Michael ironside
The sci-fi actor is our Hero.
After playing a head-detonating psychic in Scanners, Michael Ironside became the sci-fi genre’s go-to bad guy, snarling through Total Recall, Highlander II, and Starship Troopers while contributing Method madness to Top Gun, The Perfect Storm and The Machinist. Now, the 65year-old plays a psychotic overlord in post-apocalyptic genre-clasher Turbo Kid...
Turbo Kid is pretty crazy. How was it making it? It’s a lot of fun, isn’t it? The filmmakers [ directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell] were a lot of fun to work with. In a genre known for its excess, they took it to another level that was charming and funny. I saw it with my wife and daughter in Montreal, and when it started, they looked over at me and went, ‘What are you doing?!’ Then by 20 minutes in they were cheering with the crowd. Zeus is a pretty nasty guy. How does he compare to the other baddies you’ve played? We had to take it to the point of parody. That was the most difficult thing. When I talked to the directors, I said, “To make this work, it’s almost got to be satirical.” The idea was to make him derivative of a corporate lackey, like, “Would you like a little cream on your cereal? How about some blood and an eyeball?” When did you first become a sci-fi fan? As a child in the early ’50s I read Robert Heineman, Frank Herbert, Aleister Crowley. Sci-fi gave me comfort. When everybody was running around with Hopalong Cassidy gun belts and hats, I didn’t get it. My western genre was more like The Martian Chronicles...
What is it you love about sci-fi? I love that you can deliver a social or political message. With V, that was originally not a science-fiction story, it was historical fiction. What if Hitler had overrun England earlier and the rest of the world was Nazi? It was turned down by the network, so the writers turned the Nazis into aliens. So V was basically a political drama. So much sci-fi does that; it’s a way of icing the cake. What was it like working with Paul Verhoeven on Total Recall and Starship Troopers? Paul is a friend and he’s one of a handful of directors I would call a full-on bonafide director who is in charge of what he’s doing. When you’re working with Paul, he is in charge. He’s like Walter Hill or David Cronenberg. I loved working with Paul because he knows exactly what he wants and has no problem asking for it, sometimes demanding it! You’ve also been in some pretty iconic stuff like Top Gun… I don’t look back and go, ‘Wow, I was in an iconic film,’ I look back and they’re like old cars I’ve owned. I kind of look back with a certain amount of sadness over Tony [ Scott] lately. I saw him a couple of years ago and he didn’t recognise me. I thought, ‘Oh, he’s having a bad day.’ The industry has a way of propping people up and sending them forward, but there was something going on with Tony. Is there anything you’d like to do that you haven’t yet? I’m 65 fucking years old, I’ve got maybe nine years left where people will pay me money to do what I do. I’ve been encouraged to go behind the camera for the last 10 years, but I’ve never really wanted to. I’d like to work with Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro. I love del Toro’s joyousness; he has a passion and a sense of humour. He always mixes politics and horror together so well.
‘When you’re working with Paul Verhoeven, he is in charge’