With over 300 acting credits to his name, it’s impossible to sum up the incomparable impact of Michael Ironside’s acting journey thus far in just one interview. Ahead of Liverpool Comic Con, we take a deep dive into his portfolio and extensive collaboration with director Paul Verhoeven. We take a behind-the-scenes look at Total Recall and Starship Troopers, whilst digging into his organic voice acting approach on the Splinter Cell series, as Sam Fisher! With his recent narration work on Late Night with the Devil, Ironside continues to steer towards incredible projects, and all of us here at STARBURST can’t wait to see what he does next!
STARBURST: What do you remember the most from initially getting involved with Scanners?
Michael Ironside: When I auditioned for Scanners, through David Cronenberg, it was the flashback scene, with the therapist, it’s in black and white in the film, Cameron Vale, who you later find out is my brother. That was the scene that I was shown, and as far as I know, the Darryl Revok character really wasn’t filled out yet when David presented that script. The original contract was only for two days, to act for two days, and in those days, the actor scale for two days was something like 140 dollars a day, back in 1979. David asked me, “Are you doing anything right now?” I said, “No, I’m actually doing a little roofing on the side to pay the bills.” He said, “Good, because I may have something for you.” It felt like the character was written and created on the run. I sometimes got scenes a day before, two days before we were going to shoot, and rewrites and stuff like that.
When the film was first released, what memories stood out to you the most from that time?
What I do remember is the interesting thing is, when the film was sent to festivals, David and the top brass went off to Berlin, to some of the big film festivals, and I was sent down to Madrid to a festival there, I’d never been to Europe, or anything. I was fairly green at that time, I was pretty much in my Northern American element. I was in Madrid, and I was representing Scanners. I heard that in London, at the opening, there were these huge billboards of me, in that dynamic pose, with all of the veins and stuff. And in the late ’70s early ’80s with skinheads, there was a very huge problem, all over the world actually, heavily in the UK, people were graduating with BAs & MAs, and MFAs, and there was no work place for them, so to get the dole they had to go to three job interviews a week. So you had guys with PhDs and MFAs, and well-trained engineers, and teachers and philosophers, who had to go and apply and sign up for jobs as chimney sweeps, floor cleaners, and shelf stockers to get the dole, to get the welfare. So what they’d do is mess themselves up, so they wouldn’t get the part. So they’d dye their hair red, or go to work in a dress, or shave half their head so they couldn’t go to the job interviews. It was really a huge protest against the way the job market and the education system were in Europe. That was the original skinhead stuff. There was a big poster in Piccadilly Square of Darryl’s character, and they were quoting a line from the movie, which was “Just because you made me, doesn’t give you the right to kill me.” So they were all chanting that. So I’m watching it all via a newsflash on some TV in Europe, before heading to London. I turned to the two people who were supposed to be my security, I thought I’m not going to London! So that’s what I remember, I remember the reaction, because in those days, we didn’t have broad releases like we do now. You’d have 20 – 26 prints, and in Europe or England, they’d move it around; it was released in Europe and England before it was released in the US.
What was it like to work with the legendary Tony Scott on the set of Top Gun, and how do you think his vision, and creative process helped to make the film go on to become so iconic?
Tony and I got along well. I had already done Extreme Prejudice and stuff like that, and he says, “It looks like you were born in a uniform.” I said, “Let’s talk about the character”, and he said, “Let’s not worry about it, the script isn’t that deep” he said, “There’s a lot of talking between the flying and action sequences, that’s what the film is about.” I said, “How the hell are you going to shoot this?”, and he said “I’m going to take everything that they normally do at 35,000 feet, and I’m going to bring it down to 1100 feet, and just do it in conjunction, so that people can see the action, and what they are doing in conjunction to the landscape.” Because it doesn’t look fast or dangerous, or anything, there’s no point of reference when it’s way up in the air. So if you put it in a point of reference, you’ve got a hill, or a mountain, or a set of trees. He said, “It’s going to be a blast”, and it was. Tony was an absolutely enthusiastic guy to work with; he just loved it.
What was it like to work opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall?
