"You know, I'm quite a little person--only 5'6" tall," says Jean Marsh, who portrays the villainous Queen Bavmorda in Willow. "But the way I play this role, some people must think I must be six feet tall and weigh 200 pounds!"
Marsh's wicked witch looms large in the world of Willow. But this malevolent matron is just one facet of an extensive career. In 1972, the actress rocketed to international fame in the BBC TV series Upstairs, Downstairs. She has appeared on the stage, television, and in nearly a dozen films.
But it is a heavy burden, playing the heavy. "Since Bavmorda is the very essence of awful, I never got to work in a pretty set," Marsh says. "One set was a ghastly, underground dungeon. It was so terribly hot, with the lights and flaming torches near my hair. Just ghastly!
"In another location, the effects men had dust machines, and smoke machines, hail, snow and rain going the whole time. I was wet from morning to night. As I shouted and screamed above the noise, I took in great gulps of foul, effects-laden air. When it was all over, I got bronchitis!
"On top of that, I'm supposed to be aging throughout all this. They kept putting more and more strange makeup on my face and hands. I was bowed down with the weight of the goop, and the rain on my clothes."
Yet all the tortures of filmmaking seem a fitting punishment, if not for Marsh, then for the vile queen she plays. Bavmorda makes life miserable for everyone she targets--Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis), Madmartigan (Val Kilmer), and even her own daughter (Joanne Whalley).
Says Jean Marsh with a wicked grin, "I'm going to be hated by children all over the world."
-John Sayers & Adam Pirani
For veteran actor Billy Barty, who began making movies in 1928, making Willow was an incredible experience. "Everybody was having a wonderful time," says the 3'9" actor and founder of Little People of America, but the most important thing to him was "the fact that little people were being used as human beings. You have love interest, family interest, concern. Very human, only small. The hero of the picture is a little person, Willow. We're not jokes this time, we're real.
In the world of Willow, Barty has a role particularly suited to his crafty charm. "I play the high priest, the High Aldwin. He's like the governor, the mayor, the ruler of this town of little people. I pretend that I have these magical powers and I bluff my way, using some devices."
Barty is perhaps best known for his work in such '70s TV series as H.R. Pufnstuf and such recent fantasy film fare as Legend and Masters of the Universe. But, it is Willow that has captured his heart. "Willow is a very personal movie because you're dealing with a beautiful story, you're dealing with sentiment, with heart, with feeling, and you don't want to look at it as a bunch of little people who are jumping around in a circus," says Billy Barty. "This is the way it should come across to the public--you're dealing with human beings."
-Bill Warren
"Willow was very physical," Gavan O'Herlihy says, "which suits me to a T." The tall, handsome actor portrays Airk Thaughbaer.
"I had ridden some before," O'Herlihy recalls, "but I had to learn how to lead charges, and how to ride one-handed, wielding swords. That was just winging it, though. When you had to do it, you got on and tried to look like you knew what you were doing."
The son of actor Dan (RoboCop) O'Herlihy, Gavan O'Herlihy was sent to an Ireland boarding school as a youth and there developed twin passions for acting and tennis. While he perfected his stage craft, O'Herlihy went on to become a national tennis champion. But, he decided to pursue acting instead of tennis and relocated to Los Angeles. Within months, O'Herlihy was cast as Ritchie Cunningham's older brother Chuck in Happy Days' first season. Although he left after 10 weeks because he was dissatisfied with weekly television production, O'Herlihy made an impression on fellow actor Ron Howard. While O'Herlihy went on to perform on stage, primarily in England, Howard became a respected film director. Now, the two have reunited in the world of Willow.
"I've always respected Ron and thought highly of him," O'Herlihy comments. "What you see is pretty much what you get. He has a strong sense of values, a strong sense of priorities. He's a very talented guy. He's pretty high energy, and I tied into that. I like someone who's alert, and he's very alert.
"Willow had a strong company, a talented company," Gavan O'Herlihy notes. "The whole thing was memorable.
"I've played a lot of bad guys, so it was fun to play this good guy because it was flash. It was loud, it was a lot of roaring. As Airk Thaughbaer, I roar the whole movie. I'll never roar that much again as long as I live, I'm sure, in any job."
-Robert Greenberger & Adam Pirani
Incredibly ominous, awesomely evil, General Kael serves the malevolent Queen Bavmorda, ravaging the world of Willow in search of a fateful child. For Patrick Roach, a villainous veteran of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Conan the Destroyer, it was another acting challenge. Once again, he got to be big and bad.
Roles like General Kael, Roach notes, "are very demanding physically, apart from the dialogue one has to deliver anyway. People keep telling me--I don't know how true it is--that there aren't many big guys who can do both. It must be true because I keep getting jobs."
The six-and-a-half foot tall actor, who made his screen debut in A Clockwork Orange, is accustomed to the physical side of acting. "I used to box and wrestle in the fairgrounds many years ago. I have always wrestled professionally, and I taught judo for six years."
Engaging in duels to the death could be truly exhausting--and wet when they took place during torrential rainstorms. "Those fight scenes were quite hard," Roach agrees, "because all day long I would be wielding this sword, doing this fight scene from all different angles, and the heavy clothes I was wearing were wringing, soaking wet and they were just getting heavier and heavier. And it's no good changing clothes, because in a minute you were at it again. I had size 15 boots on, which proceeded to fill up with water. It wasn't pleasant."
Surprisingly, despite his vast experience and awesome physical prowess, one thing stopped Patrick Roach from performing all of his own stunts in Willow. "Insurance," he laughs. "They wouldn't let me.
-Rachel Long & Adam Pirani
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| Giving Willow a bit of small support are the brownies Franjean (Rick Overton, left) and Rool (Kevin Pollak). |
They wear "rat skins, war paint and Don King microwaved hair." They're small. They're proud. They're fierce. And they're brownies.
Their names are Franjean and Rool. In real life, they're two much taller comedic actors, Rick Overton and Kevin Pollak. However, in the world of Willow, they stand only nine inches small. And they're always getting into mischief.
"But there's more to their characters," notes Overton, best known for Gung Ho. "Both brownies are trembly and nervous creatrues whose bark is much worse than their bite. They try to ward off evil by baring their teeth and hoping that works."
It doesn't always, but the diminutive duo still make the attempt as they amble into adventure alongside--and in the higher pockets--of Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis). "We weren't content to merely play these characters the way they were written in the script," explains Pollak, who recently starred in the CBS sitcom Coming of Age. "We wanted to create who Franjean and Rool were and where they came from. Basically, we took what was written on the page and started from scratch. We created their dialect, their walk. We even came up with a brownie battle cry. Creating those characters and making them believable was a constant process."
Adds Rick Overton, "We thought that playing brownies was going to be fun and games, but let me tell you: being a brownie is no easy task."
-Marc Shapiro