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Starburst: Willow Interview

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He's only 3'4" tall yet 18-year-old Warwick Davis plays the central character Willow Ufgood in Willow - the critically-slated epic fantasy produced and written by George Lucas and directed by Ron Howard. (For my views on the $40 million special effects extravaganza see the Preview pages in Issue 124 of Starburst).

But while Willow does have many problems, none of them are to do with the ingenuous Davis, singled out for praise by most critics, as the naive Nelwyn hero who embarks on a quest to save his ILM-created kingdom. Davis was discovered by Star Wars master-mind Lucas at the age of just eleven during the filming of Return of the Jedi. Warwick Davis remembers, "My mother made me have formal acting training when I was younger and in 1981 we heard a commercial on LBC radio asking people under four feet tall to audition for the new Star Wars movie. I turned up at the Lucasfilm offices and his secretary looked at me, said I was the right height, and sent me for a costume fitting straight away. After a four week shoot at Elstree Studios we were all taken to Oregon for location shooting in the redwood forests. I ended up in one of the main Ewok scenes with Carrie Fisher and that's how it all started really. Kenny Baker, who plays R2D2, was supposed to double as Wicket the Ewok but he got ill on the day we shot the sequence. George panicked, chose me out of the crowd, I ended up playing Wicket and it started my career."

Star Wars spin offs

Davis then repeated his Wicket performance in the two Star Wars television spin-offs movies, Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor, and he subsequently appeared in the Lucas/Jim Henson production Labyrinth as two separate goblins being chased around by rocks. Davis continues, "Willow is the first time audiences have seen my proper face as I wore masks and prosthetics for the other movies. They might be terrified! I developed my acting ability in those costumes where no one could see me, and when I was offered the lead role in Willow I just hoped I would be good enough for it.

Born and raised in Surrey, where he still lives in picturesque surroundings with his parents and younger sister, Davis was first approached about appearing in Willow in September 1986. He recalls, "I was on holiday with a friend in Cornwall when my mother rang to say that George wanted to see me about a new film. When I returned home I went to Elstree to meet with George and with director Ron Howard. They had a few doubts at the beginning because of my age as they saw Willow as being a lot older. But when they decided to bring everyone else's age down, it all worked out very well. But I still played the character a little older than my real age. After all, I have a wife and two young children in the story."

Ask Davis what he liked most about the Willow story and he'll say, "The film is an adventure fantasy about this ordinary guy, Willow, who's just pushed into the big Daikini world and being small he has to learn how to cope. He's an ordinary farmer who wants to be a real sorcerer and it's about him fulfilling this dream. Also Willow is the title character of a George Lucas movie and that feels incredible in itself. That didn't strike me at first because when I got the script it came as a real shock to find far more lines than I was expecting. The enormity still hasn't quite hit me yet but I do feel very privileged to be a part of it all."

So come on Warwick, tell us all what George Lucas is really like as he is rather interview shy and people like myself have never been allowed to get even near him. "I suppose George does seem an enigma to most people but he's really nice once you get to know him. He seems a bit shy on the outside and he's a private person by nature but underneath it all he's just an ordinary regular nice guy. Apart from my height being right I never knew quite what he saw in me to offer me all the roles he has. You'd better ask him that question yourself. Oh, I suppose it's not that easy, is it?". Well everyone, you can't say I didn't try!

Davis is the height he is because of a condition he was born with that he calls, "A long unpronounceable Latin name which I can never remember." And he says he can't place the exact time when he realised he was destined never to grow, height-wise. He continues, "I've coped with living on a day to day basis for so many years now it never bothers me at all. I went to a normal school and dealing with my lack of height meant if I wanted to reach something I just stood on a chair. Now it's just natural for me so I never think about it. Before Return of the Jedi I had to put up with a few unfeeling and rude comments but now after Willow people see me as Warwick rather than just a short person. The Nelwyn village sets in Willow were all scaled down so I actually had a chair I could sit on where my feet touched the ground. It was weird to have everything at my height for a change! I don't feel there is anything to cope with in being small or with the stardom I've attained for that matter. I've carried on as normal and it hasn't affected me except financially as I now own my own car and I can buy what I want."

Small person's small world!

The small persons acting fraternity is nevertheless a small world according to Davis. He says, "I knew a lot of actors from Jedi but Jeremy Zimmerman, the casting director, brought new extras over from Canada and Europe after an international casting call as they couldn't find enough small people here. It was nice meeting up with my old friends from Jedi. When we did the opening festival scens in Willow it was supposed to be a party atmosphere and we acted just like it was a reunion - when they said 'cut' we just carried on enjoying ourselves! Billy Barty who plays High Aldwin, the Nelwyns' magician, is a veteran small actor and he told me how pleased he was to see everyone gathered together having a good time."

