Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis (34 page)

Eventually, with my nose compressed against a tube of Squeezey Cheese, the door was shut and we got the scene.

At the end of this “episode,” the Leprechaun was killed by being pushed into quick-drying cement. The cement was actually edible, a kind of gray porridge. The effects guys stayed up all night making a huge vat of the stuff.

The pressure was really on as we only had one shot at nailing this scene. Once I landed in the “cement,” my costume and prosthetics would be a write-off.

“When you fall in,” the stunt coordinator said, “just lie back and you’ll gradually sink.”

When the cry of “Action!” finally came, I fell back screaming onto the huge vat of porridge. The first thing I noticed was that it was shockingly cold. After a few seconds I realized that I wasn’t going to sink – the “porridge” was too thick.

There were some weights at the bottom, which I was supposed to grab once I’d sunk, so I wouldn’t float to the surface too soon, ruining the scene. I pushed my arms down, found one of the weights, and pulled myself under. Psychologically, this is a hard thing to do – as the cold, gloopy mess closed around me I took a breath, shut my eyes, and stayed below the surface for as long as I could.

Once I resurfaced I looked like . . . like . . . er – well, like a leprechaun that had fallen into an enormous bowl of porridge. I was completely covered and the gloop was really seriously stuck to me. I could hardly open my eyes.

A voice came from the darkness: “Over here, Warwick!”

I turned, forced an eye open, and saw a grinning stagehand holding a hose.

“Oh, kaggernash!”

A freezing-cold jet of water hit me, almost lifting me off my feet. Ah, the glamour of showbiz. As the Leprechaun I’d been killed in a huge variety of innovative ways: I’d been dissolved in a well, impaled with an iron bar, exploded twice (once in space), been annihilated with a flamethrower, and now drowned in the cement foundations of a skyscraper.

The only
Leprechaun
film I didn’t die in was
Lep in the Hood
, although some rappers might argue otherwise, as the movie finished with me performing the “Leprechaun Rap.”

Now to the burning question that millions, ahem, of
Leprechaun
fans have been speculating about for some years now: Will there be another
Leprechaun
film?

Well, a pitch meeting to “reboot” the franchise has been held with Lionsgate Entertainment. The concept was to do it in 3-D. These films are much better than the days of the red and green glasses. As long as the films don’t use 3-D as a gimmick, then I think it’s fine. I’d relish the chance to waggle my 3-D shillelagh at moviegoing audiences around the world.

My own idea is to make a pirate-themed
Leprechaun
. All the ingredients are there for a perfect
Leprechaun
movie: pirates, chests full of gold, parrots, wooden legs, maidens, eye-patches, sword fights, cannonballs, and so on.

I know the
Leprechaun
movie franchise is not to everyone’s taste but I had a great time making them and I’m proud of my performances in every one of those crazy films. I’m doubly proud that I had my own horror franchise.

Now, however, I was about to become a small part in an enormous movie franchise, the biggest and most successful the world has ever seen.

It was a story that started with a young would-be wizard . . .

^a
If there’s one thing you learn in South Central, it’s gun types. When gunshots echo through the night the usual conversation goes something like:

“Smith and Wesson 45.”

“Nah, sounded like a .22 to me.”

I would then say something like: “Shouldn’t we call the police?” which would cause much hilarity among the cast and crew.

^b
In other words, films that went “straight to video” without a cinema release.

Chapter Eighteen

Pottering About

At the premiere of the very last Harry Potter film. It took us two and a half hours to walk the three-quarters-of-a-mile-long red carpet from Trafalgar Square to the movie theater in Leicester Square.

 

Back in the UK I filmed an episode of
Murder Rooms
, a series based on the “real-life” adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. In what was yet another glamorous role, I played a traveling showman with a very sensitive medical problem, namely hemorrhoids.

Of course, I came to Conan Doyle (Charles Edwards) to seek relief. The procedure involved the employment of a device that looked like an enormous pair of metal tongs. The scene was shot from the front, and I pulled appropriately apprehensive expressions as I dropped my britches and bent over a chair. I then looked suitably agonized as the good doctor did his business around the rear.

Between takes, an actress told me that she’d been reading a wonderful book. I asked if there were any short characters in it and she said, “Lots!”

“That’s my kind of book.” I looked at the cover: “
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
. Hmmm. Sounds interesting. I hope they make it into a film.”

Some months later, my agent
^a
called, asking me if I’d like to read for the character of Professor Filius Flitwick.

By this time we were three books into what had arguably become the greatest publishing sensation of the twentieth century so the answer was a resounding “
Yes please!”
(as a bonus, I was pleased to see that Flitwick was in all three).

While this was terrific news, I knew it would nonetheless present a tremendous challenge for me. I’d be attempting to play a character already familiar to millions of readers around the world.
Harry Potter
fans all had a certain image in their mind of how the characters looked and behaved, so a great deal rode upon my interpretation.

