John Rhys-Davies doesn’t play video games. That’s hardly surprising, given that he’s an 80-year-old Welsh thespian. But it’s also not necessarily due to a lack of interest.
“I’m afraid I don’t have time to play video games. And I really should, but I’m not of that generation,” he admits.
We’re chatting one week ahead of his attendance at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto. While I naturally thought of a million things I could have asked him about his memorable roles as Sallah in the Indiana Jones series or Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was immediately curious about his take on video games. After all, his storied 50-year career, which most prominently spans theatre, film and television, also includes nearly a dozen games, ranging from Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Dune 2000 to appearances as Gimli in the likes of last year’s The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.
Given all of that, the octogenarian has a lot of admiration for both acting in games and the people who actually develop them.
Image credit: John Rhys-Davies
“When I’m on the stage, I obviously have to make big gestures. I can take different moments of time. I can take a pause. When you’re on television or film, you can’t really take too long a pause. That’s why, for instance, doing Treebeard [in The Lord of the Rings], who is phenomenally slow, was such a challenge, because when we read slow on a book, our mind does the manipulation of time for us. But you can’t be slooooow,” he says, mimicking the ancient forest creature’s deep and laboured way of speaking.
“You can’t do that on film successfully because we can’t see the thinking time. Video games, they’re different. They’re often conditioned by the way the game is developed and devised. It has to fit certain exercises that the game requires, so you have those constraints. But the actor’s job, always, is to make the script work. We serve the script. We serve the writer and the producer. And sometimes, of course, you vamp a bit, and the writers chuckle with glee and delight and they will then write extra stuff for it. And that’s great fun, and that’s part of the fun. People who are trapped in offices writing these wonderful stories, but never getting out — they sort of really enjoy that. And actors do, too!”
Of course, games also help expand the world of something like The Lord of the Rings, something Rhys-Davies is obviously quite fond of. I bring up how the recent re-release of the Peter Jackson trilogy’s Extended Editions quickly sold out across Canada — no small feat considering they’re all around four hours long. It was my first time seeing any version of the films in theatres, and that, coupled with the infectious energy of the crowds, made the entire experience all the sweeter.
Given the rough state of the Hollywood blockbuster in recent years, I had to ask Rhys-Davies: what makes these movies so timeless and, for many, leagues above pretty much everything that followed?
“Serendipity, partly,” he says, crediting author J.R.R. Tolkien for being “one of the most extraordinarily successful people” in history. “And as for his work, Lord of the Rings is a great moral story of good and evil that always works for you.” But he says there’s “more” to it.
“When I got asked to do it, I laughed because you can’t make a film of The Lord of the Rings, you cannot do it. It’s one of the rules: anyone who tries fails. But that little man called Peter Jackson had a vision of how to do it, and more than that, he created a film industry in New Zealand that was so successful that it put New Zealand on the map of the world better than any man since Captain Cook,” he said. “His casting was impeccable. You cannot imagine a better casting than the casting that we had. The crew was so fresh and so keen. The designers were passionate about it. There was none of the jadedness of, ‘Oh, it’s another job. It was serendipity,’” he adds.
“Sometimes everything comes together, and what you create is not a project, but a masterpiece. And the only credit that I would claim is I saw that this was a masterpiece, I think, before anybody else did. I got up at a very early press conference and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the press, revise your expectations upwards.’ [I made] three predictions: One, that The Lord of the Rings will do better than the new Star Wars, at which point Peter Jackson went [makes a “head in hands” gesture]. 18 months later, he said, ‘You know what? You were right.’ Two, this trilogy will be amongst the most outstanding films of the decade. And three, in 20, 25 years time, you will look back and realize that they may well be some of the greatest films of all time. And I think they are getting into that category […] I think Lord of the Rings is there in that really top 20 group of the great cinema experiences of all time.”
He says getting to share in that love of cinema — both for The Lord of the Rings and otherwise — is one of the appeals of doing a convention like Fan Expo. But he notes these events have also helped him grow as a person.
“It is fan conventions that have taught me to understand — to look at people and to listen to people. And when you do that, you realize the heroism of people, the magnificence of people, the vulnerability of people. And if you do that, your heart will be touched. And if your heart is touched, then you really learn to love people, and that’s really what fan conventions have given me,” he says. “I mean, it’s wonderful to meet the people who put bread and butter on your plate for the past 50 years. But actually in their own selves, in their own right — if you can actually get a moment under that frantic business of having to shake hands and sign an autograph, if you can actually get that moment of connection with people, that is the most rewarding thing that you can really experience, I think, as an actor.”
And for Fan Expo Canada, specifically, he’s excited for a couple of things. For one, he will reunite at the show with his friend Roger Christian, the Oscar-winning set decorator of Star Wars who designed the original lightsaber. He’s also looking forward to seeing Toronto again after not having visited since before the pandemic.
“I love Toronto. Canadians are wonderful people, anyway, and I love that Toronto is, in many ways, the most international and multicultural but successful synthesis of cultures, I think, in Canada — at least that I know of. I haven’t been back to Vancouver for eight, nine, ten years, either. But I do remember the last time I was in Vancouver, there were a lot of deserted houses and a high level of drug use, and a mixture of success and the sense of a wasteland. And I don’t think Toronto is ever that. Toronto is really an international centre of recognized, international renown. Good people — love them!”
Rhys-Davies will be attending Fan Expo Canada on all four days of the show, which runs from Thursday, August 22nd to Sunday, August 25th. Like other guests, he will be offering paid autographs and photo ops, as well as a panel on the Thursday.
Fan Expo Canada tickets can be purchased here.
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