Arnold, I class as a good, he is a friend, we’ve known each other for quite a long time now. He is an amazingly talented and intelligent guy. We were shooting in Mexico, Paul Verhoeven [director] had taken over the whole studio. I rushed off to the production office to use the production phone (we didn’t have cell phones in those days) to call Canada, because my sister had been diagnosed with cancer, and she was in the hospital, and I wanted to check on her as much as I could. Arnold noticed that I was doing that, he said, “Where do you go every day?”, and I said, “I’m using the phone.” He said, “Come to my trailer, I’ve got a special phone,” and being married to Maria with her connections in Washington, he had a special phone in his trailer, so I called my sister on the phone, Winnifred, and she said, “Where are you calling me from?” I said, “From the set, in Mexico, in Schwarzenegger’s trailer”, she said, “What?” He said, “Give me the phone” he said, “Winnifred, you have to eat this and this.” All of a sudden, he stopped, he looked at the phone, and said that she wanted to talk to me, and I said, “Winnifred, what’s up?” She said, “Who the hell is on the phone?”, and I said that’s “Arnold Schwarzenegger”, and she said “What, give the phone back to him”. They talked for about half an hour. He was talking about diet, he referenced a doctor, if they wanted to reference a doctor for the type of cancer that she had in Los Angeles, and how he was going to look after her. It blew my mind, he was just that attentive. He said, “Thank you very much”, hung up, and went back to work. When the film was over, I didn’t know this, because she told me later on, she took it for granted, every day at lunch, he called her, for five weeks, until she was out of the hospital. He didn’t tell anybody, he just called her up to see how she was doing. That’s the kind of guy Arnold is. Working with him was great.
There’s an iconic sci-fi scene in Total Recall where the character you play, Richter, loses his arms. What was that whole sequence like to work on and just how fun was it to put together?
That scene, where I lose my arms. I remember that one, because to climb into the rig, we were on the second unit, and we had Vic Armstrong, head of our stunts. We were shooting that whole sequence, and it was on an elaborate set, where the elevator went up, and my body goes behind a very thin wall, and I’ve got my real arms behind my back, and the fake arms get blown off. There were actually six explosives in each shoulder that went off simultaneously; they blew just as I hit the wall. Arnold says, “See ya at the party, Richter!” and then the arms go away. Climbing up the ladder, I kind of stumbled a bit, because my knees were really bad from roofing and football from when I was younger, I’ve blown out my knees a couple of times. I had about twelve operations at that time, on my knees. I had this ear protection that I had to wear because of the explosions in my shoulder. I was going up the ladder to get into the rig, with my arms behind my back. Then I go up, and the elevator goes up. It was about three stories high. As I’m climbing the ladder, I stumbled, and it kind of caught me off guard. After the shot was over, I came down, and Vic Armstrong said, “What happened?” I said, “Vic, I can’t roof any more”. He said “What?” I said, “My knees are gone, I can’t even work on ladders any more.” He said “Right, let’s have dinner tonight.” At dinner, he threw my resume in front of me, he said, “See this guy? Look at all of the work he has done, and he is now starring with the number one box office star in the world, I don’t think he has to worry about roofing any more.” That was really cool, because I still had that working class neighbourhood approach.
Did the scene come together OK in the end?
We did two major takes of that, on the arm scene. The second one up, I was so preoccupied with making sure that my legs didn’t give out going up the ladder, that I forgot to put my ear protection in. So I’m in the rig, and then I realise, so as the camera came close, I screamed to close my ear canals, and that’s the shot that’s in the movie. That last three and four seconds of it, where he looks up, and he screams, that’s me, because I have no ear protection. It was a lot of fun. That film took six months to shoot. Paul’s an artist and a genius. He is an amazing director.
What else do you remember from working with Paul Verhoeven on Total Recall?