I spent the night before my audition reading
The Philosopher’s Stone
. It’s strange really, I’ve never been a fan of fiction, I tend to prefer nonfiction books like the
Guinness Book of Records
, books about extreme weather, outer space, biographies, and so on. But when it comes to films, the more fantastical they are the more I like them.

Having said that, reading
Potter
while trying to imagine the film was wonderful, if a little daunting. How on earth were they going to get all this on screen? Still, this wasn’t my problem, I concluded. I just needed to understand my character.

So who was Flitwick? Well, he was described as a gnomelike wizard with a dash of goblin and, from what I could tell from the books, he seemed to be a real trooper, someone who could be totally relied upon, someone who would give his life for his students and Hogwarts. He was kind, trusting, and not without a sense of humor. He did not feel the need to intimidate his students, like certain other Hogwarts teachers. Flitwick’s small stature belied his physical strength, power, and wisdom, contrary to the stereotype of little people.

He was a great character, a testament to Rowling’s skill as an author, and the more I learned about Flitwick, the more I wanted to play him.

As I read the books I was reminded more and more of my own mad professor performance as a child, the one I’d filmed with my sister (when I hit her with my geography textbook). That’s just how I imagined a young Professor Flitwick would have been.

Finally, it grew so late that I could read no more. “Right, that’s it!” I said, and closed the book. “From this moment forth,
I
am Professor Flitwick.”

The next morning I traveled to the audition, which took place at Leavesden Studios. It was full of people besides the director (Chris Columbus of
Home Alone
fame). There were the casting directors, producer David Heyman, and several assistants. Although I hadn’t worked with Chris before, I was pleased to discover that I knew the casting directors from
Willow
. It’s always good to see a friendly face at these things, especially as we’d got on quite well in the past.

Everyone was taking this movie very seriously, it was a huge project and it was important, they said, to get
everything
just right.

“Okay,” Chris said, standing up and handing me a script, “I’ll play Harry and the other characters. You ready?”

My heart thumped. “Yep, whenever you are.”

I was a bit worried, as some directors will read the characters in a deadpan voice. This makes it very hard to produce a lively performance in return and it’s only too easy to slip up and deliver your lines a little flatter than you would if you were performing with an actor.

To my delight, Chris read with real gusto and I responded in kind. I
was
Flitwick: kind, dependable, strong but with a soft cheeky glint in my eye. Pretty soon we’d worked our way through the scripted scene and had started improvising. We wound up giggling like a pair of idiots. So was everybody else.

I took this as a pretty good sign, although, as I said to Sam afterward, “I hope they were laughing with me rather than at me.”

As anybody who has lived with an actor will probably tell you, we’re not that pleasant to be around while we’re waiting to hear if we’ve won a part. Poor Sam had to endure my anxiety as I waited and waited and waited. I went through the casting session with her over and over again, analyzing every moment, criticizing every aspect of my performance. Sam would try to convince me that I’d done well but that just made me doubt my performance all the more.

I really, really wanted this part. I became very nervous about it and life ground to a halt for a couple of weeks. Normally, if you’ve won a part you tend to hear back pretty quickly. But if you haven’t scored the role you sometimes simply won’t get a call to break the bad news: silence speaks volumes.

I’d endured my fair share of silences in my career; these were mainly the result of bad decisions on my part. These days I’m much better at making choices about a role before I go to auditions. This is a key part of being an actor, especially when you can actually afford to turn down roles that you know aren’t right for you. But there was a time when I went to every single audition, simply because I
had
to work, I needed the money, and there was really no choice.

I’ve been to plenty of auditions where I’ve walked into a room and didn’t click with the director or the producer. I’ve also done plenty of cold reads, when you’re given something entirely new to read in character there and then.

Whenever I failed auditions, as unpleasant as that was, I always took something positive from the experience and I never let them knock my confidence. I’m a great believer in what my agent once told me, “As one door closes another will open.”

Waiting to hear about Flitwick was agony. I jumped every time the phone rang and after three long weeks I’d just about given up all hope when my agent called.

“Yes?!”

“Well, don’t get too excited.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve got the part of Professor Flitwick and –”

“Brilliant! Well, why shouldn’t I get too excited?”

“Because, I was about to say, ‘You need to let me finish,’ because they want you to play the Goblin bank teller as well.
Now
you can go ahead and get excited.”

“What? Another part? So two roles?” I said, hopping up and down. “Yes!”

“See, I told you so,” Sam said.

Suddenly I was all sunshine and smiles. Laughter returned to the Davis household once more.

A few weeks later the costume department called me in for measurements. I was delighted to walk in and see that Nick Dudman, one of the finest makeup artists in the world, was running the makeup/effects department. Nick had overseen my very first life cast on the day I got the part in
Jedi
and I still have a diary entry noting the occasion from October 1981: “Met Patricia Carr and Nick and had my life cast. Let’s get on with it.”