Razor-sharp Rhames - actor Irving Rhames - Interview

Dimitri Ehrlich

Actor Ving Rhames is a big man with superb timing, a graceful way of moving, and a look that could quail mountains. In fact, he's poetry in motion - but not the kind of poetry that you find in greeting cards

Actor Ving Rhames doesn't like to admit it, but his hip-sounding first name is actually short for the less-than-cool "Irving." Perhaps he is chary about it because he has long traded on his rather un-Irving-like image; he has a profoundly menacing onscreen presence several times bigger than his six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame suggests. Until now, his most visible roles, such as that of Demi Moore's bodyguard in Striptease [1996], have been as men exuding scarcely restrained violence. Even when cast against type as a computer hacker in Mission: Impossible [1996], he projected a kind of condensed might. Other actors seem to treat him like a ticking time bomb. In real life, the man who, as a brooding gang boss in Pulp Fiction, made "I'm gonna get medieval on yo' ass" the best threat of 1994, is eloquent and almost genteel. Rhames himself doesn't have to get medieval on anybody's ass - it is his palpable potential to explode that allows him to loom so large in our imaginations.

Born and raised on 126th Street In Harlem, Rhames began acting at Manhattan's High School for Performing Arts (which was popularized by the movie Fame). He then earned a scholarship to Juilliard, where he could put aside the harsh realities of the inner city for the worlds of Moliere, Ibsen, and Chekhov. But Rhames would be reminded of the world he came from when filming The Saint of Fort Washington [1993] in New York City, when he stumbled into his estranged brother, who at the time was living in a homeless shelter.

Rhames can currently be seen In Rosewood, John Singleton's historical drama, and in Dangerous Ground as a South African drug lord. Later this year he'll play an escaped convict turned hijacker in Con Air, and a reluctant recidivist in Body Count. He's also developing, and is particularly close to, a biopic of the first black world heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. Rhames, needless to say, will play the lead.

DIMITRI EHRLICH: Tell me about Rosewood.

VING RHAMES: The film is based on a true story. In 1923, a black man was accused of raping a white woman in Sumner, Florida. It turned out to be a false accusation, but the town went crazy and basically massacred the neighboring, predominantly black town of Rosewood looking for him. My character is a World War I vet and black mason whose pregnant wife had been lynched in Alabama; he winds up killing the guys who [lynched his wife] and flees to Rosewood.

DE: Was that based in fact, too?

VR: Yeah, there were many cases of black vets being lynched in their army uniforms when they returned to the South after the war, and their families were victimized, too. So my character has been in Rosewood for about two days when the rape accusation takes place. The people of Rosewood ask for my help and eventually Jon Voight [who plays a white resident of Rosewood] and I rescue the women and children.

DE: In reality, was the black community able to save Rosewood?

VR: No. As a matter of fact, the women and children that were saved had to leave town.

DE: And what happened to the men?

VR: Many of them died.

DE: There is something in our society that is subtly - or sometimes not so subtly - racist, and that's the projection of power onto the black male as an intimidating presence.

VR: If you look at the film industry - the nature of the beast - it is a racist, sexist industry. For instance, you don't get roles if you are too short, too fat, too tall, not dark enough, not light enough, because you're not 105 pounds and five foot ten if you are a woman. I think that all of those things are based on race, creed, and looks, and not talent. But I don't specifically view the industry from a racial perspective. I have a lot of white actor friends who go through the same hell that my black actor friends do.

We have to look at the dominant culture in our society. Who controls society in most of the world? The white male does. And for whatever reason, white males are often intimidated by strong white women. That's why I think there are so few films that give women lead roles. The same is true for strong black men and strong black women. Then there's the myth of the big black buck in America: Why was it that the slave master roped black women, but when the slave master was gone, his wife would sleep with the black man? Many times the black man was used for mating purposes and so developed the stigma of being a strong, sexual, physical animal. I think the stereotype remains in many areas of today's society. And sometimes people are directed toward it, and sometimes they want to emasculate it.

DE: Just being a man who's pretty big, do you find that people are often intimidated by you?

VR: Oftentimes they are. But I can't live my life trying to change me to appease someone else. If someone's intimidated by me, that's something they have to deal with. When I walk down the streets of New York and an old woman grabs her purse when I pass by, I'm not going to give it a whole lot of energy because I'm not in the wrong, I'm a millionaire and I'm not thinking about grabbing an old woman's purse. Also, there's a difference between presence and physical size. I think I've been blessed with screen presence, but if you look at me next to John Travolta, for example, John's bigger than I am. I do work out and I am muscular, but I am not that big a man.

DE: Pulp Fiction was one of a very few mainstream films that depicted male rape. It's your character, Marcellus Wallace, who gets raped - was that an Issue for you?

VR: It's why I took the role. As an actor, the interesting thing about the character was the fact that the most powerful man in the movie was put in the most vulnerable position. Every man can relate to the thought of getting raped or having his manhood taken. Just that thought causes one to have empathy for the character, to start feeling for him. In a way, Marsellus has become a kind of cult antihero, so that empathy worked for him in a positive way. No one has ever said to me, "How could you let that happen to you in a movie?"

DE: I know you've done this movie Dangerous Ground with Ice Cube. I've Interviewed him several times, and one thing he's talked about Is the Importance of successful black people staying In their communities.

VR: I doubt that Ice Cube still lives in South Central or Compton. Thinking back on the things I went through growing up in Harlem, I thank God I never got involved in drugs or serious crime, although things happened to 90 percent of my friends, whether it was death or jail. It's gotten worse there since then. I love Harlem, but when I have children I don't want them growing up in a crime-infested neighborhood or going to a school where the kids are carrying guns and knives. I'd sleep much better knowing my kids were going to a school where they didn't have to install metal detectors.

DE: What do you think of the so-called ghetto glamour as represented by rappers?

VR: I think what most rappers are rapping about is really fantasy. If someone is really a gangster, I don't think they're spending time in a studio making records about it. Al Capone didn't do that, nor did John Gotti. Some of these things should be taken with a grain of salt. In reference to glamour, I think antiheroism is being glamorized because a lot of people no longer believe the system works in this country.

DE: When you're looking at scripts, how do you weigh their moral content and what effect it might have on people?

VR: I don't concern myself with other people's opinions when I choose a script. As an artist, I have the artistic license to do what I choose to do. I'm not concerned with man's opinion; I'm more concerned with what God will think of me. I know if I give a performance in a film, ten critics could have ten different opinions about it. So "to thine own self be true" is the only role to live by. I think when artists get overly concerned with what other people think, it leads to [self-]censorship and art ceases to grow. So if I read a script and it moves me emotionally and it moves me kinesthetically, and if I find it challenging as an actor, I'll do it.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group