Tall tale of an actor who fell for the fantasy that is fame
Troubled dwarf actor Herve Villechaize is the subject of a new film starring Peter Dinklage, writes Jane Mulkerrins
IN late August 1993, journalist Sacha Gervasi was dispatched from London to Los Angeles to speak to Herve Villechaize, the French dwarf briefly famous for his roles as James Bond villain Nick Nack in The Man with the Golden Gun, and as Tattoo in the 1970s television series Fantasy Island.
The interview was intended to be little more than a frothy filler, “a 500word, where-are-they-now, fun, dinner-party anecdote,” says Gervasi. The main task of the transatlantic trip was to interview the stars of Beverly Hills, 90210 — the teen drama then at the peak of its popularity.
But his diminutive subject Villechaize dramatically moved the goalposts, discarding the guarded approach that most celebrities adopt in interviews, and choosing instead to give a raw account of the deep anger and unhappiness he felt about the way his life had turned out. A week later, aged 50, he shot himself dead.
Gervasi’s “fun, dinnerparty anecdote” had been transformed into a bizarre and tragic suicide note.
Now, the extraordinary life and death of Villechaize is being retold — albeit in a lightly fictionalised form — in a new HBO film, My Dinner with Herve, starring Peter Dinklage as Villechaize and Northern Ireland actor Jamie Dornan as Danny Tate, the lessthan-enthusiastic journalist to whom the 3ft 10in actor decides to divulge his colourful life story. It is written and directed by Gervasi, who decamped to Hollywood in the late 1990s to become a screenwriter.
Dinklage, famous for playing Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, joined the project 14 years ago, when Gervasi took him out for dinner and showed him the initial script.
“I didn’t really know too much about Herve at that point. I knew who he was, like everybody else — Tattoo, ‘de plane, de plane’,” he says, quoting Villechaize’s famous catchphrase from Fantasy Island. “And obviously, because of my size, I had a certain curiosity about the guy. But talking to Sacha, it was apparent how interesting this guy was, how fascinating his life was.”
But, 14 years ago, while an acclaimed actor, Dinklage was far from a household name. It was only after the huge success of Game of Thrones that he had the star power to “sell” the script, which Gervasi first wrote 25 years ago, to executives.
“It took a quarter of a century, it took Peter Dinklage, and it took Game of Thrones — but we did it in the end,” says Gervasi.
Villechaize’s story is so dramatic as to be almost designed for the screen.
He grew up in a middleclass family in Paris, the youngest of four sons and the only one with dwarfism, most likely caused by an endocrine disorder.
“He had a tremendously complicated relationship with his mother,” says Gervasi. “He told me: ‘She loved me, but she couldn’t bear the fact that her body had produced this quoteunquote freak’.” His father, meanwhile, took him around the world — including to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and the Mayo Clinic in America — trying every radical, and often painful and invasive, procedure to help him grow.
He was a prodigiously talented painter, entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study art at the age of 16, with a successful exhibition on his graduation and some high-profile fans of his work. A painting he had given as a gift to Greta Garbo went under auction in 2012.
But in 1950s France, “there was an enormous, almost medieval intolerance towards little people,” says Gervasi. “Herve would be walking down the street, and people would just kick him in the head and beat him up.”
Little wonder, then, that at 21, with a few hundred dollars in his pocket, he left France for America, settling in New York and becoming part of the bohemian downtown art and theatre scene, where difference was celebrated, winning roles in plays and small independent films. Having learnt English by watching John Wayne films on television, he also adopted the Wild West attitude too, carrying large knives on him at all times, “so he never came off second in a street fight again”, says Gervasi, who would come face to face with one of the weapons.
“I’d done the interview and asked all the expected questions about the Bond movie and Fantasy Island. I was packing my tape recorder and notebook away, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a lot of rapid movement. I turned around, and Herve was standing to my right, two feet from me, with a knife. He said: ‘OK, so I’ve told you all the bullshit stories. Now do you want to hear the real one?’
“I thought, ‘I’m about to be shivved to death by the dwarf from Fantasy Island.’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
But then, says Gervasi, “he presented himself as this incredibly mischievous, dangerous, well-educated, articulate character, and it blew the whole notion that he was just a punchline out of the water. So, we spent three days together over a week [in the film, condensed into one night] and he told me the story of his complex upbringing — it was really heartbreaking stuff.”
It also became clear to Gervasi that Villechaize had thought fame would be the answer to all his problems.
“Because of his insecurities, because of his background, because of all the rejection he suffered, he reached out for fame to try to soothe himself, to try to make it better,” says Gervasi.
But fame was a fickle friend. After the high of Bond, Villechaize then spent four years living in his car, unemployed, until he won the part of Tattoo, Mr Roarke’s assistant in Fantasy Island. Villechaize stole the show, but he also developed a reputation for drinking, womanising and being difficult on set, demanding the same wages as lead actor Ricardo Montalban, and a bigger trailer than his co-star. He was eventually fired from the show — and then, in 1985, was sentenced to a year’s probation and fined $425 for illegally carrying a loaded weapon.
The film is, therefore, “a meditation on fame — the toxicity of it, and the hollowness of it,” says Gervasi. The film shows Villechaize returning to the set where Fantasy Island was filmed, reflecting on his life and recognising his own role in his failures.
“He realises he’s no different to anyone else, that he too has fallen for the fantasy that something or someone could take away the pain of life,” says Gervasi.
“If people rely on this ephemeral, empty thing to fill up the void inside them, then they’re screwed,” he says, emphatically. “Here’s an example of someone, who — dwarf or not — fed off fame and it devoured him.”
Dinklage agrees. “Herve followed this fame balloon that floated by, and I think it derailed him from what was important. I’m not judging him,” he stresses.
“He was a very intelligent, very artistically driven gentleman and an incredible painter — but fame got the better of him. And fame is a very abstract thing,” he muses. “It only results from good work, and when you attach yourself just to the fame part of it, without the underlying reason for the fame, the work, then you’re lost, I think.”
Dinklage recently received his third Emmy award for his role in Game of Thrones. Are opportunities for those with dwarfism — or anyone who is in any way different — significantly better now than they were in Villechaize’s time?
“I don’t know if it is all that different now,” Dinklage ponders. “If you turn on the TV around Christmas time, it doesn’t look very different — that’s some panto s*** right there. Tyrion was written for somebody my size, but he broke the walls of that and became a much more complicated person.”
He’s at pains to stress he isn’t judging anyone who chooses to play Santa’s Elf, or one of the Seven Dwarfs. “People need to work, people need to pay the bills. But that’s something that never interested me. I’d rather just work awful office jobs instead,” he says.
Indeed, Villechaize actively played into his dwarfism, even wearing T-shirts bearing the logo ‘Bionic midget’.
Dinklage’s approach is very different.
“With Peter, the fact that he’s a little person is the third thing he wants you to know about him, after the fact that he’s a great actor, and devastatingly handsome and charismatic,” says Gervasi.
“And I think, if there is a change that has happened [in opportunities for, and attitudes towards, people with dwarfism], it’s largely because of what Peter’s done.
“He’s redefined what it means to be a little person.” ‘My Dinner with Herve’ is on Sky Atlantic next Monday at 9pm
‘I’m about to be shivved to death by the dwarf from Fantasy Island’