How a legendary director brought Tim Roth and Quentin Tarantino together: “Whatever I need to do”
The history of cinema is littered with iconic pairings of directors and actors, creative marriages with a special creative spark aligning one party with the other. What happens when two creative stars briefly cross paths for a single project can be awe-inspiring, and when they do it more than once, it can be simply breathtaking. But these are just moments that former a far greater journey.
It would, in turn, feel unkind to simply boil down Tim Roth’s 40-year career in film and television, with its Bafta win and nominations for both Golden Globe and Academy Awards, to what he accomplished alongside director Quentin Tarantino. But someone could be forgiven for making such a claim when such a partnership yields results like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and has grossed just shy of $400million worldwide. However, as luck may have it, there’s another legendary filmmaker to thank for bringing these two into each other’s professional lives.
Before his big break stateside in Reservoir Dogs, Roth was a celebrated actor early on in the British film scene, being nominated for ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ at the 1984 Baftas for his first-ever film role as Myron in Stephen Frears’ The Hit. However, as Roth details in Rolling Stone, his legendary role as Mr Orange doesn’t happen without him catching the eye of Robert Altman.
“He (Altman) had essentially brought me out to Hollywood because he’d cast me in his Van Gogh movie [Vincent and Theo] and had me doing press; I got an agent here because of him,” Roth explains before elaborating that beyond his work with Altman, he was prepared for his time in Hollywood not to be a prolonged one.
As Roth describes it, he was in Los Angeles “doing that thing that British actors do where they go, ‘Ok, I’m giving this three months to see if it works, then I’m out of here.’ I’d done a few small things – a Tales of the Crypt episode here, an independent movie in New York there – but mostly it was just me in California, sitting there and reading scripts”. It’s a somewhat bleak image if it doesn’t come off, but luckily for Roth, it did.
During this period, Tarantino, who Roth describes at the time as “just a guy trying to make his first film”, had seen him in the 1990 adaptation of the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and would send him the document that would irrevocably alter the careers of both men from that moment forward (even if Roth did take a little convincing to audition).
“Then suddenly, this script called Reservoir Dogs shows up,” Roth elaborates. “I’ve talked to Tom Stoppard, who wrote the play and directed the movie, a lot about the music of Quentin’s writing.” Initially, Roth showed some hesitance, which in turn was quickly washed away by what he was reading. “It was like: What the fuck is a reservoir dog? Then I started reading it and 20 pages in, I was on the phone with my agent going, ‘Yes, please, whatever I need to do.’ He said great, so look at Mr Pink, look at Mr Blonde – and I just said, ‘No. I want to be the liar.‘ I liked the idea of an Englishman playing an American playing a cop who’s playing a robber”.
After Reservoir Dogs, Roth and Tarantino would quickly reassemble their chemistry for Pulp Fiction in 1994 before waiting two decades to reunite for 2015’s The Hateful Eight, now with Roth completely in the fold with what he sees as Tarantino’s own ‘theatre troupe”, describing his relationship with the director with a shower of praise. “It’s essentially a stock company he has now – he is our guy,” Roth emphasises.
“There is no director who works better with actors, and I say that as someone who’s been lucky enough to work with filmmakers who are legendarily great with actors. We love him, and we’re very possessive of him. I mean, the guy is crazy as fuck. But he’s so damned good at making movies.”
And to think, without Altman bringing Roth to the US on a press tour and landing him an agent, audiences may have been robbed of one of the more notable director and actor partnerships in recent memory.
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