Meeting Lance Henriksen

 

Lance Henriksen and Millennium co-star Megan Gallagher.
 

One of the nicest actors we’ve ever met, and who we’ve been fortunate enough to interview twice is Lance Henriksen. He is best known for his roles in action, horror and sci-fi movies, in particular Bishop in the Alien films. He also played Frank Black in Fox TV series Millennium. However, his list of films reaches to almost 100 movies, including The Terminator, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Damien, Omen II. Hellraiser, Pumpkinhead – the list goes on.

 

Our interview took place on a balcony at a Memorabilia Show, and Lance was enjoying the atmosphere of the event. “This is so much fun. It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this and its great fun, meeting the fans and talking to them.”

Rob Tysall and Lance Henriksen

 We asked him about his early ambitions to be an actor, to which he replied, “I always wanted to be an actor, even when I was a little kid. When I used to run away from home, I'd go to movies and sit all night watching Kirk Douglas. When I was 16, I tried getting into the Actors Studio and they told me to get lost. I said: 'I'll come back when I'm a man', and I came back when I was 30. I went to sea, I travelled the world ... I was waiting."

 

You can't do every movie - although I do a lot of them - and the thing I'm longing to do is… it's not that I think I'm funny…but I long to do a situation comedy. The challenge for me in a part is if it's something I haven't done. If I'm going to have a rough time doing it, then that's what I'll do. If I'm in the comfort zone, I can't. I have to get off-balance enough to be alive."

 

"I'm pretty slapstick in my life but nobody sees that. You get typecast. I'm from New York and I have a shit-detector that's outspoken. I'm very streetwise and the producers detect that. So, they get me on a movie and kill me. I go into their offices and I'm sure when I leave they say, 'You know, he'd be great to kill'. I've been killed every way you can imagine!

 

“In the Alien films, everything has happened to me. I’ve been ripped in half in the first one. The next one I was chopped up. In Alien vs Predator I was impaled on the Predator’s wristblades.” Laughing Lance added, “They keep bringing me back to life and killing me all over again!

 

Ann in conversation with Lance Henriksen

 “Alien v Predator was made in Prague, made in five months but it was five winter months and very cold, so really what you saw in the film was real, it was very cold. None of the sets were heated, and they were huge sets. None of the scenes were digital except perhaps maybe the crew ship going through the ice because it was impractical to do that in reality.

 

“It was amazing that nobody got hurt on this movie. You’d got this predator – a vast guy anyway but in his outfit, he was eight feet tall. He had to get into training, he had to train like a fighter.

 

“It was the most wonderful ensemble, everybody connected, and we’d all go out to dinner together. And after working with them, you do miss them. Colin Salmon for instance will always be my friend, I made some good friends that I still keep in touch with. I loved doing this film, the writer director Paul Anderson is a lovely guy – a bright, enthusiastic man.”

 As was Lance Henriksen himself!