My oldest daughter, Adrienne, who is now a documentary filmmaker, working on a feature herself, was on the set, and at the time she was 12/13 years old. She’d come down to Mexico to visit with me, from Canada, where she’d been with my first wife, her mother. So, there’s that scene where we first land on Mars, we march through, and there’s the lady who’s in the immigration line. They follow me all the way around. I go all the way to the elevator, stop, turn around, look at the camera, and say, “Quaid! That’s Quaid!” The lady kicks off, the head malfunctions, and it opens up, and everything goes crazy. So we shot the scene all in one shot, it’s a steadicam from getting off the landing elevator, through immigration, all of us marching in time, with the troops, and everything, onto the elevator, then I turn, look at the camera and go “Quaid?” So we shot it, two or three times. It had about 200 extras, and all the lights and technicians wanted it in one shot. So when it stopped, we were in our first month of shooting the film, and Paul always wore this blue sweater around his shoulders, or arms. He had it in a knot in front of him, and he said, “Ok, ok, I want to talk to everybody. Everybody comes in.” I love Paul, and any story I tell about him is not to disparage him in any way. So everyone gathers, he says, “This was not a complicated scene, it seems complicated, there are a lot of elements.” He says, “I know what I’m doing, and I want people that work with me to know what they’re doing.” He says, “If you think this is complicated, you will not be able to handle what’s coming ahead, because we have very complicated scenes.” He started working it up, and he has got this energy going, he says, “If you can’t do your jobs, there’s nothing wrong, just step forward and we’ll pay you off set, and we’ll get someone who can.” While he is in the middle of that, we hear someone laugh. He stopped, looked around, off the set, and went, “You!” Everyone looked, and then they all looked at me. I look, and it’s my daughter, sitting in his chair, against the wall, about 40 yards away, watching on a monitor. He is marching towards her, saying, “You think this is funny!?” I’m down off the elevator, and on my way. He is saying, “Do you think this is a joke!? To waste millions of dollars, because somebody is incompetent?” She says, “You got your shot, didn’t you!?” And he stopped dead in his tracks, and completely changed his voice. There were only three of us, her in his chair, him, and me right behind him. He goes, “Yeah, yeah, I got the shot.” He looks up and says, “Have you read the script?” She says, “No!” He says, “Get off my set until you’ve read the script.” She went, “OK, that’s fair.” She had been on sets with me since she was five years old, and she wandered off, and I realised that it had all been an act, the whole tirade. Doing a performance, to make everyone conscious of one, his voice and two, that he was in charge. For whatever reason, it worked. He turned around and said, “You’ve all heard what I’ve said, I meant every word, now, let’s get back to work.” He smiled at me.
The next morning, it was my one morning off, and I didn’t have to get to work until later that day. I woke up, it was a beautiful morning with lots of sun, I checked in on my daughter in the adjoining room, and she was not there. I go to the transportation guys at the front of the hotel – we basically took over the whole hotel – and I ask if they’ve seen my daughter, they said “Oh yeah, she was in the first car this morning, she went to the set” and I went, “What!?” I go to the set, which is 45 minutes from the hotel. I get there, I walk in, and Paul has her in a chair beside him, and they’re sitting there both with their own script, and they’re discussing stuff. She was questioning why he had done stuff. I get up, and he looks at me, and he goes, “You’re not in until later today, why are you here?” And I looked at my daughter, and I said, “Are you alright?” Adrienne says, “I’m fine.” Paul says, “While you’re here, you may as well get into make-up, we might use you.” He dismissed me. She was there for about a month, and then she had to go back to school. When she left, he wrote her a letter, saying, “If you ever want to pursue anything in this field, please feel free to say that I endorse you. You belong in this industry.” The absolute professionalism and care. People are not what they say; they are their actions. We work and live in an industry that is all an illusion. It’s really about illusion, dreams, and storytelling.
You have a classic speech within Starship Troopers, where your character Jean Rasczak speaks to Rico’s Roughnecks before going to battle, introducing your mechanical arm…
That was an interesting scene. We’d overrun our set, which means that we were shooting quickly. We shot that in South Dakota, in the northern part of the US. In the last couple of months, we were in the studios, in Century City, in Los Angeles. We were so ahead that the set wasn’t going to be ready for another two days, so they only had three walls set up, the back wall, and the two side walls, and part of the ceiling; they hadn’t constructed everything. We finished one sequence, and I was on my way back to wardrobe, I saw Paul and Jost Vacano [cinematographer], standing there. They had a camera rig that we just used on another running shot, and Paul was like, “How could this happen?” I said, “What’s going on?” he said “, The set’s not ready.” It was going to be the reveal of the mechanical hand and the reintroduction of my character, so for me, it was an important scene. I went over, and I said, “What’s going on?” Jost said “Paul doesn’t want to shoot this, we can’t do it because they don’t have a full set. They want to get three walls and part of the ceiling.” Sitting there, I went, “I have an idea!” Because we had worked together on Total Recall before, Paul turned around and said, “What?” And I went, “What if we open up with just a hand on camera, and you follow the hand down past all of these people in line. It creates the question of, who is this? And then he walks right down the ranks talking, and as he turns, it reveals me in a close-up as I walk back, that way, we don’t have to use the fourth wall, you don’t have to worry about the construction. Rico’s Roughnecks get introduced.” Paul looked at Jost, and he said, “Yeah!” We went over and walked it, and he said, “Costume change.” That night, we were walking back to our cars, and I was hanging out with some of the other actors and technicians. Paul was by himself in front of us. He stopped, turned around very abruptly, and said, “You!” Everyone scattered and left me alone, and I went, “What?” He walked up, and he said, “I took an idea from you today”, and I said, “Yeah, you did.” He smiled, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?” Then he turned around and went to his car.
