Lance Henriksen interview

The role of Bishop in Aliens really brought Lance Henriksen to popular attention. He has appeared in a number of cult movies and TV series including The Terminator, Near Dark and Millennium, and he can be seen playing a variation of his role as Bishop in Aliens Vs Predator now available on DVD.

Hey Lance, do the thing with the knife…
Oh man, I’ve been asked to that so many times. I have to do that in restaurants and bars, you know, wherever I go…even at gas stations they ask me to do it.

Does that mean you’re quite good at it now?
Ah, I still get it wrong most of the time…I guess it wouldn’t be as much fun if I was good at it.

The idea bringing Aliens Vs Predator to the big screen caused mixed reactions…
Aliens is a really good story and the first Predator is a great a movie, and for Paul Anderson to merge the two and get away with it successfully, which he did, I think is great.

Some people weren’t very happy with the end result. Sigourney Weaver for instance…
Yeah, well, she wasn’t in it. Nah, it’s a shame she wasn’t happy with it ‘cause it’s a great piece of work.

How do you get such cool roles in great movies? You were in Close Encounters, The Right Stuff, Omen II…
Honest to God, I have no idea. I’m not at all one of those guys that plans a career, it’s all just been an adventure. After one of my first movies, Dog Day Afternoon, Spielberg wanted to meet me and he offered me a six-month job on Close Encounters. I guess I’ve just been very lucky. I’ve never really pursued projects ‘cause it never seems to work. Like there are movies that I’ve heard about that are being made that sound interesting and I never seem to get those! So I guess everybody gets the job they were meant to do.

I’ve read that James Cameron originally wrote The Terminator with you in mind as that character…
I really don’t know how that story got started. What happened was I had been working on a project with Jim down in Jamaica and he gave me a copy of Terminator to read. He came over to my house and said ‘I’m really trying to sell this to the studio and I’m going to make you up as the terminator, so I have something to show them when I go into the meeting’. So then just a couple of weeks before this big meeting Jim asks me to go in, made up as the terminator, about 15 minutes before him and then he’d come in after. So I did. I went to the producer’s office and I kicked the door in and scared the shit of them. So then Jim comes in about 15 minutes later and he got it: the movie was made. I mean it wasn’t about me as the terminator, it was to present the idea, it was about Jim getting that movie made.

What kind of preparation did you do to portray a cybernetic killing machine?
Ha. I just picked a scene and worked from that. I had some cuts put onto my face with makeup and some heavy biker boots and I kind of had an expression on my face like someone who’s up to their eyeballs on drugs and who might stick their face through a windscreen and not worry too much about it. The secretary dropped her notes on the floor and I just sat there and they kept asking me ‘what can I do for you’ and I just sat there looking at them and then eventually Jim came, in much to the producer’s relief.

When did you decide acting was the path you wanted to follow?
I was 16 really. I went into the acting school in New York when I was 16 and they threw me out! I realised I had to come back after I’d experienced a little bit of life. I had no real education either, so I wasn’t ready. I went and spent a lot of time as sea, my father had been in the Navy, so I tried to find out a little about who he was. I sailed on a lot of different ships: shrimp boats, mutton ships that were going to Australia, that kind of thing. In those days, for $150 you could travel from New York to Italy on a Yugoslavian freighter. So I explored Europe, with very little money so I used to work to pay my way and try and see as much of the world as I could. Parts of Asia as well. So I had a pretty adventurous life before I became an actor. And that’s what life is: an adventure.

You’re also very passionate about your ceramics…
Ah, yeah man. I’ve been doing that as long as I’ve been acting, either making ceramics or painting. It’s my way of really being free. You know, when I’m in my studio I am really free man, there’s no time, no pressure. I guess it’s because of my grandfather I suppose, he was an artist.

This interview was originally pitched in November 2004