writing for me so it was a question of us getting to know each other. And for him to understand what my taste level was and for me to understand what his was. It felt very creative and very, very wild. And I think that’s reflected in the piece. I mean, I have to watch some of it, I haven’t seen any of it. Because we’re about to start in the new year — we’ll be doing it again, so I need to go back and have a look at what the character is about.
What are your feelings on TV versus film? Obviously you’re were on Lie To Me several years ago.
Well, that’s different. That’s network. It’s a different animal.
Of course.
In England, you go straight from television to cinema, if you’re lucky, and there’s no barriers. There’s no snobbery between industries. Or it was that way when I was coming up. My first stuff was on television, but it was with directors like Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke. These were all people that went back and forth between television and film. And then when I came here, no film actors were doing telly, really. I mean, it was a one-way street. You could go from television into film, that was acceptable. But to go the other way was considered a step down within the acting, sort of mad logic. So when Lie To Me came along I just thought of it as a sort of a very odd and a very strange experiment.
You were also in Twin Peaks this year, which will likely be better-regarded by critics than all but a small handful of movies released in 2017. Did you know David Lynch before he called you up and asked you to do this?
No, I didn’t know him personally. I met with his daughter, Jennifer — we were planning to make a film and then that got put on hold. I think David was going to be playing my dad! [Laughs.] Hopefully we can get that going again because that’d be such fun.
That would be amazing.
I knew him from Eraserhead, I knew him from Blue Velvet, I knew him from Dune, I knew him as this wild kind of artist, this extraordinary filmmaker. So when they called up and said “Do you want to do Twin Peaks?” you just go “Yeah.”It doesn’t really matter what your part is. I mean, it didn’t to me. I just wanted to be in it. You want to work with him so you can spend a few days on a film set with David Lynch. Not such a bad way to spend your time.
Did you have any idea how your scenes connected to the larger show?
No idea. Not a clue. Absolutely not a clue. When Kyle [MacLachlan] rolled up during our stuff, that was fun. And it was Bad Coop, you know, or whatever he is. And then I saw him later in the day as the other Coop — or wait a second, is there three? I don’t know. And so I thought, “Oh, what are you up to?” And I saw Naomi Watts drive by, which is always a good thing. So I knew they were up to something, but I didn’t know what. And it doesn’t matter. I was happy. It was a reunion for me and [Jennifer Jason Leigh], which is purely coincidental from David’s perspective, and we just had an absolute blast. Just wanted to do more, that was the problem.
Have you watched Twin Peaks: The Return?
No, I haven’t seen it. I don’t even know when my character… I know, he shows up in, about halfway through, I think. [Laughs.] I have to wait [to watch] because my kids want to catch up.
They don’t really have to watch the original series. Twin Peaks: The Return is pretty much its own thing.
I know, but they want to. They’ve got a bee in their bonnet, they just want to see it all. They want to see what the fuss was about in the first place and then see where this goes.
Do you generally not watch yourself?
I don’t.
Does it make you uncomfortable to watch yourself?
No. I think I stopped watching about 15 years ago, unless I get trapped in a screening. If I get trapped in a screening, then I’ll do it. Or if my kids pull out a movie that they want to watch with me then sometimes I’ll do it. But generally I don’t. I don’t read anything about myself. I don’t watch myself. I just do my job, really.
What prompted you to stop watching yourself?
I’d been directing and I was doing press for it, going around the world and doing festivals and all that stuff, and I’d met quite a few actors who had stopped watching themselves. And I’d read about it with Gregory Peck and things like that. It just felt like a good way to go. It felt like “I’ll take a break from that” and then it just escalated to “Eh, I’ll give it a pass.”
There’s certain things that I will break the rule for. With The Hateful Eight, I broke the rule, [because] that was a secondary sort of character and I just wanted to sit back and enjoy the gang. And it’s Quentin and that’s just always different.
Why is Quentin Tarantino different?
He’s just such a force in my life. And also there’s a musicality to his writing and to his filmmaking that is utterly surprising to me and I’m part of it, or have been lucky enough to be a part of it. I want to see what he’s done. It’s not just about watching your own performance and analyzing it and putting a microscope on it. With Quentin, when you look at his films you’re looking at everything.
You recently had a reunion in New York and Los Angeles with Tarantino and the cast of Reservoir Dogs for the film’s 25th anniversary. Did you get to re-watch the movie?
I did. That I did do. Well, actually, I sat down with my family and was ready to watch it, we’re having a great time, it was a beautiful dinner, and then I got yanked out of the audience because they wanted to go for a quick beer around the corner. It was during my bit that they yanked me out of there. So by the time I got back into the cinema it was just the very end. But what I saw was so beautiful and it was such a good time when we made it. I think it still stands up.
Was it really a good time for you, though? You spend a lot of the movie screaming and covered in blood. It seems like it would’ve been a tough shoot for you.
Physically it was, because it was very hot. But then I was joined by Mike [Michael Madsen]. And then I think Harvey [Keitel] gets very bloody, he was trailing me. So we were all in it together, and we bitched and we moaned and all that stuff but it was a five-week shoot. That was it.
When you’re working on a project, do you have a sense of how good or bad it’s going to be? Could you tell that Reservoir Dogs was going to be a classic film?
We all felt it was going to be great. I mean, I think we all felt that from reading the script for the first time. I was 20 pages in and I was reaching for the phone. Quentin had affected everybody who read it. So then you meet the man himself, and he’s kind of a boy really, we were young men, and there was this extraordinary energy. But you knew there was a high-end director at work when you read the script. It’s all in the script.
You probably still have people coming up to you either quoting from Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. Is that an everyday thing for you?
Yeah, it’s weird. You have that with Quentin’s stuff. Oddly, one of the things that I get a lot, especially in Europe or abroad, is Lie To Me. It’s huge. Most people don’t even know it’s been canceled. If you go in Italy, they love The Hulk. In Japan, they love The Hulk. It’s an odd selection. And I quite often sign autographs for Steve Buscemi, and I’ve signed quite a few for Gary Oldman in my time. I think that’s just the English thing. But you don’t flinch, you just sign them.
