Lance Henriksen

Posted on Dec 28, 2011

THE BISHOP OF HOLLYWOOD

From DOG DAY AFTERNOON to THE TERMINATOR to ALIENS and STONE COLD, versatile actor Lance Henriksen never fails to entertain his audience, so Mondo Film and Video Guide’s Ken Knight sat down with the multi-talented Mr. Henriksen for an in-depth interview.

Conducted By: Ken Knight
Mondo Film & Video Guide Feature Contributor

KEN: Born in 1940, you spent your earliest youth in New York living a far different life than you are now. Your first example of public performance being the time you went on a public radio broadcast to tell a sad story whereas listeners could send money. Did living in poverty at such a young age shape the ambition you would possess later on?

LANCE: That’s an interesting question. I was five or six years old when I did that. Truth is when you’re that age you don’t know you’re broke or in poverty but I got a sense when we were doing that show that something was wrong. It was telling a story to reach the edges of what you needed from the listeners. I’m hesitant to call my mother a liar but in effect she was lying but I was doing some acting because you back up your mother no matter what. I think that time, if anything, what it did was…I remember Brando saying that he was good because he was a great liar, you know, I don’t think of myself as being out of that completely as an adult who has lived a long time, I’m certain that kid is still in me. That was the only memory I have from that period so I don’t let it go. My mother is gone, she died, but that’s the only past I got.

KEN: According to your autobiography NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN, you wrote about living in poverty spending time with less-than-cordial people and relatives, even camping out in the infamous 42nd Street theaters you developed a healthy desire for creating fictional stories, characters, and fantasy scenes in your mind. Is it safe to say that Fantasy was your “escape” from harsh reality in a way?

LANCE: Yeah, but the difference was I tried to out it into reality, that part about back on 42nd Street there were nothing but surplus stores and theaters so I went and bought some camping shit and shoe-shine stuff and I took it into the theater with me and I was kinda like creating a character but if the Hudson river hadn’t been there I’d probably gone west, would’ve kept going, I just didn’t know how to get across the river!

KEN: What films that you saw in the 42nd Street Grindhouse theaters made the deepest impression upon you that you might carry with you to this day?

LANCE: THE BIG SKY with Kurt Douglas with them all going up river, the Ohio River on boats with flintlock rifles, you know, always the adventure stuff and back in those days you didn’t have to leave when the film was over, they just kept replaying it and I’d see the films five or six times.

KEN: That time in your youth when you traveled across country with your Mom selling parts of the old Chevy you rode in, do you remember what it was that kept you sane as a kid under such dangerous and dire circumstances?

LANCE: You know what happens, regardless of the conditions that you’re in, if you’re with the only family you got you spin these yarns about where you’re going you know its an intense thing…it’s not like I was sitting there scared, not at all!

I remember my mother, I got caught driving somewhere in the south and a cop pulled us over and he was the town sheriff and my mother talked our way out of it by giving the guy an ashtray. I’ll never forget it. She was basically a nice person but she was slick but again there was no fear involved, those were hungry times but we were still together, that was the main thing.

KEN: Your later job as a Bus Boy in Central City Colorado you experienced your first taste of Hollywood up front and personal when you ran into actor Rod Steiger. Was it at that point where you decided that you wanted to become an actor?

LANCE: No, no, Rod Steiger was years later in New York but when I was in Central City Colorado the thing going on there was this play playing across the street, Julie Harris was in it and I wandered in during intermission and saw this play and this guy came out with an onion (eating it) and somebody said on stage to him: “What are you doing?” and he said: “I’m eating my fucking breakfast!” and when he said that I thought they’d lynch him for saying “fuck” but they all laughed. I thought ‘God, this is great, if I could say what I want to say I’d be a happy guy!’ and that was the beginning of it. I could see there was freedom in it (acting). Years later when I spun a car in the middle of a town intersection I knew if I did that anywhere else I’d get arrested, but look…I’m having fun! And that’s the trade-off.

KEN: After having been told “you’re too young” at the time there in Central City Colorado you lied about your age to enlist in the US Navy and said in your book that it was the high point of your life up to that point in Navy boot camp.

