Serious actor has role he can get his teeth into
By: Rita Zekas
April 26, 1992
Premise of TV series Forever Knight: A 764-year-old vampire moonlights as a Metro Toronto cop.
So what's a Shakespearean actor like Geraint Wyn Davies doing in a piece like this?
Having the time of his life , that's what.
A fixture in Stratford for almost a decade, Davies's stage credits include Henry V, Merchant Of Venice, Taming Of The Shrew, Three Musketeers, Pericles, Hamlet and An Enemy Of The People.
There's no stigma these days to doing such populist fare, he said on the Knight set. They've shot three of 13 episodes, produced by Paragon Entertainment, TriStar Telvision, Germany's Telemuschen and Glen-Warren for airing on CFTO-TV and on CBS in the United States.
It's a claim also made by Timothy Dalton during the press junket for Licence To Kill. He said his paramour Vanessa Redgrave didn't even look down her patrician nose at him when he became 007.
"People ask me, 'What the hell ya doing?' " Davies admitted, lighting the first of a Bette Davis stream of cigarettes. "I did the national tour of Hamlet in Britain and what's wonderful is that you can have choices. Doing Hamlet and Nick Knight is a challenge just to use the different machinery."
He mixes the Bard with the broad. He played "a slimy record producer" on Sweating Bullets; co-starred in the syndicated series Dracula; was a bionic baddie in Return Of The Six Million Dollar Man; and has appeared in Katts & Dog, Street Legal, Airwolf, To Serve And Protect and The Littlest Hobo. Last summer in Germany he shot the Clive Donner movie For Better Or For Worse with Kate Nelligan. She describes it as "Misery meets Silence Of The Lambs."
"We are becoming a global village and we're not as elitist," Davies said. "If it's good, it doesn't matter whether you do it on TV, street mime, juggling or on the stage. Because Knight's a good show, I don't feel like I get stuck in a rut and I can do any accent I want.
"Nick was bitten in 1228 and has present-day flashbacks to different eras. He sees Joan of Arc, he goes back to being an actor in the 18th century or 17th century - I get to do lots of fencing. I don't have my feet planted firmly; why be an actor if you wanted stability?"
He's been one for 16 of his 34 years. He started while still in college, studying business and economics at Western. He walked by an audition for the play Moon Children and got himself a role. So much for a career in finance.
"It was Dec. 7, 1975 that I last used my brains except for acting."
Davies came to Canada from Wales at age 7. He's the son of a Welsh United Church minister, who preached at a Welsh chapel in Toronto.
"I watched Dad preach and I wasn't interested in what he said, it's how he said it, which leads me to believe I was more shallow than I thought I was. I don't have the temperament or the selflessness to be a preacher.
"I want Dad to come on the show. He's already appeared on a couple of CBC things, he'd play the odd minister in a funeral. He always wanted to be 1) a minister 2) an actor or 3) a pilot. My brother's the pilot and I'm the ponce."
Yeah, but Davies did play a helicopter pilot in Airwolf.
"My brother called up and said, 'You probably blew up the helicopter in that shot.' Watch, some vampire is gonna come up to me and say, 'You missed the artery, you dummy.' "
Blond, blue-eyed Davies in the role of vampire is counter casting. Dracula is usually associated with Frank Langella. Or Bela Lugosi.
Davies is a most happy Bela. There's a perpetual twinkle in his baby blues and a quip on the lip. In a 1989 interview about his role of Henry V at Stratford he confessed, "I wanted to play the Hal out of him. My natural tendency is to want to laugh and seek the humor in situations, both as an actor and a guy."
It's impossible not to think of a vampire/cop as camp, but he swore it's played straight.
"It's funny but it's not tongue-in-cheek. What I like is that it combines the real element of police and the mythology of vampires. This has the same feeling as Quantum Leap, it's not a send-up. He's a guy fighting an addiction to blood. He slaughters animals.
"It's not preachy but much is made of his inner struggle. He's a good person fighting the evil side of him, he only goes to his superstrength mode when he has to. That's when they bring in the set of eyes and teeth. Whenever Nick gets mad, he's all eyes and teeth. It's a challenge not to be camp, not to make it an Eyes And Teeth Show, but it's got a real edge. Everyone else does the talking, I look and do the brooding. I move from town to town, being the Littlest Hobo With Teeth."
Davies is a dad twice over. He has a son 6, a daughter, 4. His wife is designer Alana Gwynn. The kids wanted to come and see Dad shoot a scene on a 48-foot-high crane.
"I'm scared s-less of heights and I hate contact lenses. They're very yucky and gelatinous and they make my eyes yellow and cat-like. And I hate blood. And all that sunblock 2012 I have to wear."
But he likes Nick's wardrobe.
"He wears a lot of leathers and a lot of black, he's a cool dude - as opposed to myself. He's accumulated enough money through the centuries to buy decent duds. He does catalogue shopping, he can't exactly shop at high noon. And he needs lots of clothes - when can he do laundry?"