Once Upon A Fan

Open Magazine has a wonderful interview with Robert Carlyle in which he talks about his movie California Solo, his work on Once Upon A Time and his love of directing. A sample of the interview is below.

What about the process of playing Rumpelstiltskin in the TV series Once Upon A Time? You seem to be absolutely relishing it.

I do, actually, even though it is one of the most intense roles of my life. The character of Rumpelstiltskin is so well-written, dynamic and otherworldly that I’m so glad to have got the chance of doing it my way.

There’s the fact that this guy is 300 years old and he has met so many people in his life that he’s lost to who he really is now, so I didn’t want to give him a normal persona. So he disguises who he really is by taking on different characteristics of people he’s known, every time. But there was something missing, and I found that in my six-year-old son, Pearce, who I once heard making this incoherent sing-song voice (sings it out). And that was it! I injected this childlike quality to Rumpelstiltskin and it became the X-factor it needed.

You seem to enjoy playing the anti-hero. What fascinates you about such characters?

I think, as my career progressed from the late 1980s and early 1990s, I realised that the parts I gravitated towards were those of the anti-hero. And that’s because I have always liked giving a voice to people who didn’t really have any, whether it is the character of a lower-class construction worker like Stevie in Riff-Raff, or whether it’s Gaz, the unemployed steel worker from The Full Monty. And by giving them a voice, I was able to show the audience that everyone’s got a story and no one and nothing is in shades of black and white; everyone’s got shades of grey.

I did, eventually, go through a time when I kind of struggled with this decision and didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. But then I came upon this idea in my mind that an actor is like an artist who paints on canvases. So, in a sense, these characters would be like a series of self portraits, because artists, as they paint themselves through the years, reflect changes in society through these portraits. I realised that I would be doing the same, so I shouldn’t be afraid of this or run away from it, and I should instead embrace this, because there was nothing pompous or highbrow in trying to give people a voice.

Read the full in-depth interview at Open Magazine