“It’s important for me to reinvigorate myself”: Anthony Michael Hall on ‘Trigger Warning’, playing villains, and career longevity
With a career stretching back well over 40 years that made him a star before he’d left his teenage years, Anthony Michael Hall has spent almost his entire life as an actor. New challenges remain welcome, though, with his latest performance allowing him to break bad as the villain in a bone-crunching action movie.
Starring Jessica Alba in the lead role, Netflix’s Trigger Warning marks the Hollywood directorial debut of Mouly Surya, the Indonesian filmmaker who gained international attention with subversive and incisive neo-Western thriller Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts. The country has become a hotbed for the genre, and when some of the team responsible for the John Wick franchise are involved, it’s easy to see what drew Hall to the project.
“This all started for me when I had a meeting with Mouly Surya, who I really loved,” he said, referring to the director’s breakout feature as “her version of Kill Bill,” which is an opinion echoed by many. That DNA was present in Trigger Warning, too, with Hall describing it as “a revenge thriller that has shadows of an old Western to it as well.”
The story follows Alba’s special forces operator, Parker, who returns to her hometown following her father’s death to take ownership of his bar. However, Hall’s powerful politician, Ezekiel Swann, isn’t of the mind to provide a hospitable welcome, and neither are his two sons, Elvis (Jake Weary) and Jesse (Mark Webber), the latter of whom also happens to be Parker’s former love interest.
Playing a senator with ulterior motives requires a certain sense of duality, an opportunity Hall relished sinking his teeth into. “It was a dynamic character to play. I love playing bad guys. You pull out all the stops and enjoy it,” Hall offered, with the actor given the leeway to put his own spin on Trigger Warning‘s antagonist.
“I felt the instinct to give him a little bit of a Southern snarl. I wanted it to be kind of nondescript. I worked on the voice, I felt that was important, particularly for politicians who have to be communicators.” Off-camera, Hall found Surya to be “an excellent director to work with” before taking a moment to spotlight the other women who were so integral to crafting the no-holds-barred actioner from the ground up.
“Jessica Alba is obviously one of the producers,” Hall said of the lead pulling double duty. “And then we had the two ladies from Thunder Road, Esther [Hornstein] and Erica [Lee], and we had a female cinematographer, Zoë White, she had shot The Handmaid’s Tale. So it was very interesting that in the context of an action project that was produced by Thunder Road – who brought us the John Wick franchise – this was really a great, full-throttle action movie,” which benefitted immensely from having so many women in important creative positions.
Furthering the John Wick connection, Hall marvelled at the choreography and stunt work of 87eleven Action Design, the company founded by stuntmen-turned-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski. “I’ve done a lot of action over the years, but I gotta say this. They’re really top-notch,” he remarked. “These guys were all former stuntmen, who at some point started doing second unit directing, and 87eleven is an outgrowth of that work. They put together a core that’s really incredible.”
“They approach it almost with a military mindset,” he continued before shining more light on how meticulous the preparations were. “Just to give you a little detail, when I got to the set on this project, the whole stunt crew of 87eleven had been there already for four to five weeks, and so they had pre-visualised all the sequences. So not only are we doing pad work and choreography and doing drills and working on the hand-to-hand combat, but these guys had already pre-visualised, so the sequences were already put together.”
Hall has plenty of experience working in the genre, then, but he’s always ready, willing and able to try something new. “I’ve done a lot of action sequences in my career. You know, it’s been a 48-year career. Here I am at 56. I started when I was eight years old. I did a play in the mid-70s with the late, great Steve Allen. So I’ve been very blessed and fortunate, first of all, just to have a career in this business and to maintain it. I’m very grateful for that.”
That being said, having been in the thick of it on Trigger Point, could Hall ever envision himself going full Liam Neeson and reinventing himself as a grizzled action hero? “I’m glad you said that because there’s something that I’ve written. It’s a project that’s near and dear to me, called The Lost Shield. And it’s an action project. It’s a film that I wrote – I originally optioned the script from another writer – and I worked on it with him, and then I wound up developing it for a period of years, and now I feel it’s in great shape.”
Hall has dabbled in directing before, helming the 1994 comedy Hail Caesar, which he starred in with Robert Downey Jr and Samuel L. Jackson, and an episode of Stephen King’s series The Dead Zone, in which he played the lead role of Johnny Smith for six seasons and 80 episodes. As chance would have it, his passion project will see him stepping back behind the camera for the first time in a long time.
“I certainly could see myself doing that. I’m very capable that way and very athletic,” Hall said of channelling his inner Neeson. “The project that I mentioned is the one that I’m prepping. And we’re still working on the financial piece, but I look forward to getting behind the camera and directing that. And that does have a lot of action. It opens in New York, and then it transitions to New Orleans, but it is an action drama that I’m planning to make.”