How did you get involved with the world of Splinter Cell? Taking on the classic gaming role of Sam Fisher?
I’m not a gamer, and still not to this day. It was sent to me while I was doing a miniseries in Montreal, and Ubisoft sent it to an agent; it was a very small company at the time. They had a small setup in Montreal, in the middle of the city. Two and a half floors of a building. They sent me the script, and the offer was a lot of money. I thought they wanted me to narrate it. The story was very vague, but I read most of the dialogue. I told them, “The dialogue is very techno geek, it’s not really human, not kind of, organic.” At that time, there were still five owners of Ubisoft, two or three of them were like, “What are you talking about!?” Stefan, the one fella who was very hands-on, great guy to work with, he said, “What do you suggest?” I went in, and talked to him, and I said “OK, I’ll do it”, and when I went to see the set-up, they were going to do all of it in a sound booth, I said “No, wait a second, you want an organic thing, right?” So we restructured Sam’s character, because the acting is only 8-10% of the game, the rest is action, and animation. I said, “Here’s what I’d like you to do, I’d like to get the actors together, who are going to be the voices, let’s just have one day of rehearsals, just to get to know each other, so we have this empathy towards what we’re doing. Because a lot of us will be doing it in sound booths, by ourselves, while no one else is around, just the technicians. So let’s get to know one another and compare notes.” And we did do that. Stefan allowed me to re-construct Sam Fisher, a character that couldn’t give affection, and couldn’t accept affection, I’ve played those characters before, like Richter in Total Recall, very similar. I said, “If you’re going to go forward with this game, then let’s make sure that we build in a history for Sam, where his family were killed, or something happened to create this personality defect, that allows him to do this.” They agreed, so we went ahead and did it.
How else would you describe your working collaboration with Ubisoft at that time?
The thing that I remember the most from doing that first game was… fames were new to the market, especially for acting. Ubisoft was a small privately owned company; they hadn’t gone public. They had broken it into shares; it was a shared company. They offered me this chunk of money, and I said, “I tell you what, I’ll take a third of that money, give me the rest in shares, because I believe in this game.” I really thought that they were going to go somewhere, because of their acceptance of an artistic point of view. I’d been around a lot of different companies, and they were very open. So I called the union, and they said, “No, you can’t do that.” I said, “What do you mean?” And they said, “Well, how do we get our end of it? Our 10/9%.” I said, “Why not set up a corporation that you and I are partners in, and the money goes into that”, and they said “No, it’s too complicated, won’t work. You’ve got to take the cash deal”, so I said “I’ll do it out of another union then”, and they said, “If you do that, we’ll ban you.” So they basically handcuffed me to take the cash deal. Ubisoft did go public, if I bought the stock at the time it would have been around 2.75 cents Canadian a share, then by the time the fifth game came out, it had split six times. I bumped into Stefan just before they did the sixth game, before they changed the voice of Sam for another actor. I bumped into him in the American Airlines lounge in Kennedy Airport, in New York. He said, “I was just doing numbers last night”, he said, “If you had taken that deal, and they had let you, do you know how much money you would have had today? 17.6 million dollars!” I sat there, and I said, “Thanks, Stefan, I’ve got to go on a plane now, and fly to Bucharest, and that’s all I’m going to think about.” The cool thing was that somebody from the union called before COVID, and they asked if I had an original draft of using and sharing back-end profits for video games. So I sent them all of the paperwork, but I don’t know if they’re going to use it. Everything happens for a reason, and I was paid an extraordinary amount of money for that job, and for all five or six games that I did, I loved the process, and they allowed me to be a part of that creative team. It really helped a lot of actors, especially in and around Montreal. Ubisoft took off, and they ended up buying that whole building, that whole block in Montreal. Then, they opened up another outlet in Toronto and another place in Los Angeles. They just made a fortune, as they should. A couple of the owners I think are now living on private islands somewhere, Stefan, as far as I know, is still very hands on. He is a very creative guy.
Looking back over this length of time, how would you say gaming has progressed in general?
