Spall takes on firebrand Paisley role
TIMOTHY SPALL acknowledges that the late northern Ireland firebrand politician Ian Paisley was ‘not everyone’s cup of tea’.
But he couldn’t resist portraying him in a new film that imagines how onetime enemies Paisley and Sinn Fein’s martin mcGuinness were reconciled.
The movie, The Journey, fictionalises the real- life efforts by labour Prime minister Tony Blair to bring peace to northern Ireland.
Spall said he wasn’t out to impersonate the Protestant from Ballymena. ‘I try to start to feel and get a sense of the man,’ he explained.
The 59-year-old actor joked: ‘Think about it: I was so right for this part — I’m a foot too short; I’m 20 years too young. and I’m too english.’
luckily for him, though, ‘ the make-up people gave me a brilliant chin and fabulous false choppers — and lifts in my shoes.’
That aside, Spall captures a vital essence of Paisley. There are many who repudiated everything he represented, but Spall’s portrait of the ulsterman shows us someone who stood for what he believed in.
The star, who was sublime as the artist J.m.W. Turner in mike leigh’s masterful film Turner, said he found what he was looking for in his character when he viewed footage and listened to tapes of Paisley as a young man, and discovered a vulnerability that his famous powers of oratory — and belligerent personality — disguised.
The best scenes in nick Hamm’s film are when Spall’s Paisley quietly regards Colm meaney’s mcGuinness, his eyes telling us what he really thinks of the Sinn Fein man.
Spall gives another extraordinary performance in Denial, in which he portrays the controversial — and divisive — historian David Irving, opposite Rachel Weisz.
‘It’s like the 77 bus,’ he told me. ‘nothing comes along for three hours; and then two come along at the same time.’
Both films are being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.