‘He was a very dear friend’: Cary Elwes on life after The Princess Bride — and losing Rob Reiner | film

IIn 1988, actor Cary Elwes’ career declined. His latest film, a fantasy film in which he played a farm boy turned adventurer hero, was a box office hit and the actor was left out of work for a year. One day he was in a New York restaurant when he saw Al Pacino, so he went and introduced himself. “He asked me if I was working, and I said no,” Elwes recalls. “You need to practice your,” he said [acting] Muscles, he asked me to go back to school and train. Pacino put him in touch with the Lee Strasberg Institute, where he studied with his friend and mentor Charlie Lawton. “I auditioned, got in and ended up working with Al’s mentor, and it changed my life.”

But the meeting with Pacino was not the only event that changed Elwes’ life that year. The “failed” film in which he played the handsome farmer Westley? That was The Princess Bride, a satirical fairy tale that was also an adventure story aimed at adults and children alike, which its director Rob Reiner later said was a marketing nightmare. A year after its theatrical release, it was released on VHS and suddenly took on a life of its own.

Now, nearly 40 years later, The Princess Bride is one of the most beloved films of all time, celebrated for its stellar cast — Billy Crystal, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Robin Wright, and Peter Cook — and its series of catchphrases: “As you wish,” “Unthinkable,” and “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” They are, as Elwes says, “a testament to… [famed novelist and screenwriter] William Goldman starred. He put more memorable lines into one movie than any other in the history of cinema.

In the decades since, Elwes has kept in touch with Reiner – who also directed This Is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally – and who was found dead in his home last December along with his wife, producer and photographer Michelle Singer. The couple’s son Nick Rayner was later charged with their murder and is due to stand trial later this year. Elwes and Rob Reiner often appear together at The Princess Bride anniversary events where they entertain audiences with silliness and constant laughter on set. “He was a very dear friend and I miss him terribly,” he says now. “It’s a tragedy, an absolute tragedy.”

On Sunday, Elwes was on stage at the Academy Awards alongside a number of Reiner’s friends and collaborators including Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Meg Ryan, Kiefer Sutherland, Demi Moore, Kathy Bates and John Cusack to pay tribute to the late director and his wife Michelle Singer Reiner.

Elwes, 63, speaks from his home in Los Angeles, where it is early in the morning and where he refuses to turn on his camera: “I haven’t shaved. Is it okay for us to do audio recording? I’d just prefer that,” he says in his trans-Atlantic accent (Elwes grew up in London but has lived in the US since he was 18). He keeps his answers short but polite, calling my name periodically the way celebrities do to indicate they care.

We’re here to talk about his latest film, Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, which tells the true-life story of Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), an Indianapolis businessman who visited his mortgage brokers in 1977 and took one of their executives, Richard O. Hall (Dacre Montgomery), hostage. Kiritsis tied a sawed-off shotgun to Hall’s neck using a piece of wire and took him to his apartment. There he invited the media to camp out while he publicly made his demands on the company he said had cheated him over a piece of real estate; These demands included canceling his debts and an apology from the company president.

This leader is played by none other than Pacino, who Elwes has been friends with since that first meeting. It’s a clever bit of a cast that references Dog Day Afternoon, the Sidney Lumet classic from 1975 in which Pacino’s small-time crook attempts to rob a bank and quickly finds himself in over his head. Both Dog Day Afternoon and Dead Man’s Wire feature working-class men struggling to make ends meet and committing crimes out of desperation.

Elwes did not remember the case when he read the script, but he said the moral “grey area” surrounding Kyritsis’ actions caught his attention. The film shows what happens “when people feel pushed to the edge, and sometimes they make decisions they later regret. More people. More people.” [today] They feel as if they are marginalized or put in a corner. “We are not advocating resorting to violence but are just trying to show that this is what can happen.”

Elwes plays local cop Mike Gable, who also worked as an undercover narcotics investigator. Gable, who died in 2016, was a master of disguise, which seems appropriate because Elwes is barely recognizable in the role, sporting a beard and long brown hair and looking indescribably cool wearing a terracotta collar and brown leather jacket. “This jacket is the one that Mike was wearing. It’s not the actual jacket, but I met his kids who showed me pictures, so we just tried to recreate it. We wanted to give it that authenticity, you know?”

Dead Man’s Wire was clearly admired by many of Elwes’ favorite directors of the 1970s, the ones he grew up with as a child growing up in London. “Obviously Billy Friedkin, Scorsese and Sidney Lumet. The plan was to try to make a film that evoked that era in cinema.” How does a boy from Paddington make it to Hollywood? “You had a big dream, Fiona!” Eloise replies. “Even as a kid, from the moment I discovered television, I wanted to be in the entertainment industry. And I just showed it. I really believe in that. I read a bunch of biographies of my favorite actors: Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers, Peter O’Toole. I was completely focused on doing everything I could to get into this business.”

It didn’t hurt that Eloise’s stepfather, Elliot Kastner, was an accomplished film producer from America, whose credits included “Where Eagles Dare” and “The Long Goodbye.” Through Kastner, 15-year-old Elwes spent a week working as Marlon Brando’s personal assistant, after the actor’s regular personal assistant called in sick. Brando was filming Superman: The Movie at Shepperton Studios and Elwes had to “answer the trailer door, get his meals, get his new pages for him — and make sure he got to the set on time.” I’d say that sounds terrifying for a teenager. “I was a little nervous,” Eloise answers calmly. “He was a legend and I looked up to him.” He pauses and adds: “So I had two godfathers who influenced my life, which is very strange.”

When Elwes immigrated to the United States, he studied acting at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Shortly after graduating, he auditioned for the 1984 film Another Country, starring Rupert Everett and Colin Firth, and got the job. “I got it on my first audition, which I wouldn’t recommend because then I thought it was too easy.” Next, he played Lord Dudley, opposite Helena Bonham Carter’s Queen, in Lady Jane, a role that prepared him well for the role of the heartthrob in The Princess Bride. When the latter failed, it was a wake-up call for Eloise. A new approach was needed.

The meager job offers that came in during the year of unemployment in New York, he says, were all about swords and princesses. “So, even though The Princess Bride wasn’t a success at that point, the casting directors wanted to cast me [as the romantic lead] And I don’t want that. I wanted to play character roles. His stint at the Lee Strasberg Institute solved the problem, allowing him to showcase his versatility as an actor. Since then, he has appeared in war films (Glory), horror films (Saw franchise), thrillers (Twister, Kiss The Girls, Mission: Impossible), comedies (Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Liar Liar) and in popular TV shows including The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Stranger Things.

When choosing a next job, he says, if I come across “something I’m a little afraid of, that’s usually the thing I’m drawn to.” However, it is his role as the floppy-haired hero in The Princess Bride that remains most famous and celebrated. There is rarely a day when Elwes goes out and is not asked to repeat Westley’s immortal phrase: “As you please.” If he finds it boring, he’s too smart to say so. “This film brings people and families together,” he says. “I feel like I have a responsibility to that, but it’s a wonderful responsibility. You’re lucky as an actor that your work resonates with anyone, so I don’t take that for granted.”

Dead Man’s Wire hits theaters on March 20.