Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis (41 page)

Throughout the shoot I cursed, raged, and fumed, red-faced inside my overheated dome. I wanted to tell Garth that he was killing me, that he was an insane megalomaniac who took delight in torturing his actors, that he should be banned from directing another movie ever again.

But then I’d see Garth lolloping toward me like a lanky two-legged Bambi to ask how I was doing. He was so childishly enthusiastic in such a sweet and charming way that all my Marvin tendencies evaporated. I just couldn’t bring myself to disappoint him. Garth is quite possibly the most delightful man on the planet, who should be allowed to direct as many movies as he could possibly wish.

“No, everything’s great,” I’d tell him.

“Not too hot?”

“Nope.”

“Cold?”

“Nope, I’m fine.”

“Fantastic! I thought you looked quite uncomfortable. Just another six or seven takes and we should have it.”

“Great!”

And he’d run back to his wonderfully warm trailer and slam the door.

“Git!”

My only cinematic tantrum to date remains the wobbly I threw at Ron Howard when I faced certain death from drowning during
Willow
. That’s how far you have to push me. However, if they were to announce a sequel to
Hitchhiker’s
(the books are the galaxy’s first six-part trilogy) and they wanted to bring Marvin back in that same costume I would have to think about it
very
seriously. With all my other characters (apart from Petchet in
Prince Valiant
), I’d jump at the chance to leap into their costumes again, but Marvin, well . . .

I was thrilled with the end result in that people who saw the film didn’t realize that Marvin was actually someone in a suit. I took this as a compliment; he is supposed to be a robot, after all.

At the time I thought I would do the voice as well but Garth managed to get Alan Rickman. Alan called me up and checked that I was okay with him doing it. Of course, I would have preferred to do it but, well, Alan Rickman is
Alan Rickman
– and he has that incredible voice that defines the word “sardonic.”

As it was, I was flattered that he had asked for my blessing. Marvin really was a huge team effort; so many people had brought him to life. But we did get something wrong, and fans of the film may be interested to rewatch it with this little fact in mind.

As they were using Alan Rickman to rerecord my dialogue, someone decided they would give Marvin a few more lines. This would have been fine except for one thing: the new dialogue didn’t match Marvin’s body language.

When I saw the film for the first time I cringed whenever Marvin spoke a new line, as it failed to match the movement. As far as I was concerned, much of Marvin’s wonderful character had been lost. This may just be because I was so close to the part but I did observe that the lines that still matched Marvin’s movements were also the ones that got the biggest laughs from the audience.

It’s easy to say this with hindsight, but it would have been better to have the actor on set reading the lines live, as the performance was being recorded. This technique was used on
Harry Potter
where Toby Jones was on the set to record the voice of Dobby, and, however subtly, I think you can see and hear the difference.

I mainly kept going as Marvin for Peter’s sake. He’d taught me so much and I really wanted to show him it had worked. So I was delighted when I got the chance to work with him again when I was offered the part of a baby gorilla in a movie called
Vanilla Gorilla
, with former James Bond Pierce Brosnan penciled in to take the lead role.

The plot of the movie went thus: “A New York girl befriends Gogo, the world’s only living albino gorilla. Through sign language they communicate and bond, and their ensuing trans-African quest to return Gogo to the wild puts ruthless poachers, determined CNN reporters, and one very concerned parent on their tail.”

I spent an amazing two weeks with Peter, who was going to play the albino gorilla, learning how to behave like a primate. Peter had played gorillas in dozens of movies, including
Gorillas in the Mist
, and it was a real treat to see a true artist at work. It was really tough, but Peter was so enthusiastic that I found myself pushing myself harder and harder to get the performance that he wanted. Peter transformed his studio into a zoo and had placed tires, tree branches, and fruit all over the place.

“Gorillas don’t think about what they’re going to do, they just act on their impulses,” Peter told me, handing me a pair of arm extensions. Gorillas have much longer arms than humans and we needed to get used to using them.

It was incredibly difficult trying to maintain a gorilla’s stream of consciousness while waving a pair of metal arm extensions, but eventually I did it without thinking and by the time I left the studio I’d almost forgotten I was a person. It was a wonder I didn’t swing my way across Hampstead Heath to the train station.

There’s a good reason why you haven’t heard of
Vanilla Gorilla
. Although the film was green-lit, all the bits of paper that had to be pushed about between agents, producers, actors, and financiers failed to get signed and the project died. This was a real shame because I was keen to act alongside Pierce, but such is life.