LANCE: Yeah, I was sixteen at boot camp and they gave me a court martial for fraudulent enlistment and asked if I wanted to stay in. While I was in boot camp I was really happy so I said yes! I loved boot camp. I was getting three squares, my own boots, my own clothes and it was a great thing. It was stable, I made friends and I felt like I was going somewhere.

KEN: Upon leaving the Navy you found yourself hitchhiking with a $10 bill in your boot and the clothes on your back, you mentioned in your book that while walking alone out in the desert you suddenly felt “connected” for the first time in your young life. Explain how that felt?

LANCE: I took the biggest step a person makes realizing it’s all on them! Doesn’t matter who your parents are, a kind of epiphany where you feel really responsible for who I am so I gotta find out and it becomes your solo journey as opposed to living in the past. “Don’t let the past take up too much of today”~ that’s a great phrase because what it meant to me at that moment was: “I’m going to do whatever it takes to become my own person!” I had a lot of good ideas but I realized I was only going to do it in my own name and that was the big change.

KEN: In your youth you became an artist and potter. Do those talents still reside in Lance Henriksen?

LANCE: Oh hell yeah, if I didn’t have that I wouldn’t have a very well-rounded life. I love pottery because there’s a lot of labor involved and no one looking over your shoulder or giving you lines to read or you know a place you have to be…it’s a nice life, very soothing and very challenging.

KEN: Another burst of motivation you mentioned came in the form of a catering job in Phoenix Arizona where you got to serve a sitting U.S Senator and future U.S President. Who was he and what did you think of him as the future unfolded after that chance meeting?

LANCE: Well I got to tell you something man, we got to Phoenix (during the road trip) and I was just fifteen gonna turn sixteen, I went into a Salvation Army store and bought a Tuxedo for a waiter job and it was the dumbest looking thing, nevertheless it was only five dollars and they gave me this job waiting on the head table where this guy John F. Kennedy who was getting the nomination~ I dropped ice cream on his plate and brought the dessert, all that stuff and then afterwards, I didn’t know who the hell he was or anyone else at that table but at the end of it he got up and made a speech and everyone in the place~ you could hear a pin drop! He was so articulate and commanding, he said a great line I’ll never ever forget~ “What they say about America is there will be a million miles of blacktop roads and a thousand lost golf balls and that’s all that’ll be remembered of America…I’m not going to let that happen!” I think we all get into each others’ lives you know, like right now.

You never know what it signifies and I never knew what it signified until later in my life and I remember the day Kennedy was killed, that really was another significant day, I was much older and I had a motorcycle, a real piece of shit and I was sitting on the edge of a mountain up at Berkeley looking down at new construction going on, all the workers on roofs and I saw these guys suddenly drop their hammers and they started running to a central point talking about President Kennedy being killed.

It was a remarkable day, but throughout my life I’ve run into some really interesting people and more and more so as I became an actor and a painter. I’ve had an extraordinary time just accidentally running into certain people!

KEN: 1966 was a banner year for the starving actor Lance Henriksen was it not with your role as a “mime” which involved your first-ever “death scene” where you jumped off stage in a loin cloth right after a big “orgy” scene at Sodom and Gomorrah. Was that the role that put you on the “launching pad” for more stage work later on?

LANCE: Yeah, but thing was (laughs) that’s pretty funny…that was Moses and Aaron with Sarah Caldwell directing and they just said: “Who wants to commit suicide off the balcony?” What it meant was I had to throw myself off the balcony in a loincloth and land on the stage, thirty-five or forty feet almost at an angle and I said I’d do it since I felt pretty invincible! I had an enormous bruise on my hip but it was great and it gave me a feeling for theater and I remember a lot of good came out of it because I had the guts to do it and I never did mime before. Later, a Cuban buddy of mine asked if I’d like to go to an audition and said sure! We got up to the 100 Mimes in line for only 4 roles and we watched them thinking ‘Shit, I can do that!’ pulling ropes and going up imaginary escalators, all that, and my buddy and I got two of the role Mime roles!

Thing is, look what happens when you say “YES” ~ anyone can say “no” but someone comes to you with an idea and I say WHY NOT?! I wish the world was more like that, and how about electing Ron Paul for President!

KEN: We are in the same boat brother!

