Murray embraces tough role

SITTING through the premiere of his latest film, St Vincent, Bill Murray was unexpectedly moved.

“I thought, ‘Well, I better not be crying when the lights come up,’” Murray recalled in an interview shortly after the film’s Toronto Film Festival debut last year. “That would be bad for my image.”

His image – deadpan and dry, but always game, ever-adventurous – has swelled over the years.

For an actor who has worked irregularly, St Vincent, which opened in South Africa yesterday, involves his most challenging part in years. It’s a technically demanding role that includes a coarse Brooklyn accent and portraying the aftermath of a stroke.

Murray reflected on his newfound ambition, his Oscar hopes and how he stays relaxed.

AP: This might be your biggest part since Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers in 2005.

MURRAY: It is ambitious and it is larger. It really was a big, leading part. I thought to myself, “God, I haven’t had to be the leading part in a while.”

AP: Playing a stroke victim rehabbing with slurred speech would scare me if I was an actor.

MURRAY: Scared me, too. I hate that not-having-your-faculties acting. That’s like acting school. I don’t want to go to acting school, ever. Life could be worse. I’m not complaining. I could be the guy with the stroke.

AP: This film could have easily slid into sentimentality, something you’ve made a career out of avoiding.

MURRAY: Sentimentality to me is a symbol that we’ve left the planet. OK, bye-bye. Let me know when you come back because you’re no longer here. You just left. It reminds of being at a funeral, like my dad dies and the grief is just overpowering. And all anyone can say to you is, “Well, he’s probably up there in heaven, bowling with Uncle George.” It’s like, “Yeah, that’s probably it. He’s up there bowling with Uncle George.” He’s dead. He’s gone. What am I going to do? Talk to me. Don’t make up your own dreamscape. Stay here with me, will you? Don’t go away.

AP: You’ve long avoided separating yourself from the public.

MURRAY: Most people are fine. The percentages are the same as they are in your life, the people you meet. The range of experience is the same for all of us, I think. I just have a lot more of them.

AP: Why don’t you surround yourself with the kind of representatives most celebrities have?

MURRAY: From the first time I was ever given a bodyguard, I thought, “Oh my god, I’m going to be assassinated.” It made me think I was going to be shot. So I never liked it. I never liked the sensation of it.

AP: Harvey Weinstein will surely push you for an Academy Award nomination for this.

MURRAY: Oh, God, yeah. That’s what Harvey does. He’s not going to like me, but I’m just not going to get on the pony and ride from town to town, I don’t think. I hope not. Movies are magic, or they’re supposed to be something like it. Leave it alone. If you’re telling people how it works, you’re a jerk. You’re a loser that doesn’t know how to do it. But that running after prizes stuff, I was involved in that once before. It’s like a low- grade virus. It’s an infection when you really campaign for it. But it’s fun to win the prize because you get the chance to get up on stage and be funny.

AP: You seem to still enjoy that, like at the Q&A following the festival’s screening of Ghostbusters.

MURRAY: Like shooting fish in a barrel. You can do things with a few hundred people. You can really mess around. You can shock a lot of people at once. You have an incredible liberty to avoid everything that’s expected of a man at a microphone.

AP: You spoke then about the importance of staying relaxed.

MURRAY: You’re unconscious most of the time. Not out cold, but you’re unconscious. Lights on, nobody home.

AP: So it doesn’t always come naturally?

MURRAY: ( Speaks at length about breathing deeply and relaxing tension in your body.) Then you can almost perceive a sort of connectedness between the parts in you. You’re not taut anymore. You’re free. You’re available for the next thing that’s there. And in the meantime, rather than try to think what that’s going to be, you can just receive something, like grace.

AP: Are you doing a good job of that?

MURRAY: Only when I remember. I’ve actually started saying, “I’m not a worrier.” People say, “Don’t worry about.” And I say, “I’m not a worrier.” I’ve found it to be extremely helpful. – Sapa-AP

MOVED: Bill Murray plays a stroke victim in his latest film.