Huston takes an epic risk
Why re-make a classic? That’s the question put to Jack Huston, scion of screen royalty
Why would you want to remake Ben-Hur? In the 136 years since it began life as a wildly popular novel by a former American Civil War general, it has spawned numerous stage versions, an animated series, and three films, two of them classics preserved in the United States Library of Congress.
The silent 1925 version, and the 1959 William Wyler film were the most expensive productions in history when they were made, and the latter carried off 11 Academy Awards. It also saved MGM from bankruptcy and sealed Charlton Heston’s matinee-idol status. By most measures, you would think Ben-Hur has been done.
Jack Huston, the Anglo-American actor stepping into Heston’s sandals for the new 3D version of the galley slaves and chariots epic, doesn’t see it that way at all. For the 33-year-old – scion of Hollywood royalty and a dark horse with bookmakers to be the next James Bond – the better question would be, why on Earth wouldn’t you want to remake Ben-Hur?
‘‘I’m not one of those people who ever says, ‘Why would you do that?’’’ Huston explains.
Huston family history has given him confidence. He cites his paternal grandfather, John, the legendary double Oscar-winning director of The African Queen and The Asphalt Jungle, who ‘‘obviously did The Maltese Falcon very well the third time, but it was made twice before’’. Then there’s his aunt Anjelica, the actress who won her Oscar for Prizzi’s Honour, directed by her father. She has been ‘‘like a surrogate mother’’ to Huston, and was ‘‘one of the biggest champions’’ of him taking on Ben-Hur because she believes that the family ‘‘has had their greatest success through the greatest risks’’.
There was Walter Huston, John’s father, who ‘‘got on a freight train from Canada and came down to New York because he wanted to be an actor’’. He broke into films in his late 40s, winning his Oscar for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son.
Heston’s son Fraser is helpfully a ‘‘very close’’ friend and gave his blessing to the new Ben-Hur.
Huston also spent six months learning to race a chariot, which was evidently great fun. And his Californian girlfriend, Shannan Click, a Vogue and Victoria’s Secret model, moved to Rome with him for the shoot with their young daughter, Sage Lavinia. While he was there, he had a wonderful Italian chef who would be ‘‘in tears’’ serving miserable carbohydrate-free dinners to slim him down to emaciated galleyslave proportions. It can’t have been that bad.
At least, not until the film started to tank, earning a mere US$11.2 million in the US and Canadian ticket sales on opening weekend, prompting analysts to point out the glaringly obvious truth that Huston, in his first big lead role, is no Charlton Heston.
‘‘It’s a shame it didn’t get out there to more people,’’ he says, but ‘‘hopefully’’ the worldwide box office will ride to the rescue. In one way, he adds gamely, ‘‘this is sort of the fun of making movies: you never know what’s going to hit and what’s not’’.
Heston he may not be, but Huston is slim and quite tall, with features that Terence Winter, creator of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, has compared to ‘‘a young Errol Flynn’’. Instantly friendly and fizzing with enthusiasm, he gives the impression that he had the time of his life making Ben-Hur. ‘‘I’m one of those excitable actors who actually thinks this is pretty awesome, what we do,’’ he says.
Having lived in Los Angeles for years (he was born in Norfolk, England), Huston is California-mellow but with aristocratic good manners. His mother, Lady Margot Lavinia Cholmondeley, is descended from Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, and Mayer Rothschild, founder of the banking empire. Home is a ‘‘colonial’’-style house that he shares with Click, Sage, three, and her brother, Cypress Night, born in January.
The Ben-Hur title role seemed right for an actor who wants to play character parts but looks like a leading man. The script was rewritten by John Ridley, who won an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave. Huston says you would be hardpressed to find a better part than Judah Ben-Hur, the Jewish prince who is sent to the galleys by the Romans before earning freedom and revenge in the arena.
He jokes with offhand British awkwardness about the important ‘‘bollocks’’ of the character’s ‘‘journey’’, which means that he gets to look dashing at first, then do the crash weight-loss thing and endure numerous torments before performing most of his own stunts in the genuinely breathtaking final chariot race.
Huston grew up with horses, but the first time he went out on a chariot he struggled just to hold on. ‘‘We got in the arena [a fullscale replica] and we went round. I got off and I said, ‘There’s not a f***ing way in hell I’m going to do that. That’s mental.’
Growing up in England, his family’s fame was peripheral to his childhood. He was 9 when he first understood who they really were, when he went to Anjelica’s 1992 celebrity-packed wedding to sculptor Robert Graham and was introduced to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joe Pesci, one of the villains in the Home Alone films. Huston loved Home Alone at the time. ‘‘I remember just looking around and thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ ‘‘
By 21 he was living in Venice, Los Angeles, in the house across from Anjelica, where her husband normally kept his dogs. Huston spent six years trying to make a living as an actor.
At 27, Huston was ready to chuck it all in and go to Brazil to ‘‘travel, sit, write and paint’’. Back in London, he made one last effort to get a small part he really wanted: a disfigured World War I veteran turned mob hitman in the Prohibition drama Boardwalk Empire. ‘‘I didn’t give a shit because I was about to leave the business anyway.’’
His melancholic, excruciatingly self-conscious killer struck such a chord with fans that he was bumped up to a season regular.
Now he has a whirl of projects on the go. He has just completed Yellow Birds, a war film in which he plays a tattoo-covered Texan with a shaved head, and he is developing a dark biopic of Errol Flynn. He is also working with his sister Allegra on a script that she’s written for him, noting that ‘‘there’s never been an Oscar in the family that has been won when there wasn’t another family member involved’’. - The Times
Ben-Hur is in cinemas now.