LANCE: Yeah man, I am so sick of the rest of it, the rest of these politicians are not my kind of people. I think miracles are very possible right now; people are so disillusioned I think Ron Paul is going to step into the light.

KEN: Your first feature film was IT AIN’T EASY in 1972 which met with bad reviews. Is this a film Lance Henriksen would rather forget or chalk up as a watershed moment?

LANCE: No, no, I’d rather forget it, watershed moments have some universal aspect to them and that one didn’t!

KEN: Years later you worked with future Oscar-winner Al Pacino in the film DOG DAY AFTERNOON and in 1977’s Broadway project THE BASIC TRAINING OF PAVLO HUMMEL and you made an impression on Pacino to the point he asked you to read for OTHELLO. Something involving a water pistol??

LANCE: (laughs) Yeah, right. He asked me not because he thought I was a good actor, he just needed another set of lungs to talk so I went and did it but Al was always one who wanted to do plays and work on plays and that one (Pavlo Hummel) was Broadway which was great and it ran for six months. But with DOG DAY AFTERNOON I knew almost everyone in that movie you know a lot of the actors in the bank, we all knew each other. I did work in New York a long time after that once like PRINCE OF THE CITY. Again, it was an era in New York that was great work with Pacino and De Niro and all kinds of stuff like THE GODFATHER happened. Everyone in it bonded, Al Pacino was the lead and it was an era where everyone wanted to be good actors, we all hung out at the same bars because in New York you got a park, a bar, or a theater to get off the street from, that’s it!

KEN: Your second major film role was CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. What was your most memorable moment working on that Spielberg film?

LANCE: I worked on the movie for almost six months and I was you know, I call it a “fart-catcher”~ you don’t have many lines, you’re just always there, like when the lead says something good you laugh, so it’s a “fart catcher”!. I’ve done a few of them. When you start out in acting you say “Yes” because if you say: “I’m only going to wait for great movies”~ well you could turn 90 years old and still haven’t done one. So I was an adventurer, I’d take on anything.

KEN: One film genre you’re most noted for is Horror, from THE EYES OF DR. CHANEY to DAMIEN: OMEN II and later PUMPKINHEAD. Your role as Sergeant Neff in OMEN II had your befriending the young Anti-Christ Damien as you trained him at the Military Academy he attended. Was it easier for you to play a military role since you had been in the military in the past yourself?

LANCE: Sure! Yeah, in fact I actually gave them something I wanted to do. I was up at this Military Academy in Chicago where they shot my scenes and I said: “This guy just came off the battlefields of Vietnam with his sea-bag and goes to this military school just to guard this kid”. I didn’t consider it a “devil” thing~ I don’t believe in the devil having any kind of power like that, you know, it was a fantasy.

KEN: Did you bond with Writer/Director James Cameron during shooting of the B-movie cult film PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING?

LANCE: Yeah, sure did, yeah. I have a lot of respect for him. Again, through tribulation you respect each other. Jim had the smallest budget on the planet to do that movie, worked his heart out and I was part of it so how could we not become friends?

KEN: Don’t tell us you had a part in making those silly flying piranha?

LANCE: No, but Jim was up in a room making as many of the fish as he could and down in the parking lot the crew was making miniatures, we had to use our imaginations, I even bought my wardrobe off a waiter!

KEN: Your foray into television included a stint on the soap opera RYAN’S HOPE and the gritty cop show CAGNEY AND LACEY where you play a Hostage Negotiator. Is it true that your footage from that show was later used as a training film by the US Govt for hostage negotiators?

LANCE: Yeah it was so well written, it was great and that’s true…but the U.S Government also used training films on V.D.! (laughs)

KEN: In the early 1980s you found yourself helping your friend James Cameron get a deal for THE TERMINATOR. Is it true that Lance Henriksen gave the Hemdale big-wigs their first glimpse of what Cameron had in mind as a “Terminator”? Tell us about how you pulled it off.

LANCE: Well what happened was Jim said to me: “Go in there fifteen minutes before I get there to pitch the movie” and he had already painted me as The Terminator so I did, I went there fifteen minutes before him, I was dressed as a punker with tin foil on my teeth and I kicked the door in (laughs) and I think the remark from Hemdale was: “Anybody but him!”. I might have freaked them out a bit, thing was~ I just wanted my friend to get his movie whether I became the Terminator or not. I ended up in the movie though!

