Based in Britain, actor Gavan O'Herlihy was in just the right place when director Ron Howard was casting Lucasfilm's Willow. Not only was the movie shot out of nearby Elstree Studios in England, but O'Herlihy was already known to Howard. The two had briefly worked together on Happy Days, O'Herlihy playing Chuck, older brother to Howard's Richie Cunningham. And while Howard earned his directorial credits, O'Herlihy was building his own movie career with hard-edged performances in Superman III (as Brad, Lana Lang's ardent admirer), Never Say Never Again (as the brother of Domino, played by Barbara Carrera) and Death Wish 3 (as the crazed gang leader Fraker).

He was pleased when the call came to audition for Howard for Willow. "I hadn't seen him since Happy Days, but I always had an affection for him, because he was always straight with me," O'Herlihy says. "I went in, and it was a pleasure. It was marvelous to see him. I've always respected and thought highly of him. He has a strong sense of values and priorities."

O'Herlihy was soon cast as Airk Thaughbaer, leader of the rebel army which seeks to overcome the evil Queen Bavmorda's troops--a conflict in which the innocent Willow Ufgood becomes deeply embroiled. "I had the greatest time of my life working on this movie," the 34-year-old actor says. "It's just a big, bruising physical role. I've never enjoyed myself as much--being able to just get out there and get dirty, and get a little rough. It was very physical, which suits me to a 'T'."

"My son Gavan [pictured]," actor Dan O'Herlihy explains, "is based in England, though he has been doing a lot of American movies, like Willow."

Riding horses was a substantial part of this physicality. "I love Willow for the riding," O'Herlihy confesses. "I had ridden some before, 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 you tried to look like you knew what you were doing. Greg Powell was the horsemaster on Willow. He's tremendous, a great, great bloke.

"Horses are dangerous, that's one thing I learned," the actor notes. "I got thrown half a dozen times." It was one particular day, shooting on location with numerous horses and extras, that O'Herlihy had his worst equestrian experience. "It was winter, and they weren't film horses," he explains. "There were thousands marching, four abreast, and I was behind a squad of about 60 or 100. I fought [the horse] all the way down. When he was in the midst of the army, I was trying to keep control physically, just trying to hold him in. I mean, you shouldn't have to do that. I let him go a couple of times, to ease off, and he would just immediately start getting off track, while I was trying to stay in line. Then, he started kicking, and I was shouting and trying to keep people away.

"They had a huge crane, and they had a camera on top of the crane, shooting, and I know I'm in the shot, and I'm trying to keep it together. I finally got past the camera, and I just pulled him off, and went out--there was some pine virgin forest next to me. That's when he started losing it, and that's when I took a hike. I got him 30 yards from everybody, and I just dove and let him go." O'Herlihy believes, "he probably would have rolled on me, or he would have put me up against a tree. He was losing it."

"An hour later, that horse came back with Greg, did a 180 in the air and came right down on Greg and wiped him out, but Greg's so goddamn strong....

"Then I got rolled on about five minutes later! Greg had gotten up, and called Silver [a different horse] in. I was moaning, and Greg's saying, 'It's all right, it'll work.'

"He got Silver down there and they were holding him, reining him ready for the shot. He had to be dead still--I was doing a closeup, the horse couldn't move out of the shot. I said, 'Let go of his rein. He's not going to stay still when you let go, so let me see if I can get him under control.' Silver was sweating and flipped out and crazy like all the other horses."

With O'Herlihy in the saddle and the reins released, the horse "started bucking and rearing immediately, and he went right down and [his head] came up and hit me in the face, and I went straight off him, and then I just felt the weight hit me right here [on the side of his face and one shoulder]. It was over very quickly.

"I was stunned, and Greg came over, going 'Are you all right, are you all right, are you all right?' I said, 'I'm all right.' Everyone's asking, 'What are we going to do, what are we going to do?' Because we had run out of horses that would stand still while an army of 500 or 1,000 walked by.

"Greg said, 'Here, I'll get him on my shoulders.' He just bent down, I climbed on his shoulders, he stood straight up, we walked over, and he bounced from foot to foot to mime a horse, I took a rope, and it was a closeup of me looking down at Willow.

"The funny thing was: I was trying to decide whether I should mime my original shot [for continuity reasons], which was kicking the horse and taking off--at the end of it, I sprint away. So, I kicked Greg in the ribs, and you can hear him, 'What are you doing? Christ!' He's prancing off camera, and he has to run out of shot--and I'm slugging him in the ribs with my heels!

"First, his right leg is almost crushed, and now, he's getting stomped by me. I gave him a few good belts there, not too hard. He's strong, he can handle it."

The battle against Bavmorda wasn't made any easier for O'Herlihy by temperamental horses which rolled as often as the cameras did.

It was a day of contrasts: O'Herlihy learned the temperamental extremes of horses ("I got thrown twice, and rolled on"). and the sensitive perceptivity of his executive producer, George Lucas. "I was a little bent out of shape about the quality of what I was doing, because I was thinking so much of just surviving on the horse, and George came up to me once and he just said, 'Thanks, that was good work.' He said it at a time when, if you're ever going to hear that said, [that was the right time]. I was pretty bugged out, because I was struggling and the horses were getting crazy, and he just chose that moment to say something, and I really appreciated it.

