WINGING IT! 
Greg King talks to British actor Linus Roache, star of Priest and 
The Wings Of The Dove.

"I think I tend to get drawn towards characters who are in moral dilemmas, 
people who have got really difficult choices to make. I'm very interested 
in what real conscience is." 

After several years based in the theatre, actor Linus Roache first exploded 
onto the screen in Antonio Bird's provocative and intelligent drama Priest, 
about the crisis of faith faced by a young gay priest assigned to a working 
class parish. It was a controversial movie that attracted a rather surprising 
backlash from a number of outraged minority moral groups, particularly in America. 
At the time of Priest's release, movie theatres in America received bomb threats, 
and even today Disney still receives nasty phone calls about the film. 

The response surprised Roache, who thought the film was a brave one for tackling 
such a difficult issue head on. "It wasn't an angry film - well, some parts of 
it were angry - but I thought it was very mature in the way it approached the 
subject and it didn't condemn Catholicism per se. It challenged the status quo 
and tackled some important issues head on. I suppose I was a bit naive and thought 
that America was the home of the brave and the land of the free, and all that. 
I thought it'd be fine, but there were a lot of people against it." 

"I didn't think the film was making any sort of gratuitous statement," he adds. 
"It challenged the status quo, but it did it with a lot of integrity. I felt 
confident about it, I felt fine about it because I was 100% behind it. When 
you're standing in the truth you don't feel there's anything to be scared of." 

1994 was a banner year for the 34 year old actor, who is the son of William Roache, 
an actor probably best known for his ongoing role in long running tv soap 
Coronation Street. Not only did he appear in Priest, but he also appeared in 
the highly regarded BBC series Seaforth. Roache was not interested in committing 
to a second series because he found the nine months a bit relentless and gruelling, 
and he couldn't see where he could go with the character that would be interesting 
or challenging. "That's why I think making a film is about right. You spend two or 
three months doing one project. It's very intense stuff, but just to focus in that 
way is enough for me." 

Not surprisingly, Roache made a deliberate choice to lay low for about eighteen months. 
"It was a mixture of things," he says of his decision. "I'd worked pretty hard for 
a long period of time, and I'd done a lot of stuff. I'd fulfilled quite a lot of 
ambition, done a lot of theatre that I'd wanted to do. I did a tv series, and then 
Priest came out. Because of the success of the film financially I could afford not 
to work. And, secondly, because it gave me more of a high profile I could afford to 
take some time off as well." 

Having enjoyed his self imposed break, Roache has been busy, performing on the 
London stage and working on a couple of movies. He has recently completed a film 
called Shot Through The Heart, a co-production between Canada, the US and Britain, 
made for the HBO network in America. Set in Bosnia, the intense and powerful drama 
centres around two marksmen, one a Serb and one a Muslim, who are inevitably pitted 
against one another when war breaks out. "It was a very powerful and intense piece 
to do and I hope it comes out well." 

But the project that lured him back to the screen was The Wings Of The Dove, 
Iain Softley's melodramatic adaptation of Henry James' novel of a doomed romantic 
triangle set largely in Venice at the turn of the century. Writer Hossein Amini 
(the recent adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Jude) brings a contemporary flavour to 
this adaptation of James' novel, by shifting the story to 1910. In setting the story 
against the changing face of Europe as it boldly moves into the twentieth century, 
Amini also strips away much of the stuffy Victorian ideals and stiff morality of 
James' novel. 

Although he says that the script was one of the best he had read for quite some time, 
Roache was still initially ambivalent about doing it. "It was a risk," he explains 
further, "because the character is not in anyway your typical male lead." Roache plays 
working class journalist Merton Densher, who finds himself manipulated into romancing 
a doomed heiress for her inheritance. 

"In many ways he is quite a weak man," Roache says. "He's a very human, fallible, 
vulnerable man who falls into this quite horrible situation. It's not a flashy, 
showy kind of part, but I was interested in experimenting with something that was 
kind of simple where I could be simple and not do much except walk through the film. 
The story was strong and was going to rely a lot on what the actors bring, and what 
the director brings to the whole mood and nuance of the piece." 

Roache held several discussions with director Softley (Back Beat, etc) and liked his 
vision for the film. Somewhat surprisingly for a studious actor who is known for the 
amount of research and homework he puts into preparing for a role, Roache admits 
"openly and unashamedly" that he has not read the novel. It was a conscious choice, 
he explains. Roache knew that Amini's adaptation was very different and brought a modern 
sensibility to the story, and he didn't want to let the original novel shape his reading 
of the script or his interpretation of the character. 

"Iain was really open and he created a good atmosphere on the set. He had a strong sense 
of direction and feeling about the piece. He was looking for the darker side of what 
these characters were doing, and he was always nudging us and pushing us in that direction. 
I think, in many ways, I didn't appreciate how brilliant Iain was until afterwards, when 
I saw the film. You're not aware of it while making the film but afterwards you realise 
how much you were being supported." 

The crew spent five and a half weeks in Venice, working on the film. Because it was 
the height of the tourist season though, they found themselves working a lot of long 
and odd hours. There was plenty of night shooting involved, and they also took advantage 
of the first hours of daylight before the tourists arrived to capture the background 
setting for the film. The crew was also granted access to many palazzos and areas that 
are normally off limits to tourists. 

Venice is one of those cities that always looks beautiful and picturesque on the screen. 
A number of films like Death In Venice, Don't Look Now and The Comfort Of Strangers have 
been set in the city, and have created the romantic but vaguely haunting old worldly image. 
Having visited Venice I know that somehow, on first impression, the reality fails to 
match up to expectations. 

Strangely enough, Roache agrees with this observation. "When I arrived there, I didn't 
really like the place," he admits candidly. "I just had this very strong reaction to it. 
I thought: 'What's the big deal? Why is everyone so excited about Venice?' It's a kind of 
decaying, smelly, historical Disneyland, with no sort of reality there. But there is 
something extraordinary about the place, and after two or three days I turned 360 degrees 
and I was under its spell. I don't know what it is, but there's something almost like being 
in a dream, and you can almost feel the past and present blending into one. It's kind of 
haunting, and it sort of comes screaming at you when you're walking down those alleyways 
at 4 am." 

Another aspect of the project that strongly appealed to Roache was the opportunity to 
work with Helena Bonham Carter again. The two had previously appeared together on 
a BBC radio play called Letters Of Love. "She's great to work with. She's got such a 
great sense of fun, and she's got this healthy attitude and approach to the business. 
She's not starry. She's good natured and very easy to work with. I think she's done an 
amazing job here. She really found a lot of complexity in the role. She plays a very 
manipulative and intriguing character." 

Roache is excited that Bonham Carter's performance has been recognised with an Oscar 
nomination, which has briefly revitalised the film at the box office. "It's fantastic, 
and I really hope she gets it," he says, sounding genuinely pleased. "She deserves it." 
"In the end I don't think think one should take them too seriously," he says of awards. 
"There have been hundreds of great performances that have gone unrewarded, so I don't 
think that one should take it that an award automatically means that it is the best 
in the world. There are a lot of factors that go into why someone gets a particular award. 
But, then again, they can be very beneficial. Especially with the Academy Awards, because 
it can give someone the power and the freedom to choose. I don't stick my nose up at them 
in any way. They're great things for an actor to receive." 

©Greg King March 1998 Melbourne Australia