KEN: THE TERMINATOR Producer Gale Anne Hurd later stated that you were originally considered to portray the Terminator in the film but Schwarzenegger got the part and became the “icon”. Tell us about what the “Lance” Terminator might have been like in comparison to the “bulldozer” Arnold Terminator?

LANCE: (laughs) That’s pretty funny man! It certainly would have been more Machiavellian. Hydraulics can be very deceptive. If you’ve ever used a log-splitter you know what I mean, it doesn’t mean bulk is necessary so I could have been much more Machiavellian and more of a “surprise”. I can’t second guess it, again when you make a films it’s an adventure and a lot of things happen while you’re making it and since I didn’t have that role I can’t really say if it would’ve been better but I would have given it my all!

KEN: Your role as Det. Hal Vukovich in THE TERMINATOR was one of a seasoned cop with the penchant for talking too much but who battled to the death with the Terminator attacking the police station. Did you enjoy this brief but memorable role and what was it like to work alongside actor Paul Winfield?

LANCE: Oh man, I gotta tell you I loved Paul, he was a really funny guy in fact we had so much fun people on the set said that Paul and I should’ve done a comedy cop show! At one point James Cameron considered bringing back Detective Vulkovich in T2 in a wheelchair as a real angry cop (laughs). Anyway it was a great experience watching all that happen. When we went to do ALIENS that was a huge movie and Gale Anne Hurd is a great Producer and we shot in England. We all got there and Bill Paxton and the others were all happy to be there, all devoted to Jim Cameron but the British weren’t too happy with us, they though Cameron couldn’t pull it off like Ridley Scott did, which was bullshit. I didn’t like the way they were treating us, bringing tea every five minutes and calling us ‘artistes’. I’d say: “What, are you a wise-guy, I’m just an actor, man!” It was like two rough boards rubbing together but we got the movie made.

KEN: You’ve talked about how the paintings of H.R. Geiger had an impact on you in your youth. Since you would later portray the pivotal role of “Bishop” in the film ALIENS in 1986 (as well as ALIEN VS PREDATOR in 2004), is it safe to say that you and the Giger-inspired “Alien” were just meant to be together?

LANCE: You know, like we were talking about with JFK, I remember I was in New York and back in those days I was only painting then, painting pictures and there was an exhibition of Giger’s work at a gallery and I was going out with this really hot chick and she said we’re going to the opening of Giger’s stuff and I walked in with her and saw those “Alien” pictures of his “necromancia”~they were these beautiful, detailed, great paintings and I walked in and saw it and he (H.R.Giger) was there and I hadn’t connected yet and I wasn’t even an actor then. It was like walking through a forest elbow-to-elbow with the unexpected and later in life that’s an intricate part of your life, kind of like a “fate” I think…strange isn’t it?

KEN: Explain what you refer to as “gathering” preparing for a film role?

LANCE: Well, really if I have enough time I keep the script as far away from me as I can~ I read it over and over again but I don’t make any decision yet and slowly but surely it’ll come to be about what the guy wears, what his day is like, all this info comes into your mind and belief in the story by its bits and pieces rather than grabbing it up and suddenly you’re locked into that and becoming very close to what you want to do in the movie, and that’s done privately then you get on set working with the Director and he starts influencing it and so it’s a building process, “gathering” ~ you want to hang out with people who might lend themselves to that character so I go through the script many times in a day before a decision is made.

KEN: Your role in NEAR DARK as well in PUMPKINHEAD have cemented you as a horror film icon and word has it that you met author Anne Rice about adapting “Interview with the Vampire” for the big screen. Was is true that you were considered for a lead role in that film and what was it like for Lance Henriksen to meet Anne Rice?