"He's an interesting man. He's bright, he's highly imaginative, and he's a very talented director, let alone a producer. He takes risks, and I admire that. I felt like it was old-time moviemaking, in a way: Spare no cost, and shoot it with this incredible production level. He's a great filmmaker."

O'Herlihy also enjoyed his new working relationship with Ron Howard. "He was just a pleasure from day one. Ron's a very talented guy--he has pretty high energy, and I tied into that. I like someone who is that alert, and he's very alert."

The title role in Willow is played by 18-year-old, 3'4" tall Warwick Davis (STARLOG #101). "Warwick's a gold mine, Warwick's a tremendous talent," O'Herlihy notes.

In the movie, Willow is one of an entire race of little people, the Nelwyn. "For the little people, the movie is going to be important, because they're people. The audience is going to see them with families, homes, children, hurting, loving--all the things that societies are, people are," O'Herlihy says. "Also, they're extraordinary people, because to have to deal with being odd one out has got to teach you many things. The ones I got to know are remarkable people. And I admire them. The more you're hurt, the more you hopefully learn, the more compassion you learn. Otherwise, you go the other way, and you become vicious and angry and pissed off."

Location shooting in Wales was another outstanding aspect of Willow for O'Herlihy. "The sets in Wales were the most memorable that I've ever had to work on. All night shoots but a half-hour from my home. I would drive down at eight at night and sit out there with a bunch of my Welsh buddies, watching this incredible set. It was thrilling being on location at the top of a slate quarry at night, with a huge castle, built, with bonfires everywhere, and drawbridges, and armies all around you. That was the most thrilling night I've ever had."

While attending Dublin's Trinity College in 1970, O'Herlihy recalls, "I was doing a philosophy degree, and I was playing tennis; I had a great number of people interested in backing me for a tennis career. Paul McGuinness--who now manages U2--approached me to read for a part in a play. He was just a student there, and he was directing a show at Trinity Players. I liked him and that whole crowd, so I did a show.

"It kind of steam-rolled, and I joined the Abbey school [part of Ireland's leading theater, the Abbey], and did a lot of work there. It was just a great two years, with probably 15 to 20 shows, many lunchtime, afternoon shows, as well as working in the main theater at night. It was a gold mine for an actor." Simultaneously, O'Herlihy had become Irish National Tennis Champion, and found himself with a choice: tennis or acting. "I went to LA, and decided to see if I could make a career as an actor there."

Just 20 years old, O'Herlihy was already making a name for himself, and "within five months, I was offered Happy Days. I was Chuck, the guy with the basketball, bouncing away..." There was just one problem. "I didn't like it," he says. "I didn't want to start my career with a seven-year contract, grunting, eating fast and stuff. Chuck was sent away to college in the pilot, so he was going to be there as a back-up man.

So, I asked out after 10 shows. It split some people up; the writers didn't appreciate the fact that a 20-year-old was saying, 'Hey, I don't want to do this.' I had no trouble, I wasn't that important to the show. Jerry Paris, who was Happy Days' director and co-producer, was a little surprised, and he tried to talk me out of it.

As the Nockmaar attack, Airk (O'Herlihy) prepares to duel with General Kael. ia

"But I asked out and got out, and from that day, I haven't been in another pilot. That has never been my direction. I would rather do movies or stage or whatever."

However, another reason the actor returned to LA, where he was born, was "to check it out. I returned to America because I really left it at 13 to go to a prep school in Ireland, and I think that's why I went back. If I had spent more time there when I was young, New York would have been my natural base; my energy and the way my mind functions would have tuned into New York much more.

"So, when I pulled out of Happy Days, I started doing a lot of episodics and did a fair bit of stage." Among his TV appearances, O'Herlihy was featured in The Six Million Dollar Man ("I played an IRA gangster"), Matt Houston and The Bionic Woman.

"I did about 25 hours there," he explains. "It's no good; I don't like it. I imagine many do. For a start, in the old days, you could make a good living at it, because you might make $5-7,000 a shot as a guest star. Then, once the big money went into production, and into paying the leads, they put a $2,500 or $3,000 limit on the episodic [guest] appearances. Well, if you do 10 of those a year, you're making 25 grand after tax, and you're banging your head against the wall competing, trying to get them. You get 10 of them, you think you're doing great, but you're not making any money. American TV is a production line." Of his work done in that period, the actor says none is memorable to him. "It didn't excite me then, and it still doesn't," he remarks.

After abandoning the LA TV grind, O'Herlihy looked into the acting alternatives, spending a year with the Great Lake Shakespeare Company of Ohio. "At the end, I felt, in a way, LA's not my kind of town professionally," he recalls. "You see, I started in Ireland, and I knew that I could work [in Britain] because I'm an Irish citizen. So, at that year's end, I split over to London. I had people who through the years had kept in touch with me, and asked to represent me if I ever came, and I did." Almost immediately upon arriving in Britain, O'Herlihy landed the role of Captain "Red" Burwash in We'll Meet Again, a TV series about the air fighting during World War II, which also starred Susannah York.

