Biography

If you were looking for examples of artistic integrity, Hollywood probably wouldn't be your first stop. Yet Tim Roth, fast becoming a major star in America, has it in spades. Having decided early on to involve himself only in movies that interested him, he has steered well clear of inane blockbusters. Indeed, in the first two decades of his career, he made only two studio movies, surely making him the only Big Name who genuinely deserves a Lifetime Achievement gong at the Independent Spirit Awards.

And he's British - very much so. He was born on May 14th, 1961, in London, and might easily have carried the far more English moniker Smith. His father, a Spencer Tracy lookalike named Ernie, was a tailgunner during WW2 and, after 1945, became a Fleet Street journalist. Traveling to countries which vehemently disliked the Brits, he changed his name to the less antagonistic Roth. Tim's mother, Ann, was a teacher who later became a full-time painter.

Tim grew up in the salubrious surroundings of Dulwich, south London, but suffered the terrors of economic insecurity after his parents divorced while he was at primary school. School was initially not a happy place for Roth. Having failed the entrance exams for posher establishments, he was enrolled at the Dick Shepherd Comprehensive in Tulse Hill, where he was beaten up every day for not having an accent like Eliza Doolittle's father. He learned quickly, he now recalls, to speak proper, like. 

His education was not top-notch. He failed his 11-Plus and, after Shepherd's, moved on to the Strand Comprehensive where he was picked on again, this time for being short. As said, not much fun to be had at school. But he did involve himself on one level, a political one. Ernie was a left-winger and would regularly take Tim and his sister along to demonstrations. While at school, Tim took charge of their branch of the then-burgeoning Anti Nazi League.

On leaving at 17, Roth attended Camberwell School Of Art to study sculpture (he'd discarded an earlier ambition to be a missionary), working mostly in bronze. His interest didn't last long. As a joke he auditioned for a part in a musical version of Dracula and, to his amazement, he was cast as The Count himself. Nerves jangling terribly, on the first night he actually wet himself while walking onstage. 

But he loved it - what a buzz. "That's the best choice I ever made", he remembers. Finishing his foundation course, he began to act on the pub theatre circuit and went after his Equity Card, which he got doing Genet at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre. He had no formal training, though he did visit RADA for one day - he got drunk with an actor friend and went to watch a rehearsal of Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus. They thought it was hilarious.

Continuing to gain experience in small theatres (where he met his longtime friend and fellow star Gary Oldman), Roth supported himself by selling ad space over the phone. "I was crap at it", he says. Then, cycling home from Soho one day, he got a puncture, outside the Oval House, a theatre and workshop he attended near the Surrey cricket ground. Going in to borrow a bicycle-pump, he was noticed by some people holding auditions there. He'd recently had his head shaved to play Cassio in Othello, they were looking for a skinhead, they asked him in.

The TV play they were casting, luckily for Roth, was Alan Clarke's Made In Britain. Roth knew Clarke's work well. He'd loved the controversial Scum and says that Ray Winstone's performance in it was one reason why he himself became an actor. And Clarke liked Roth, giving him the lead role of Trevor, the foul-mouthed, supremely aggressive and painfully sensitive lead. Made In Britain was a sensation, appalling people with its graphic (and sadly realistic) portrayal of life at the beginning of Thatcher's reign. The integrity-packed Clarke was a huge influence on Roth, particularly his own directorial debut, The War Zone. Furthermore, as post-production on Made In Britain wrapped, Clarke sent him next door for another audition he knew to be taking place. It was another corker, Mike Leigh's Meantime, and it showed Roth to be an actor of true class.

In Meantime, Roth played Colin, a slow, possibly retarded denizen of a hard estate. The film follows his relationships with a girl who likes him, his brother (who's jealous of his job) and Coxy, a loud-mouthed racist thug played brilliantly by Oldman. Huddled in his Parka, Roth was superb - bewildered, kind, uncomprehending, pitifully warming to any decency shown him. His next movie made an even bigger splash. 

As Myron, John Hurt's fellow assassin in The Hit (a part Joe Strummer turned down due to the drawn-out split of The Clash), he was again excellent, winning the Evening Standard's prestigious Best Newcomer Award. His swagger, by the way, was due to his slightly bowed legs, not any London arrogance. Everything was looking good. He was on the up, and a father too, having had son Jack with girlfriend Lori Baker.

Yet somehow it didn't work out. The UK cinema industry was at a low ebb, there was little work. Roth was known as a prime member of The Brit Pack, along with Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis, but they snaffled the decent parts, won the big awards and, by the late Eighties had moved to the States. Roth got nothing, just a few bits and pieces - a Miss Marple mystery, a Steven Berkoff Kafka adaptation, a dodgy Christopher Lambert mob movie, he was a punk (again) in Return To Waterloo by The Kinks' Ray Davies. 1988 was terrible. He worked in January, then nothing for the rest of the year. He split with Baker, took to drinking and sleeping around, bitterness overcame him. Desperate for work, he travelled to Australia, France and Czechoslovakia.

