THE ROGUE ONE
Stephen Lang, back on terrifying form in Don’t Breathe, reflects on his greatest villains
The Party Crasher (The Hard Way, 1991)
“I was coming off a big hit on Broadway, as the original Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men. Coming off a Marine haircut, the idea of doing something funky and fun was appealing. We built up the look — Chuck Taylor sneakers, peroxide hair, this wonderful silky shirt — and turned him into something akin to a cartoon character. I remember bits of my hair would break off from time to time. And I remember Michael J. Fox knocking me out cold with a frigging two by four. He was meant to bring it across my shoulders and brought it across my head. I was gone for 30 seconds.”
Colonel Miles Quaritch (Avatar, 2009)
“I ran into Steve Guttenberg the other night and he had just watched Avatar. He started kvelling about the scene where I jump out of the burning Dragon Ship in my AMP suit. He said, ‘That’s about as classic a movie-villain moment as you’re ever gonna get.’ Another moment people tend to mention is the cup of coffee he drinks in the big battle. I said to the props guys, ‘Get me a black coffee, scaldingly hot, in a metal cup.’ They brought me this plastic cup and I said, ‘Is this all you got? This is a big movie, fellas.’ And for some reason they never got the steam going on the thing. Quaritch will go on his own journey in the sequels. The story is magnificent, but the schedule is a Mongolian clusterfuck, you might say.”
The Blind Man (Don’t Breathe, 2016)
“There’s a Job-like quality to this guy. He’s a tragic figure, but has moved past self-pity and created a kingdom where he can exist. Despite the dark things you learn about him, hopefully you feel a certain amount of empathy. That to me is the real strength of the film: it’s why it transcends the horror genre. To prepare I tried to go about my usual routine as if I was blind. It’s hard to do the balancing series in yoga with your eyes closed. But I did get pretty good at making health shakes with a blender. Some avocado skin snuck in at one point, but I’ve still got my fingers.”