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Tuesday 7 October 2008

Christian Slater's second act

Christian virtue: a man in the prime of his second act

A Hollywood actor on the London stage

‘I was doing nothing but watching TV yesterday,’ he says, ‘so I’m sitting there and I was watching a couple of the scenes — the Christopher Walken scene — and I thought God, brilliant. It’s so weird, all the things that watching a movie like that bring up for me.’

Fourteen years after True Romance, Slater is now an established favourite in the West End, initially because of his two runs as Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and now as the brutally ambitious Hollywood producer Buddy Ackerman in Swimming With Sharks. The play, expertly adapted and updated from the 1994 film by theatrical wunderkind Michael Lesslie, is not to be missed.

The part of Buddy was played by Kevin Spacey in the original movie, but Slater’s take on the studio executive who becomes Mephistopheles to his young apprentice, Guy (Matt Smith), is more subtle and seductive. While we are never in any doubt of Buddy’s villainy, we also see his appeal — and his dark honesty about human motivation.

‘It’s not like I’m the only shark in it. Everybody in the play has an agenda. We are all maybe different kinds of sharks, I think Cyrus [the studio boss] is the Great White, you know, and I may be the Tiger shark and I think when Guy shows up it is like a new shark... I think every actor brings whatever it is that they have within themselves. No matter what character it is that I’m playing, I have to find something I enjoy about him. And yes, with Buddy, I think he is an hilarious character — it is an opportunity to play somebody who learns nothing. I mean, he is completely true to himself.’

His preparation for the part was fortuitously perfect, too. ‘When I read the script, I had just come back from Fiji where I had actually swum with some sharks, which was cool. I remembered the movie slightly, and I thought, wow — and I was really into it, I thought it was rich, and fun, and just right.’

It must be said that Slater is one of the most instantly likeable people I have ever interviewed: disarmingly open and genuinely pleased that people enjoy his work. He is also living proof that Fitzgerald was wrong to say that ‘there are no second acts in American lives’.

More articles from: Matthew d'Ancona | this section

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