British actor Tim Roth drew a big crowd and much applause with a masterclass at the 15th edition of the Luxembourg City Film Festival (LuxFilmFest) last week, in which he discussed such topics as his work with Tupac Shakur, Quentin Tarantino and Werner Herzog and how he prepared for his first TV role as a racist skinhead.
He was one of the big names attending the anniversary edition of the fest, along with the star-studded jury, which was led by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and also included Danish actress Trine Dyrholm (The Girl With the Needle, Poison), Austrian actress Valerie Pachner (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, A Hidden Life), L.A.- and Luxembourg-based VFX expert Jeff Desom (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Spanish director Albert Serra (Afternoons of Solitude), and screenwriter Paul Laverty. The festival has also featured a masterclass by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar.
As part of his busy Luxembourg schedule, Roth sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss his movie at the festival, look back on his career and address what Donald Trump’s second term in the White House means for filmmakers.
You star opposite Trine Dyrholm in the Desirée Nosbusch-directed Poison [about an estranged couple who come together 10 years after the death of their son], which received a special screening here in Luxembourg. I was familiar with Lot Vekemans’ play but still found it so emotional to watch. It’s about a man and a woman who used to be a couple and meet again 10 years after a personal tragedy. You lost your son in 2022 and know what loss feels like. How did you get involved in the film?
My son was ill at the time. But they just sent me this script. I have scripts come through, and quite often I read them and they’re not for me or whatever. But I read this incredible story. And the idea of a film being done in real time felt to me like something that would have been done in Italy in the ’50s or something like that. And the conversation between two people, very different, but also connected. I just thought it was an extraordinary piece, terrifying to take on, just as far as the acting, the mechanics of acting — how do you get all of that stuff in your head? And then I sat with my family and talked to them about it, and they said: “Go do it!”
I usually don’t watch myself in films I have done. But I will watch Poison because of what I went through on a personal level. I want to see if what we shot matches what I felt as a civilian and not as an actor.
You have played so many different roles and have starred in small indie and big blockbuster movies. How do you think and feel about your career and your choices?
My feeling is that the career that I was after was anarchy. I always like that — and chaos. So, I always do a film to finance another film. Because a lot of these films that I love to do, these crazy films I love to do, have no money. They’re the little independent things that are trying and are struggling to be made even more now than ever. So you got to do the ones that finance them. But sometimes they are terrible, and sometimes they are great, and sometimes the little independents don’t work.
I think my career is healthily messy. I don’t watch them, so they’re all for the audience. After I’m done, I’m done. So it’s over to the audience once I’m done, and then they can say what they like. But I think I’ve done some really bad stuff.
What did you not like?
I’ll leave that to you and other people. But sometimes the bad ones can be the most fun to make. And that’s the surprise to you. You never know what’s going to happen when you show up. And so, you can do one and think, “Oh, my God, this is terrible.” And people love it. So it’s always a mess, and a mess is good.
Last year, it was unveiled that you would play Henry Kissinger in a political satire called Kissinger Takes Paris. Is that your next project and what can you tell me about it?
No, I don’t know when we can do that, but we’re going to try for it. Jeff Stanzler, the first director that I worked with in America, came to me with the Kissinger thing. It’s an incredible book he’s written that he’s adapted for the screen. And there are all these comedic actors that are connected with it, and Robin Wright. So hopefully one day we’ll get to make it. It’s really good. And I think we’d have to do some makeup work.
What are you doing next then?
I have a film that’s being written now by [Mexican auteur] Michel Franco, who I love working with [and did so on Chronic and Sundown]. So we’re going to do another one together, I hope. He’s writing now.
I have a fantastic script that I want to shoot, which is ready, that hopefully we can shoot this year, which is in Britain and is about the industry of gambling and how it is very bad. It’s very, very tough, and it’s a wonderful script. I have a series that I want to do, probably next year. It’s being produced by Jeremy Thomas, who produced the first feature I ever made [The Hit]. So it’s a nice connection. But I don’t want to talk about these too much yet.
You have in the past criticized populism and President Donald Trump in his first term. Any thoughts on the current state of the world?
My father was American-Irish and grew up in the slums in New York and went to England to get jobs. Then he ended up running away from his family. And in the Second World War, he fought [the Nazis] and survived, but he was always very political. I remember my father telling me when I was a kid: “It’s coming. It is just a matter of time before it comes to America, and when it comes to America, it will be very dangerous.”
I think we’re seeing what fascism looks like, or dictatorial political theory looks like in practice, in America right now. It’s just the beginning, though. They’ve been prepping it for a while. In his first term, he was getting ready, but they got invited back, and now they’re really ready. So we’ll see what’s coming. I’ve no idea. It’s depressing. It’s sad.
Do you think differently about what projects to take on in this environment?
Not so much, because there’s often a political aspect to a film anyway. But there is one film that we’re moving ahead of with because we feel that it needs to be said now with the current climate and what’s happening in America and around Europe.
But I think that making a film in America, with the exception of the fun stuff, will become harder. I think they will go after the industry, because they always go after what potentially could harm them. So I think they will go after the arts, [so] I think [filmmaking] will flourish more in Europe and around the rest of the world. I think what people will start doing is leaving to work elsewhere, which I do anyway. I think it’s going to be harder to make films of consequence, as opposed to films of a more general nature or the streaming thing.
