The Rule of Jenny Pen looks terrifying! Does the prospect of sudden ageing frighten you? BenderRodriguez
It’s not sudden. I was in [King] Lear when I was 64 and said: “I need a wig that’s grey because he’s supposed to be 80.” Now I’m 73 and I still think inside I’m a brunette. This is the 54th year of my career. The last decade has just galloped past. I waited for something like this – a project that I latched on to. There’s been a lot of stuff that I turned down. I’m now being very pernickety about what I commit three or four months of my life to.
No doubt there was also a lot of work behind it, but was playing Hector Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean films as much fun as it looked? Have you ever reinhabited the character for a brief moment, to amuse yourself or others? Liam01
Yeah, it was fun. [Director] Gore Verbinski had a kind of pop cultural sense of anarchy. Anyone who liked the Pirates films should also check out Rango, which has his cinematic fingerprints all over it. I’ve reinhabited the character for brief moments, for the Disney ride in Anaheim, and I think Shanghai, and maybe in Florida. I remember having to go and voice some lines after a day on another film, and rolling my eyes going: “Oh my God, will this never go away?” It’s the vanity of being a moment of cinema folklore. It’s fun.