"British television is vastly different," the actor asserts. "For instance, nowadays, on a Dallas or something, they'll shoot 34 or 35 hours in a year. We shot 13 hours of We'll Meet Again in a year. It's almost a third of the work rate, so there's much more time to actually work, and try to make it better. In England, the actor has much more of an influence on the end result, it's more of a colllaboration.

In the States, as far as I'm concerned, you can take your Dynastys, your Falcon Crests and stuff, and you can take any one of thousands of actors and put them in an hour of it, and it makes no difference to the show. Because it's the show, the production that sells, not the actors. Whereas here, the actors make a big, big difference. And that's fun."

What would Mrs. Cunningham say, if she saw her little boy Chuck (O'Herlihy) as a violent gang leader trying to kill Mr. Majestyk, Charles Bronson?

We'll Meet Again was "my introduction to Britain," O'Herlihy says, "and it has been my home ever since, pretty much, almost six years, I guess." His subsequent work has included Secret Adversary, a two-hour Agatha Christie film with Francesca Annis, a TV series set in the financial world, A Killing on the Exchange, the Bond film Never Say Never Again and Superman III.

"I played Brad, the high school hero, who is trying to get it on with Annette O'Toole and has been spurned, and gets drunk with Richard Pryor in the computer room, and then at the end, I try to beat up Superman! [He adopts an incredulous tone of voice:] Great! I hope that's not an epitaph, 'I tried to punch out Superman!' When we were shooting it, I was thinking, 'Jeez, give me a break, guys!'

Charles Bronson was O'Herlihy's next opponent in Death Wish 3. "[Director] Michael Winner is quick. He moves at a very rapid pace, so you really have to have your wits about you. I ended up with my shoe smoking in the middle of the street on that one. They blew me out the side of a wall."

Does O'Herlihy do his own stunts? "Well, I'm an old jock," he responds. "But basically what you find out is that stuntmen have got to make a living. I could do most of it. I mean, I'm not going to do falls, things that take experience, skill, practice and the rest.

"But you discover as the years go by that if you do a stunt, you're taking money out of the stuntman's pocket, even a stunt that's only worth 200 pounds to them [about $380], because they get paid by the stunt. It's their job."

"Sometimes, if it's really advantageous to the actual scene, sure, if the director feels that it's integral that you do it, no problem. I would like to do most of it, because I like being athletic, but I've learned with experience that there's no need to do it."

Although for casting opportunities O'Herlihy intends to travel regularly back to the US, he is content to remain in Britain. "Culturally, it's a tremendous land," he says. "I'm a history buff, and the history is so powerful. If you're sensitive to that, it feeds you. I lived down on the river for a year-and-a-half, on a house boat, which I used to take up and down the river from the Hampton Court area up to beyond Oxford. I've done incredible trips on the river here, I've moored underneath Windsor Castle.

"Personally, I like it here a lot. Philosophically, it's a good life. Your consciousness is different here, it's easier, gentler, more thoughtful.

"And it's a beautiful land. I'm into stars, I like the stars, and I've got great stars in Wales. I like the environment around me, that's why I like America. America's breathtaking, drive across the States and your jaw is hanging open the whole way."

Although it took a back seat to acting, O'Herlihy still finds tennis challenging. "I may start competing again," he says. "I could have made a good living at tennis, I think--but what an obsessive life. You have to need tennis as your only outlet, you've got to go 355 days of the year, racket in your hand, hanging out with tennis players in hotels. People who succeed, or are driven to succeed, in it, you admire them all the more, but boy, it's a very narrow world."

While not quite as physical an activity, O'Herlihy has still been able to exert himself in his SF reading. "Olaf Stapledon I've liked," the actor notes. "He's not very well known, but I've liked him a lot--Sirius, StarMaker and things like that. StarMaker was a great book. And I've come across weird books, great books...A great book by William Barrett called The Rational Man.

"I've read fairly voraciously for most of my life, I grew up on the Magnet [a boys' paper published in Britain from 1908 to 1940], Billy Bunter stories--my dad has one of the world's top collections of it. That and the Gem [a similar paper, 1907-1939], and it's highly literate and beautifully written.

"You see, I went to Ireland at 13, so I was pretty lonely, and I used to just plow through these books right through the night, and listen to baseball games--I listened to Sandy Koufax's perfect game on the Armed Forces Radio from Germany at 3:30 a.m. It was amazing. I spent much of my early years doing that--hanging on to America."

Gavan's father is actor Dan O'Herlihy. How has this affected his career? "It has probably taught me a fair bit about the profession," he comments, "about its idiosyncrasies, its pain, its pleasures, its nuances. It has taught me how to avoid certain things. And he's a damn good actor. In many ways, he's better now than he ever was. He's bloody marvelous in The Dead, the new John Huston movie. My father is a great actor."