LANCE: Oh man, it was very cool! Especially back then with Anne, she had this huge plantation house in New Orleans’ Garden District and she’d throw parties with all her really wonderful very eccentric friends and so yeah, I got to meet her and what was really wild about it you know, NEAR DARK hadn’t been made yet but I had read a few of her books and had a lot of respect for her writing because it was very alluring, her writing would make you feel like it was personally happening to you, you know, she wrote “Interview with the Vampire” because her young daughter was dying of Leukemia at the time and that was her way of handling it, to write that book, so when you know how personal her stuff is, it made me feel like I knew her and it was really a wonderful evening. I think Sam Raimi was there also, and a lot of cool people who were working in New Orleans at the time, so it was great. I didn’t know years later I’d be doing NEAR DARK but they were talking about “Lestat” at the time and it came up that me and Rutger Hauer would, but it went nowhere and of course Cruise got the role.

Again, I never felt bad about not getting a role, there’s no way I can do every role, the ones you don’t you don’t think about…again, don’t let the past take up too much of today, it’s not a good idea.

KEN: You mention in your book that when you do a horror or fantasy film it all boils down to something in the script that surprises or interests you. Give us an example of what you look for?

LANCE: I think whatever your life experiences are there are certain things that will trigger you, I think what got me the most was the relationship with the boy (in the film Pumpkinhead) my son, where there was no wife or mother around, imagine a guy trying to raise a boy like that by himself and there were a few times I wanted to give him his lineage, you know of any kind, to me telling a child about the positive things about where he came from, back to the first person in your family if you could, that would be cool to do but it doesn’t happen that way in the modern world anymore, great-grandparents are forgotten! And so I remember feeling pangs of that and wanted to offer him something and so I had this scene where I remember my grandmother washing my hands when I was a little kid, and here I was washing his hands and I said her skin was thin as tissue paper and the love she put into washing my hands really moved me, again that’s part of the “gathering” thing and that gave me enough “grief” to feel for when my son is killed in the film that I could go on with what the script was asking of me, the core of it was that. You can always find something if you look for it.

KEN: In the 1991 Biker Film STONE COLD you portray the leader of an outlaw biker club ‘Chains’ Cooper. Did you improvise and immerse yourself in the character to the point the original script was overridden? You knocked that role out of the ballpark Lance, you know that right?

LANCE: Well the original script only had my character reciting lines from the Bible and it really terrified me because I knew the minute my character opened his mouth the audience was going to ignore me from then-on, so the man who wrote it, he died recently so I don’t want to speak ill of him but he didn’t serve the character of “Chains” very well in my opinion so he got fired a week before I started shooting and they brought in Craig Baxley and I met him in the lobby when he got off the plane.

I said that “I am going to play ‘Chains’ and you and I need to talk, the lines are going to be all Biblical and it won’t serve this movie at all”. He said: “What are we going to do?” I said : “Trust me man, we’ll improvise every morning before we shoot, I’m not gonna change the way the story goes but what I say in relation to the scenes we’ll improvise”. He said: “Okay, let’s do it!”. So most of it, about 95% of what I say in the movie was improvised.

KEN: To this day, the movie STONE COLD is remembered for your  character over the others. Who remembers Brian Bosworth? I call it the “Chains Cooper Movie”.

LANCE: (laughs) Thank you buddy! I loved playing that character, really loved it. It was self-will run rampant, absolutely living on the edge, somehow I channeled  that guy~ first thing I asked for was a stainless-steel chain mail vest they wear in a slaughterhouse so they won’t cut themselves accidentally, and I wore that most of the time under my jacket and shirt and remember I was “paranoid” about  being knifed in the back and I asked the Producer if I could go out and hire some real bikers and so I went to a Harley shop down in Mobile and found all these  bikers, they were kind of my “club”~ we worked on that movie for four months, it was a great adventure!

KEN: Portraying such a villainous character like Torquemada or mercenary cut-throats such as ‘Ace Hanolan’ in 1994’s THE QUICK AND THE DEAD ever give you a surrealistic glimpse into what a real villain’s mind might be like?

LANCE: Sure, sure, because we’re all capable of these things if the circumstances are right. I realized early on while playing “bad guys” that no “bad guy” thinks of himself as a bad guy, just looking at everyone else and saying: “You just don’t know how to live!” that’s all. And it’s a bit of a psychosis in there really you know, and I personally would never hurt a fly, I mean I avoid a fight at all costs because why, what good would it gain? Take a look at the military right now, what is war getting us but broke, pain and misery and suffering of our troops that are fighting and its tragic and so that’s a core thing with me that I don’t…you know, I understand violence, I’ve been around it, but its really the bottom line, it’s very terrifying and the only time I’d kick it into high gear is if my children were threatened, that kind of thing, but otherwise no.

