A few years ago, legend has it, a female theatregoer had a bit of an enounter
with Bob Hoskins. Finding herself in the seat next to his, she made the
mistake of shyly complimenting the actor on some performance or other. And
he told her to f*** off. They’d never met and his aggressive, unmistakably
unironic rebuff seemed a trifle over the top, even coming from a man famous
for playing aggressive, squat psychopaths.
A few months later, a journalist dispatched to interview the testicle on legs
— the critic Pauline Kael’s appellation — found him “the rudest, most
disagreeable person” she’d ever met. It seems that everyone has an angry Bob
Hoskins story.
On the train to Cheltenham to meet the balding ball of fury I wonder what my
own Hoskins horror story will be. I expect swearing at the very least,
perhaps even physical violence. A hole punched in the wall of his trailer
would be good.
That pent-up fury he still manages to emanate on-screen at the age of 63 must
come from somewhere — that, at least, is the theory held by his critics
(women, mainly). One interviewer diagnosed depression, while a poll of women
around my office produced the more nebulous “bad energy”. Hoskins has some
kind of energy, that much is clear.
Even on this grey day in Cheltenham, he can be spotted from miles off, smoking
his cigarette and surrounded by a little pool of awe. Men in
three-quarter-length khaki trousers scuttle about with coffees, bits of
gaffer tape and clapper boards while “Bob” shoots a car scene. More men in
more regulation trousers fuss about in the trailers and scan today’s
production notes — if I tell you that a World Cup timetable is stapled
between its pages you’ll understand just how masculine this crew is.
They think Bob’s great, they worship him, and now he’s their mate. For fans of The
Long Good Friday there may be no greater thrill on earth than casually
inserting the word “Bob” (no “Hoskins”) into a sentence.
Today Bob is pretending to be a policeman with a grudge in a film he’s making
called Outlaw.We’re scheduled to have our chat after lunch in his
trailer and everybody has assured me that in real lifehe’s as nice as pie:
“Rude? Bob? Naaah.”
Up close, his friend and driver of 30 years, Sammy, by his side, Hoskins still
has the short man’s straining-at-the-leash quality. But the bit of rough is
now smooth at the edges. He’s finished his chilli con carne — no tofu
nonsense for him — and has settled on a sofa, his arms thrown back in a
posture of magnanimous relaxation (which comes across as slightly forced).
“This script is pretty revolutionary, actually,” he’s saying with more gusto
than he usually manages to drum up when promoting a film. “It basically
boils down to the script. I enjoy developing young talent and that’s why
scripts get through to me.”
He doesn’t look exactly frightening. More a mixture of amused, combative and
wary. Not unattractive. But there’s another quality that explains the
unexpected smoothness — money. Hoskins has acted in more than 80 films,
quite a few of which he can’t remember making. Besides assorted gangsters,
there’s hardly a villain or sidekick he hasn’t played. Mussolini, a street
sweeper, a Super Mario Brother (his nadir, most agree, unless you’re
counting the advertisements for BT), so he must be very rich. A cigar would
not go amiss in one of those cubic fists.
Which invites the question: so why is he working for a pittance on a
low-budget British film? “The script reflects the anger of the streets.”
But can someone as rich as Bob Hoskins really feel the anger of the streets?
“I still live in London. I buy the paper. Just going out to the paper shop,
listening . . .
“Britain was very different when I was growing up. When Maggie Thatcher came
the whole thing changed, she turned up all kinds of inequalities. It was a
terrible situation. But the Labour Government is worse. It’s running along
Thatcherite rules, but there isn’t any opposition.”
He grumbles some more about how Britain is going to the dogs. On this point he
is definitely angry.
Actually, grumbling is what he should stick under Other Interests in his Who’s
Who entry. It contrasts favourably with the surliness I was expecting.
He’s not exactly political, more anarchic. There’s a riff about evil traffic
wardens, the congestion charge, and Gordon Brown’s stealth taxes. “There
seems to be so much control but no control at the same time. People are
wanting to take the law into their own hands. Look at how popular the BNP is
suddenly.”
He adds ruefully: “It’s a shame Screaming Lord Sutch is dead. I’d vote for
him.”
Outlaw — due for release next year — is directed by Nick Love, who
specialises in making provocative films about British culture. His most
successful to date is The Football Factory, a reactionary portrait
of football violence. A South Londoner, Love says he has no qualms about
making films for the so-called “chav generation”, or in this case about the
chav generation.
The plot of Outlaw in brief: it is Britain in 2007, law and order are
falling apart; gangs of youths beat up people at random; the criminal
justice system is useless. A group of previously law-abiding citizens go on
a vigilante rampage and all sorts of baddies — paedophiles, youths with
knives — get their comeuppance. “I play a policeman who decides to go bent,
giving out information to vigilantes,” Hoskins says. “I’m not personally in
favour of vigilantes, and this film is not a call to arms, it’s a prophecy.
“You only have to look around you. There are kids running around with knives.
People feel let down and ripped off. That’s what I feel, what most people
feel.”
He looks fleetingly angry again, but checks himself. “Film is a good way of
making these points. It’s the most expressive form there is. If Leonardo da
Vinci were alive today, would he f*** about with a pot of paint?”
Outlaw, he tells me with great relish, is a “very violent film”. This
seems to be why everyone else on set likes it too. And why when it is
released next year women will again talk vaguely about Hoskins’s “bad
energy”.There is another reason he is so drawn to this film, and why he also
agreed to play the brilliantly convincing boxing coach on the brink of a
meltdown in the then 25-year-old Shane Meadows’s Twenty Four Seven (1997).
“At first I was intimidated, thinking these young guys are going to see me as
an old fogey. At my age it’s nice to see you’ve still got street cred.”
Hoskins is uninterested in knighthoods, but he is self-conscious about what
the man on the street thinks. “The older I get the more English I feel, the
more I like this country. Doing films here I get to see a bit of the country
and I must say the people in England are very nice.”
He tells a story. “I was in a Waitrose in Sussex when some old dear came up
and said: ‘Bob, where’s the tea?’ So I said, well here’s the organic stuff
and here’s the decaffeinated, and she said: ‘No, Bob, I mean tea. Tea, Bob!
Normal tea. Where is it?’
“Eventually we found the stuff and off she went. I’d never met her before but
people think they know me. A fellow came up to me the other day and said:
‘You know my sister.’ I said: ‘I don’t think so,’ and he said: ‘Course you
do, she’s watched all your films’.”
Ah, the twisted logic of the public. Wherever he goes, Bob Hoskins can’t get
away from the public. But the public has a hard time getting away from him,
too — already this year he’s shot two other British films and soon he is off
to play Badger in a screen adaptation of The Wind in the Willows. I
suspect he’s one of those actors whose ubiquity clouds our judgment.