In pre-production meetings Splash and Cocoon director Ron Howard gave him the following advice, says Davis. "He wanted me to be really natural and not be pushing the character forward all the time. I was pretty much myself in all honesty, I don't think I gave too much characterisation. The script was well written and a lot of Willow was there already just waiting to flow out of the lines. Ron wanted a natural style and I had to practice holding babies so I looked like a proper father. I looked towards my own dad as a reference. I also had to learn swordfighting, how to ride horses and be taught simple magic tricks by magician David Berglas. There was a three week rehearsal period where we ran through all the scenes so it would be quicker on set as the schedule was pretty tight. Ron was the perfect director being an actor in Happy Days and American Graffiti as he knew what I was going through because he's been on both sides of the camera." He continues, "There were a lot of instances where I had to act to nothing more than a taped X on the studio floor in place of, for example, the 9 inch tall brownies. But Ron took the place of the monster or the camera trick and waved his hands around like a lunatic so I could react to something. I think it was a good working atmosphere because everyone was part of the Lucas family. Ron would be directing, George would be observing, and if ever a problem arose Ron would always discuss it with George because, as he wrote it, he knew the Willow world inside out and had all the answers. It took a load off Ron as George could oversee most things and leave him to carry on with his prime concern, the directing. It was a good two way relationship."

Locations

Willow began filming on April 27th 1987 at Elstree and ended five months later after location work in Snowdonia Wales and the Queenstown mountain district in New Zealand. Davis says, "New Zealand was stunning with all the mountains and snow. It was a difficult place to shoot in because getting to the top of the mountains quickly was only possible by helicopter.

"After spending months being studio-bound it was a great relief to get in the open. Nockmaar Castle was built out of polystyrene blocks in a Welsh slate quarry and it was so spectacular that tourists would stop and look all the time."

Davis had a stunt double, he reveals, "But he was a little larger than I was so they couldn't have him do everything. I didn't like the horseriding as I was pretty terrified and if I had any galloping to do my double did it instead. The sledging sequence comprised of a camera locked onto the front of a rig with a sled fixed at the back. Val Kilmer and I were strapped in and a skier towed us downhill. When we started down the shallow hill Ron told us both to look scared which was easy. But suddenly the hill went steeply down and around these rocks ending up on a frozen lake at the bottom. The first time I did it my face registered such a deep terror you can still see it in a few shots. That was real fear, not acting. We had to do it twelve times in all and I was a nervous wreck afterwards. It was like being on a rollercoaster ride which I suppose was in keeping with the rest of the film."

Davis is understandably proud of Willow which has been a moderate box-office success enough for MGM to announce a sequel. And he hasn't taken kindly to the devastating reviews which greeted the film in America like 'Ron Howard the Duck'. He remarks, "There's a sweetness about Lucas' films as the underlying messages are about friendship, love, trust, and loyalty. Willow has a big heart which is all Ron and George hoped for and the secret of its success. Audiences have related to that - and to me as Willow, which is a surprise as I thought they would go more for Val. I don't like the way everyone is pointing out the similarities it has to other stories and films - saying it's like Gulliver's Travels or whatever. I suppose it does bear a resemblance to a lot of myths but why does that matter? Star Wars was a formula picture that worked so why not do it again?"

Although he feels the magic of the movies has been ruined for him - and his family - thanks to his career, Davis has nevertheless surrounded himself at home with signed posters, photographs and props, like the Willow magic wand, from all the movies he's appeared in. He has also invested his earnings in expensive video and editing equipment as he intends to become a director - an ambition grounded in studying the behind the camera techniques while acting in Return of the Jedi. At present he is taking a two-year course in Media Communications at East Surrey College and he has made short films and directed promotional pop videos for local bands. One of these shorts, made at 12 years of age, was submitted to the Surrey Film Festival where it received second prize, and the same occurred the following year with a new film.

The next year he won the Festival with Nightmare which went on to win several international awards when it was later entered at the London Film Festival. The actor/director, whose favourite films are the Elm Street horrors, Psycho movies and Police Academy comedies, explains, "Ron became a director at 18 and I want to do both as well although before Jedi I had no desires in this area. Acting in a film a year isn't a steady job so filmmaking has to be the base. I have enough contacts in the industry now and hope to pursue a directing career after finishing college. As long as they keep making films like Willow I could have steady acting employment although I'm hoping someone will eventually write a part for me set in real life like a cop thriller which I'd love to do. It has all been a dream come true really. I've never felt exploited due to my size because I don't have to act in anything if I don't want to. But in the case of Willow I trusted George, even though the script hadn't been completed when I first read it, and thought it would be worth doing. I've always loved fantasy movies but actuallys starring in Willow still hasn't really sunk in."