It was a far from wasted experience, however. Peter had taught me so much and just how much was brought home to me not very long afterward.

^a
No one could be bothered in the end.

^b
Dragon’s
Den
is a British TV show (much like the American version,
Shark Tank
) where inventors pitch their ideas to millionaires who then decide whether to market their product for a cut of the hoped-for profit. It’s very popular. We have a
lot
of mad inventors in the UK.

Chapter Twenty-Two

A Little Extra

Appearing on
Extras
proved to be a life-changing experience.

 

With Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, hamming it up as Wayne Rooney before the big England versus Portugal World Cup match in 2006.

 

My phone rang. “I’ve had Saatchi and Saatchi on the phone,” my agent said, “they’ve asked if you’ll do an ad for them.”

“Head and Shoulders, is it?”

“Yes, that’s right, how did you know?”

“We’ve already sent about half a dozen actors from Willow Management and they’ve all been rejected.”

“Will you do it?”

“Sure, I’ll give it a try.”

When I tried the costume on I wondered how on earth nobody else had managed to get this job. I was supposed to play a character called Hair, and if you’ve ever seen
The Addams Family
and recall Cousin Itt, then you will know exactly what my character looked like. Essentially, I was covered in an umbrella of hair that stretched all the way down to my feet.

I put it on, imagined myself as Hair, walked up and down, and got the part. I didn’t understand. Why did it have to be me? Why didn’t they give the job to one of the other actors we’d sent from Willow Management?

The ad was a love story between a man and his hair, with the tagline: “Don’t lose your hair.” We filmed in West Yorkshire, at Keighley train station, a beautiful part of the world. Filming started at 3 a.m. in temperatures of minus four.

As I stood on the platform in a skin-tight leotard underneath the hair suit, I had one of those moments where I looked down on myself from above and asked, “Why am I doing this?”

And as I stood there in the dawn light, shivering, waiting for my cue, I worked through the answer (it took my mind off the cold).

I never consider myself too good for any role and firmly believe that my last job really could be just that – my last. So I have to be up for anything and whatever part I’m playing, no matter how silly, I give it my all.

Sometimes it would be easy to say no when a physically and mentally challenging role like Marvin comes along. But if I feel excited about it, I’ll go for it. A lot of people might think that’s a bit odd, but that’s the kind of person I am. As a result, I think I’ve played one of the widest ranges of characters in British acting history.

It was then I realized why I got the Hair job. It’s because I can bring this thing to life. Somehow, I’m able to convey emotion from beneath all that hair. I could make it look sad, happy, in love, broken-hearted. Much of that skill had come from all my creature acting, but I also had to thank Peter for making me realize how your body can say so much – even when you can’t even see it properly.

“I’m good at this,” I thought to myself as I stood by the train, “this is what I do – this is who I am.” I thought about all I’d done, from Wicket to the Leprechaun, from Flitwick to Willow, and I felt a rising tide of excitement; there was still so much I hoped to pack into my life.

It was quite a revelatory moment and, as if right on cue, the train suddenly hissed warm steam, which rose up beneath my dome of hair. Lovely. But as soon as the train left, the steam condensed and started to freeze. As soon as the next break came I staggered over to the only warm place on the station, the waiting room.

Inside were four extras dressed as train guards, all aged about seventy, all talking about their prostate troubles. I nodded hello, and lay down on a bench for a nap. I sat up when the food trolley appeared. Normally I’d never eat a hot dog, but when you’re on a film set at 3 a.m. you sometimes do strange and irrational things to pass the time.

As I was about to take a bite out of the end of the sausage, one of the men turned to his companion and said, “Fred, have you ever had that little camera stuck up the end of your old man?”

Yep, this is the life, right enough.

I was in my kitchen when the phone rang. It would be another in an already long line of life-changing calls.

“Hiya,” a voice said, “it’s Ricky Gervais.”

Now, most actors upon hearing those four words would have said something along the lines of: “Hello, Mr. Gervais, I’m a big fan of your work,” while praying the phone call wasn’t a dream.

I, on the other hand, responded with an extremely skeptical-sounding: “Oh yeah?”