Then it began to turn around, classy projects coming his way. He played Michael Gambon's psychotic henchman in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, and got his first starring role in a cinema production, as Vincent Van Gogh in Robert Altman's Vincent And Theo. The latter movie was vital. As Van Gogh, Roth was on fairly familiar ground - he was desperately sensitive and eventually unhinged. For many, his performance was a revelation. For Roth itself it had great meaning too. He'd always been angry at his father for leaving, and had only recently reached some form of reconciliation with him. But Ernie died during the filming of Vincent And Theo - an especially poignant event as Van Gogh was Ernie's hero. He was, in fact, cremated with some sunflowers - and a photo of his son as Vincent.

Roth found himself alongside Oldman again, in Tom Stoppard's heavy but hilarious Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. It was getting better, but Roth's future in the UK still looked bleak. Instead of taking on a BBC radio play, he decided on New York and an indie feature called Jumpin' At The Boneyard. Director Jeff Stanzler feared that Roth's accent might undermine his efforts as a depressed Irish American trying to save his crack addict brother but, working hard with a voice coach (as he would for years) Roth pulled it off. Having been convinced success was possible by the efforts of Oldman, he stuck around in Los Angeles. And then Quentin Tarantino, who'd been impressed by Rosencrantz, came calling.

Roth always refused to read for parts, not for anyone, even Steven Spielberg. He didn't get Schindler's List for that reason. But, while out drinking with Tarantino, the wannabe director wrote a few lines down on a cocktail napkin and a drunken Roth did read them. And he was in - as the copiously bleeding Mr Orange in the explosive Reservoir Dogs (the second Roth film to feature an anaesthetic-free ear amputation). Now the parts came flooding in. Most notably, he was an impressive Charles Starkweather in Murder In The Heartland, the character played by Martin Sheen in Badlands. Then there was Nic Roeg's Heart Of Darkness where Roth was Marlow (coincidentally also played by Martin Sheen, in Apocalypse Now). And, of course, there was Tarantino again, and Pulp Fiction, with Roth and Amanda Plummer starting and ending the action as armed robbers Pumpkin and Honey Bunny - foiled at the last by Samuel L. Jackson, Roth's co-star in Jumpin' At The Boneyard.

Naturally, being Roth, he didn't go the blockbuster route, as he could have. He played a hit man (again) in the sombre Little Odessa, and charming cockney convict, seducing Julia Ormond in Captives (researching the role, he spent six weeks on a sex offenders' wing). Next came his first big studio movie, Rob Roy, where he was unexpectedly good as the sadistic, aristocratic Archibald Cunningham, who burns Liam Neeson's home and gleefully rapes his wife, Jessica Lange. He was so good, he was nominated for an Oscar.

Now he was on a roll, in his personal life too. He'd made some good friends, including Sean Penn (also a mate of Oldman's, having starred with him in the tremendous State Of Grace), who'd phoned him after seeing Vincent And Theo, and said "Anytime etc etc". And he had a new wife. At the Sundance Film Festival some years before, he'd met fashion designer Nikki Butler, and they'd fallen for each other. He liked the fact that she hadn't seen any of his films, and considered her "way out of my league". 

She liked his get-up-and-go, the way he said he wanted to see America from the carriage of a freight train and, with a friend, actually jumped on one, riding and hitching up to Canada, then across to Minnesota (they even got busted for trespassing on railroad property). Tim and Nikki were married in 1993, in Belize, while Tim was filming Heart Of Darkness. They have two children, Timothy Hunter and Michael Cormac.

Comfortably off, Roth could easily stick to his avowed intention of taking only interesting roles. He was again great as a slightly slow fellow, this time an ex-con in No Way Home. He was thoroughly loopy as Tupac Shakur's fellow junkie in Gridlock'd (Tupac was murdered the day before post-production was set to begin). He tried Woody Allen with Everyone Says I Love You, and was again excellent as the super-smart killer taunting the police in Deceiver (also known as Liar). And then he was slow AGAIN, as 1900, a piano prodigy who's grown up in the bowels of a cruise liner in The Legend Of 1900. 

Next there was Vatel, a chance to play alongside Gerard Depardieu, and a part as John Travolta's shady buddy Gig in Lucky Numbers. Soon there will be The Musketeer (the draw here presumably being Catherine Deneuve): Werner Herzog's Invincible, about a blonde Jew acting the part of Aryan hero Siegfried in Nazi-era Berlin: Inside Job, a thriller with fellow super-mavericks Christopher Walken and Jennifer Tilly: and, reports state, Emmett's Mark, once again as a hit man, this time one whose employer wants the job called off. And, right now, there's Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes (which Roth took in preference to Speilberg's Harry Potter), where Roth plays General Thade, leader of the gorilla army, who goes after marooned astronaut Mark Wahlberg and chimp activist Helena Bonham Carter.

Where next for Tim Roth? One must assume he will direct again soon. His debut, The War Zone, his adaptation of Alex Stuart's disturbing novel of incest and abuse, won a raft of European awards. Nic Roeg and Danny Boyle passed on the project but Roth, perhaps again inspired by Oldman who'd just made Nil By Mouth, took it on. 

For the lead, he hired his hero Ray Winstone, but for the younger roles put out adverts saying No Acting Required. His choices worked brilliantly. Taking a leaf from Alan Clarke's book, and trying to treat everyone - cast, crew, tealadies - with the same respect, he drew out some tremendous performances. Indeed, so good did Roth consider Winstone that for a while he felt too inadequate to ever act again. What a strange circle that would have made. ~ Dominic Wills

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