Huston’s Hollywood heritage

Danny Huston grew up feeling as if he were the son of God, said Hadley Freeman in The Guardian (U.K.). He was born in Rome after his parents, famed director John Huston and actress Zoe Sallis, had an affair while working together on the 1966 epic The Bible. His mother starred as Hagar, Abraham’s second wife, and his dad appeared on screen as Noah and also provided the voice of God. “That’s where the therapy starts,” says Huston, now an acclaimed actor and director himself. “I had a lot of difficulty separating truth from fiction with those characters.” As a youngster, Huston often visited his larger-than-life father on film sets, once trekking to North Africa’s Atlas Mountains for The Man Who Would Be King. “And there was Sean Connery and Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer. For a young boy, it felt like an absolute adventure.” Later, he became his father’s personal on-set bartender, mixing cocktails to match the location. While shooting 1984’s Under the Volcano in Mexico, his father decided to drink Cuba libres. “Normally he would complain and say, ‘No no, the Coke is only there to color it!’” During the making of that movie, “my father was having trouble with the title sequence. It was too slow. I’d been to film school, so I said, ‘You could do this...’ And he said, ‘You do it!’” Huston beams with obvious pride. “And it made the cut.”