I had a friend, Paul Zerdin, who was pretty good at impressions and who liked to wind me up by pretending to be Ron Howard saying he wanted me to star in
Willow II
or the Director of BBC Drama telling me they wanted me to be the new Doctor Who, so I had good reason to be cautious. I mean, Ricky Gervais calling up out of the blue? How ridiculous was that?

This was followed by a very distinctive laugh, a unique giggly screech that could only come from one person.

Oh no!

“It is you, isn’t it?”

“It is. You are Warwick Davis, aren’t you?”

“Err . . . Yes.”

“I’m making a show called
Extras
with Stephen Merchant and we’re planning the series at the moment. There’s one episode which we’d like you to be in.”

“Great!” This was when
The Office
– a show I adored – was at its height.

“Well, hang on a moment,” he said. “Before you say yes, I’m calling to check whether you’d be okay with what we’re thinking. Essentially, the episode finishes with me kicking you in the face.”

I didn’t hesitate. “Ricky,” I said, “it would be an honor to be kicked in the face by you.”

They said they’d be in touch and that was all I heard for a few months, until the BBC announced they’d finished filming the series. I was gutted but then Ricky called back to say they were making a second series. “Do you still want to be in it?” By then the show was a huge hit and famous actors were lining up for the chance to be on it.

I met Ricky and Stephen for a quick read-through in London before we shot the episode at Pinewood. They were terrific to work with, really down-to-earth. At the time I was producing a
Star Wars
show for Disney World and I asked if Ricky and Stephen would mind contributing a few questions as part of a celebrity-led quiz. They got into it straight away and quickly improvised a whole overly nerdy
Star Wars
routine while reading out the questions.

Ricky may have been a brilliant improviser but when he was shooting
Extras
his approach was painstaking. Ricky and Stephen were tireless; they couldn’t move on unless they were completely satisfied that the scene was as funny as it possibly could be and they had tried every single thing they could think of. At the same time, they worked at high speed and would shoot scenes faster than anyone else I’d worked with before.

Filming took place between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. “I’m always funniest between these hours,” Ricky told me. It was a smart move and was typical of their ability to rewrite the rule book and do things their way. Like most actors, I was used to working on films and programs that started shooting before dawn and didn’t wrap up until 9 p.m., and I’d seen many actors and crew become so tired that they started to lose morale.

On
Extras
, everyone was full of energy and intensely focused. We’d come back from lunch knowing we just had a couple of hours to go. Ricky would get us all fired up and would say, “Right! Let’s rattle through this and go home!” and we’d always manage. That way we all left Pinewood Studios at a reasonable hour and saw our families, so morale remained high throughout the shoot.

In the episode I was in, Andy Millman (Ricky) was appearing in a new fantasy film starring Daniel Radcliffe. Andy accidentally offends the mother of a Down syndrome teenager while eating in a restaurant, leading to a typically overwrought reaction from the British press, who take the comments out of context.

Andy manages to deal with this but then gets into a fight with me over remarks he privately made to his best friend Maggie (Ashley Jensen) – which she later repeats to my fiancée. I then physically attack Andy who accidentally knocks me unconscious, although everyone else thinks he does so deliberately.

In the run-up to this last scene, I’d been listening to Ricky’s podcasts with Stephen and Karl “head-like-an-effing-orange” Pilkington on the radio station XFM and had been tickled by the fact that Stephen had poked fun at Ricky’s tubbiness.

My verbal attack on Ricky as I started to punch him was ad-libbed: “You git,” and then, scrabbling to add something else, “You fat git!” Afterward Ricky looked at me, grinning. It was pretty funny, I guess, especially coming from me, with my rather more obvious physical dissimilarity.

“Sorry, Ricky, I don’t know why I said that.”

He took it in his stride.

We did this scene over and over again. I was supposed to punch Ricky in the stomach and as he was wearing padding (which added to his tubbiness) I could hit him as hard as I liked. During one take I really let fly and really caught him a beauty. He yelled at me to stop. He’d forgotten to put on the padding and I’d caught him perfectly in the solar plexus.

I didn’t have any padding in the scene where Ricky knocked me unconscious by accidentally kneeing me in the face. Once his knee had “connected” with my chin, I was supposed to throw myself backward to the floor. Thanks to Laurel and Hardy and almost three decades of playing characters who fell over a lot (often accidentally), I was able to do this pretty well. Nonetheless, we practiced over and over again with a stunt coordinator. Ricky tried all sorts of lines after I’d fallen to the floor until he finally settled on the one he wanted.