The movie that made Tim Roth want to start acting
British actors have often enjoyed widespread success in Hollywood, and there are few who’ve experienced as much career joy over the Atlantic Ocean as Tim Roth. Roth came through as part of the ‘Brit pack’, a collection of British actors, including Daniel Day-Lewis and Colin Firth, who came to America’s attention in the mid-1980s.
After starring in several acclaimed productions, including The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Vincent & Theo, Roth appeared in 1995’s Roy Roy, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. The London-born actor also began a long-standing collaboration with Quentin Tarantino, playing for him in the likes of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Four Rooms.
But like any artist, there was the initial catalyst that caused the desire in Roth to begin acting at all. When Roth named the five films that changed his life with the Academy Award website A-Frame, Roth spoke highly of the British director Alan Clarke and explained the impact he had on him.
The first is 1979’s Scum, starring Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Julian Firth and John Blundell and telling of the brutal reality of a British borstal prison. It was originally written for television, but because of the excessive violence, it was withdrawn, and Clarke later made it into a feature film.
Scum was the film that made Roth want to act too. The actor explained: “When I saw it, that was the film that made me decide on the spot, ‘I want to do that. I want to work on films like this.’ These films are all movies that really touched me in different ways, and Scum very much changed my life.”
Clarke’s 1979 picture is not the only of his works that inspired Roth, though. He also drew attention to 1989’s Elephant, produced by Danny Boyle, telling of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. “I think there are about three lines of dialogue in the whole thing, and it’s an extraordinary film,” Roth said. “It was fascinating to watch. It was heartbreaking and very difficult, but on a cinematic level, it woke me up and really inspired me.”
Roth made his debut with Clarke, clearly one of the biggest influences in his life, on 1983’s Made in England, and gave him the skills that would have him succeed in the rest of his career. Roth noted, “[He] was the director who taught me about being on set and being in front of the camera. He liked to use Steadicams.”