In addition to acting, writing, and directing, Hall also established himself as a producer through his Manhattan Films banner. One of its recent projects is Nicholas Celozzi’s The Class, which he compared to one of his most famous roles after calling the coming-of-age comedy “a modern-day spin on The Breakfast Club.”
“It’s an homage. It’s not a remake,” he clarified, with Hall playing the principal “kind of like the Paul Gleason role in The Breakfast Club all those years ago.” The other is 1980s-set sci-fi Roswell Delirium, which “won over 50 awards already” on the festival circuit, while he’s also “developing a series with Robert Downey Jr. and his wife Susan that’s called The Singularity” to keep his producorial juices flowing.
With the 50th anniversary of his career fast approaching, Hall has seen plenty of what the industry has to offer across film, television, and stage from both sides of the divide, so what is it that draws somebody with almost half a century of experience to a new project above everything else?
“That’s a great question, and it’s something that challenges me at this point,” he confirmed. “I’ve played a lot of different roles. I’ve played bad guys. I’ve played teachers, husbands, all kinds of things that can be characterised in simple ways. But it’s a personal reaction I have to your question, because I think it’s really about enjoying the process. And that’s something that at times can get a little bit lazy or a little bit blasé about the process.”
Fortunately, reinvention has always been part of Hall’s approach. “It’s important for me to reinvigorate myself and not to get that way. A lot of it starts with my own awareness, when I get to a set, just the idea of being part of a team working in collaboration. And that’s really always what it is anyway, right? It takes a village to raise a kid, but it really takes a village or two to make a film.”
Working in perfect synchronicity with his analogy, Hall used a massive series he’s recently finished working on as the example. “I just wrapped season three of Reacher, and we had a 300-person crew on that TV show. I want to enjoy the work. I want to play more heroic parts. I didn’t really plan these last couple of films. Even my role on Reacher is to a degree a villain, so it wasn’t intentional.”
Some actors try to lay out their trajectories years in advance, but having been around the block, Hall isn’t really buying it. “I think a lot of actors like to posit this idea that everything is planned and thought out and carefully regulated. The truth is that you go where the work is, and you have to stay flexible and adaptive. So, I’ve tried to be that way in my career. To answer your question, it’s to really appreciate the work and to be present on set no matter what I’m working on and to really enjoy the people and the experience of what I’m doing.”
Enjoying a rapid rise to fame, Hall became a household name when National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science were released consecutively between July 1983 and August 1985, with the actor still just 17 years old when the latter hit cinemas. However, the pressure came after that when he was faced with trying to attain longevity.
“When it first started to happen, it was after Sixteen Candles. Those were the films that started me off, I wouldn’t be talking to you today without the late great John Hughes. So it’s always important that I tip my hat to him. And I honour John, and also the likes of greats like Harold Ramis, and Matty Simmons, these gentlemen are no longer with us, but they’re here in spirit. And they really gave me my start.” Trying to keep a cool head, Hall tried to balance his newfound status with remaining focused on the long game.
“It was off-putting, it was kind of scary when you find fame and notoriety. But the truth is, I’ve always tried to mitigate that. My focus hasn’t been playing a celebrity or being a celebrity, as much as just doing the work and maintaining a career and doing work that I’m proud of. So I appreciate that. I’ve had a really blessed career. I started out as a kid, and I’ve been able to maintain myself over 48 years. There’s an ebb and flow like in any career, but I’ve never stopped working. I really am grateful for my blessings and the fact that I’ve been able to endure and maintain, so I’m grateful.”
Hall has appeared in movies that people adore and will continue to adore for generations to come, but every actor has favourites of their own that may not be as well-known or widely appreciated. For him, one of them came when he worked with one of the biggest stars in the business.
“War Machine is one that I’m very proud of. I had a great experience working with Brad Pitt,” Hall outlined. “He’s really a great guy and an excellent producer. And I learned a lot watching him, just in terms of how he handles himself, and obviously on-screen as well. So that was one.”
His performance as Bill Gates in 1999’s Pirates of Silicon Valley is another, which earned five Primetime Emmy nominations including one for ‘Outstanding Television Movie’. “It’s kind of an antiquated story now from a technological standpoint because, at the time, the movie was about the battle between Apple and Microsoft over software,” he admitted. “And obviously, here we are a couple of generations later, and the world has gone mobile.”
Playing legendary baseball pitcher Whitey Ford in the Billy Crystal-directed drama 61* is another that Hall is “very proud of” and “very happy to work on,” but almost five decades on from his performative debut, there may yet be plenty more to come that makes his cut as being among the best work he’s ever done.
