“Scared me, too”: the 2014 movie role Bill Murray called “the worst kind of work”
Even though he’ll always be best known for his comedy work, Bill Murray is no slouch in the drama department, either. However, there’s one specific type of acting that he can’t stand, which didn’t stop him from playing a role where he’d be required to do just that.
As so many filmmakers and co-stars have stated over the years, Murray doesn’t do anything that he doesn’t want to do, whether that’s accept a role in a movie, collaborate with a certain creative, or even the simple things, like being nice to his colleagues and not acting like an arsehole every chance he gets.
That makes it a little surprising that he’d agree to star in a picture where his least favourite kind of acting was central to the character he played, but then again, the story of how he ended up agreeing to board writer and director Ted Melfi’s St Vincent was enough of an odyssey in itself to suggest that he’d be open to trying almost anything.
In the 2014 dramedy, the Saturday Night Live alum plays the title character, a curmudgeonly Vietnam veteran who develops an unlikely friendship with the 12-year-old boy who lives next door. When he becomes the kid’s babysitter, he takes the little fella along on a string of oddball adventures to such child-friendly places as the horse track, the strip joint, and the odd dive bar.
Midway through the film, Murray’s Vincent MacKenna suffers a stroke and undergoes physical therapy, and losing some of his faculties ultimately plunges the character into depression, along with all of the other wayward goings-on in his life. It was integral to the narrative, but that didn’t mean the star was keen on the idea when he first read the script.
“It really was a big, leading part,” he reflected. “I thought to myself, ‘God, I haven’t had to be the leading part in a while.” As for playing a stroke victim, which included adopting slurred speech, Murray acknowledged that it was a terrifying prospect: “Scared me, too, I hate that not-having-your-faculties acting.”
Since he wasn’t a trained actor, it took Murray outside of his comfort zone. Even if it was inside his comfort zone, though, he still wouldn’t have been a fan. “That’s like acting school,” he went on. “I don’t want to go to acting school, ever. That was like doing ordinals or cleaning paint with a small razor blade. It’s the worst kind of work. Deep cleaning.”
It was all in service of the character, and as much as he doesn’t like the idea of doing anything with a role that veers too close towards the overly and obviously performative, the veteran was so enthused by the prospect of St Vincent in general that he overcame his aversion and did it anyway.
It wasn’t for nothing, either, with Murray’s turn earning him a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’ for headlining a movie that was nominated for ‘Best Picture’ in the corresponding category, so doing “the worst kind of work” didn’t turn out too bad.