I took it almost as a demonstration why people want to see violence and characters like “Chains” and vampires…because it is a harmless way of experiencing violence and it’s a safe way but we all fear a great deal, all of us feel fear, I do have some guns and that’s the way it is, that’s modern life.

KEN: You studied the work of famous FBI Profiler John Douglas for your portrayal of the character Frank Black in the TV thriller series MILLENNIUM. Could you ever see yourself as having done that kind of work for real?

LANCE: No! You know what? This is honest-to-god truth, when I got that role I thought my education was limited, I’m not dumb but I didn’t have a traditional education when I started reading the books about Profilers like John Douglas. I started finding out about the “Academy Group” in Manassas Virginia and they actually do that work. I was so blown away by how bright they are and I’m so glad they’re there and that they exist. But I never thought I’d be able to live up to it, I was very afraid of it and when I realized the core of it the thing that made it work for me the non-judgmental thing was really some of these people have to be taken off the streets permanently or the blood bath would be too horrible. What I wanted to do was understand it, like what the hell happened to these criminals, what sent them in that direction they took? That gave me the role because otherwise I couldn’t have acted it and so it was a great adventure and a great challenge, very difficult but a lot of people had patience with me and gave me the shot at doing it. I’d love to make a movie of MILLENNIUM and there’s a push for it by the Frank Black fan base to make a movie. In one year we’d do 1500 pages and I memorized a great portion of that which is equal to 12 movies and we did it (Millennium) for three years! So it is a lot of work, at the time I never thought I’d survive it.

KEN: You stated in your book MILLENNIUM’S “apocalyptic” episodes were not your favorite, so how does Lance Henriksen feel about all the “end of the world” talk we’re hearing nowadays as 2012 approaches?

LANCE: Well that’s been going on for centuries, the “apocalyptic” ~ you know if you want to get a following all you have to do is convince a group of people that “time is short” (laughs) you know, you’d get a following immediately because it strikes that chord and discomfort of fear to such a degree you feel like you’re experiencing it. Kathryn Bigelow did a great movie called THE HURT LOCKER (she directed NEAR DARK) and I remember the first time I saw it and I felt like I did a tour in Iraq, it was so visceral and so well done I left the theater shaking like a leaf because it really hit home~ what these guys have gone through, it’s going to take a lot of years for people to understand.

KEN: In the 1999 cable T.V. film THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT you portrayed Abraham Lincoln in the final days leading up to his assassination. Was it intimidating to take up such a historical figure? Do you like acting in “period” films such as that one?

LANCE: Oh hell yeah that was a challenge. I had to read all of Lincoln’s speeches, all his stuff and it was a challenge and certain moments really got me! I found out he had a coat made and inside the lining was an embroidered eagle and it was black and its there at Ford’s theater on display. You know he walked around the White House bare foot! He played with his kid there and in those days you could walk into the White House and meet Lincoln, talk with him, there was no Secret Service back then. He also had a slight case of cholera thanks to the water piped in from the Potomac River. Everything I say about him is details, not the giant statue sitting in Washington DC~you can’t act that! I could act the things that resonated with me of course, I tried to live up to the script/ I wore two sets of contact lenses because Lincoln had grey eyes and so I wore two pairs of contact lenses to get that color, that kind of thing, the “gathering”, the part I love the most. If I had to describe my talent, that’s my talent.

KEN: You knocked that role out of the ballpark sir!

LANCE: Thanks buddy that means a lot. I occasionally read Lincoln’s speeches I have on a shelf here and other things such as when he was a lawyer and helped a Revolutionary War widow get a pension that was due her.

KEN: 2004’s ALIEN VS. PREDATOR you return to the genre as CHARLES BISHOP WEYLAND the billionaire who “founded” the company which sets the entire tone for the ‘ALIEN’ Universe (now mixed with the “Predator” universe). How did it feel for you to take such a pivotal and conclusive role that links it all together?