My dad used to say, “Humanity’s biggest problem is its ability to be bored. Even when things are going good, you get bored” he said that “a lot of people’s artistic integrity comes from boredom. It causes change.” Video games have gone that way as well. It was a huge sensation for about a decade, and then the audience started to demand more. The audience not only wants realistic, but they don’t want to see real blood, or feel the impact of the gun or anything, but they want empathy, they want a certain amount of storyline, they want to know why they’re playing the game. They want integrity in their characters. I think that games are starting to go towards that. An audience has control by not showing up, by not buying or playing. Some games tank after a while, because it’s so repetitive. You can only have so much violence before the gamer gets bored; there has to be something more.
There’s an anime and TV series of Splinter Cell on the horizon, right?
I came back and did a couple of guest spots for Sam, and a couple of other games. I’m really excited. I haven’t seen it yet, but it got sold, and they’ve made a limited series. They shot in South Africa, and Liev Schreiber played Sam. Which I think is a brilliant choice for live action. It’s already shot, as far as I know. So, they’re waiting for the anime to run its cycle, and then they’re going to have this miniseries on.
Late Night with the Devil is one of the best horror movies of recent years. How did you get involved with the movie, and what do you think sets it apart?
I got involved via the producers, as we were looking for a project to do together. It was a co-production between New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. I couldn’t be fully involved with Late Night with the Devil, because I was involved with another film at the time, doing this shooting sequence. So they went ahead and did it, and we came up with the idea of doing the voice introduction to it, very much like Network (1976), which is a brilliant film. At the beginning of Network, there’s a narration that goes on about this newsman, and the rise and fall of Howard Beale. So we were talking about it, and we were like, “Why not do a whole narration at the beginning of it, and we’ll do it like Network narration”, and they said “Oh that’s brilliant.” So that’s what they did. So they covered the whole backstory in the introduction. It was a fun film. What I loved was the discipline with which they shot it, the discipline of three TV cameras, like an on set studio. Like The Tonight Show, which stars Johnny Carson, and the different nighttime talk shows. They did a really good job. Also, the poster and the artwork that they used for the ad campaign were well done. It’s good, I was at a Comic Con, and they were bringing up posters, it was the first time that I saw the poster, and the artwork. I saw it, and it was so good. I wish nothing but the best for those guys, the whole production team, the producers, the directors, the writers on that, because they’re a really creative bunch, and I hope they get more opportunities.
How excited are you for Liverpool Comic Con? It’s great to see that so many of the Starship Troopers cast are there!
Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. They’ve weathered the storm and aged a little bit better than I have because I was their age when I did it. It’s been about 30 years! I’m looking forward to the convention. A couple of my good friends live near there, so I’ll be able to visit them and say hi, and I will get to see Liverpool! The last time I was there, my wife went on a Beatles tour, got on the bus, and they all sang the songs. She came back a puddle of nostalgic tears. I’m really looking forward to it. The great thing about doing Comic Cons, I hadn’t done them the last couple of years, because of COVID, and there wasn’t a lot of work, I kind of got muscled into doing it, and I liked it. I kind of like having a first-hand connection with the audience again, talking with people. I don’t want to rush people through, I like to spend some time, and chat with them. There’s a saying, “That there are three components that are important, the audience, the piece of work, and the author. All are equal. If the audience and the piece of work go in one direction, it’s none of the author’s business.” He said, “It’s so important that they are conscious of each other.” In film, I think a lot of people aren’t conscious of the audience. They’re conscious of feeding them the publicity, or the propaganda, or whatever they want to do to sell the product. But actually getting out there and meeting people brings a theatrical, live performance feel to it. It’s cool.
So, what other projects do you have coming up on the horizon, and is there anything that you can tell us about them just yet?
I’m superstitious, I don’t talk about work until it’s in the can. I just did a film, and we’re going to do some pick-ups on it. I did it just before Christmas. It’s called Deep Tissue, and it’s kind of a tongue-in-cheek comedy and action film. It’ll probably be out this fall. It was a fun thing to do. I’m working on three films. One I’m actually going to direct sometime this year, called Motel. Hopefully, if I get the opportunity, the quality of the Coen brothers with a bit of Martin Scorsese at the end. It all happens in one night, in a motel in 1964. We’ve had it for a couple of years, and things got in the way. Hopefully, we’re going to shoot it outside Calgary sometime in October.
Find out about Liverpool Comic Con.
Check out Michael Ironside’s legendary acting portfolio on IMDb.