LANCE: Oh it was good to do, I met with Paul Anderson over at Beverly Hills which I never like to go to Beverly Hills, my nose starts to bleed, and it’s a horrible place to go, so plastic. Anyway, I got over there, we sat in the park and he literally explained every scene of the movie to me and said: “How’s it going to work brining your character back and look like Bishop?” I told him I really felt connected to this because if there was a “Charles Bishop Weyland” and he made his money in robotics, wouldn’t it be logical sometime in the future they’d make a “Bishop” android looking like him (young) as a “nod” for the guy who started it all? A tribute, exactly! And it felt right and I wanted to call up Bill Gates and ask: “What do you carry in your pocket?” You know, being a Billionaire! He carries a pen, that’s all he needs.

KEN: I also understand your “four packs a day” voice (as you call it) has been lent to films and cartoons as well. How do you feel about adding voice-actor to your resume?

LANCE: (laughs) I don’t smoke four packs a day, I’ve been smoking since I was sixteen so I guess it averages out but anyway I’m actually the voice of “Droid” now some “Droid” ads, if you’re watching the football games there’s an ad with me on it for the new razor-phone.

KEN: While filming THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (’91) you reportedly lived on just bread and water acting as “Torquemada”, what was that like?

LANCE: Well I didn’t do it the whole time, I had to finally quit because I was there a month but I was living in this huge castle in Italy and walking around barefoot all the time trying to live that “monastic” life. The reason I did it was because I realized this guy (Torquemada) set himself apart by not allowing himself anything. Torquemada, that asshole! He should have been ex-communicated for sure~ he wrote 300 volumes on torture, what kind of spiritual man is that? He was also the Confessor to Queen Isabella of Spain~she was just 16 at time, imagine the bullshit he put in her head!

KEN: Your new book NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN was released in May 2011 (I read it in just three days!) What motivated you to write your incredible story? Please say it’s not signaling your retirement from acting!

LANCE: No, hell no, I’m far from retiring! I’d been asked to do it before by writers and I’d say “Naaahh, it’s not over yet man!” but Joe Maddrey a young writer, him and I worked together on a documentary on Genre films it’s called NIGHTMARES IN RED, WHITE & BLUE so I narrated it for him and after we were done we formed a friendship so he came to me a year later and said: “I’d really like to do it and I’m interested in writing this book with you”. I said “I tell you what, if we get ½ way through and its bullshit or an ego trip we’ll just throw it out and never look back and if you’re willing to do that I’m willing to try, and so we got ½ way through it and the book was writing itself.

KEN: You’re one of the ultimate examples of the ‘American Dream’ Lance, you went from abject poverty and wandering danger to top-notch actor in a profession few succeed in, to live the life you wanted and become someone who has stomped an immortal footprint in Fantasy Entertainment for generations now and later. Would you dare have it any other way?

LANCE: You know what? No, no, it’s been a great journey it has; it’s the making of me. I don’t know what I would have done if I had not found the Arts because certainly the people who’ve influenced me have all been very bright people with good minds you know, and good thinkers and it influenced me and now I’m grateful for the whole journey. That’s why the book’s title came from the movie ALIENS, the last line Bishop says: “Not Bad for a Human”. I called James Cameron and asked him if I could use that as a title and he said that he was honored. The book has gotten 5-star reviews and I’m thrilled with that, people reading and enjoying.

KEN: Reading your book NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN for me was like sitting around a campfire listening to an old friend tell an enthralling story. For legions of film fans (including me) you are exactly that Lance, a dear friend who has been with us forever!  Thank you for this interview sir.

LANCE: Thanks my friend, thank you every much I really mean it. You’re a cool guy and I hope we run into each other again. One more thing, I just finished a movie with Ed Harris out in San Diego called “Phantoms”, a movie about Russian Submarines and we’re all playing Russians so that’s a good one coming out.

KEN: It’s good you’re still busy out there Lance, because Hollywood and the legions of film-fans need you!

LANCE: Thank you pal, that really means a lot to me.

Purchase Lance Henriksen’s book NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN here…
Look for Lance in the much-anticipated 2011 film, MONSTER BRAWL