No mere henchman: Sweeney Todd’s Timothy Spall

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is one of the most interesting and, for the non-queasy, entertaining films we will see this year, boasting a cast of highly-interesting and entertaining actors that includes Timothy Spall. Spall’s name might not ring as much bells as those of his top co-stars — Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and Sacha Baron Cohen — yet Spall’s body of work spans over two decades’ worth of stage, film and TV roles, collectively attesting to the London-born and based actor’s breadth of talent.

Yet in his youth, he wasn’t immediately sure what to do when he grew up. “Back in school, I had no idea what to do. I had two choices: Either join the army or go to art school,” he tells us in a brief phone interview recently. “But at age 14, I was in a school play, portraying the Lion in The Wizard of Oz, and my teacher suggested that I should be an actor.” Soon enough, he joined the National Youth Theatre and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) at the latter earning the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor in his year. His earliest film appearance on record is for the 1978 UK movie The Life Story of Baal, but rock fans would have seen him more as Harry the projectionist in the film version of The Who’s Quadrophenia, which was released in 1979, the same year that Stephen Sondheim’s musical adaptation of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street debuted on Broadway. (Also in 1979, Spall joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, staying there for some two years and performing in the likes of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Nicholas Nickleby.)

Spall then had a steady amount of TV and film work in the UK during the ’80s, including initial collaborations with esteemed director Mike Leigh, who later cast Spall in Secrets and Lies and Topsy-Turvy, among other projects. “It has been a privilege to work with Mike Leigh,” Spall muses during our talk. “It was in collaborating with him that I most came to understand that acting is about finding what makes the character tick from the inside, even if the character is bizarre or outrageous”— in effect, as Spall pointed out in an earlier interview on Reel.com, leading to a more honest and convincing performance no matter the character he’s playing.

Thus, Spall has been a delight as either an antagonist or a protagonist over the years. Aside from portraying the dastardly henchman Beadle Bamford in Sweeney Todd, he most recently played the wicked stepmother’s nefarious aide in Enchanted, was Wormtail in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was the buffoonish Mr. Poe in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and was also in Tom Cruise’s Vanilla Sky and The Last Samurai, and quite memorably played a band manager in Rock Star — all of which are Hollywood productions. (He has done voice work as well for Chicken Run and even the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.)

Spall’s hard work and menagerie of roles on both sides of the Atlantic have certainly led to becoming part of Sweeney Todd, the latest from director Tim Burton. “I have representatives in London and the US,” Spall says, “and through them I learned that Tim Burton thought of getting me for the movie. I was very excited: Tim is one of my favorite directors and this was my chance to work with him.” What’s interesting about this latest take on the enduring legend of Sweeney Todd, aside from its dark stew of love, horror, revenge and murder, is that it is based on composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s acclaimed musical version. “I didn’t think I would fit because my character (Beadle Bamford, played by an array of singer-stage actors on Broadway and in London) is supposed to have a high voice and I have a low voice,” Spall recalls. When that matter was settled, he had, as did the rest of the cast, to audition for Sondheim himself, a trepidating experience that he amusingly likens to “doing Hamlet in front of Shakespeare.” Spall adds, “Stephen Sondheim will be remembered as one of the greats. He’s very talented, and to audition in front of the writer of this great work obviously made me self-conscious. It was a challenge but he was generous, wonderful and encouraging, even if I didn’t exactly do well at first.”

Spall is a hoot in Sweeney Todd, playing Beadle with both comedic aplomb and nasty aftertaste, wielding his false virtuousness and retractable rod with villainous panache until he becomes one of the Demon Barber’s customers. And not only is Sweeney Todd his latest musically inclined flick (after Quadrophenia; Topsy-Turvy, a comedy about Gilbert and Sullivan; Rock Star; and Enchanted), Spall, yes, gets to sing in it — subtly shining as he delivers the lilting Ladies in Their Sensitivities in a singsong dialogue with Alan Rickman (incidentally a fellow RADA alumnus).

“(Working on Sweeney Todd was) an absolute delight,” Spall enthuses. “It’s a great opportunity to work with people you admire, people who are clever and original. And what’s almost ridiculous is that you learn that these people are very nice. Tim Burton has a good heart, and so does Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter. It has been such a great opportunity, far better than carrying a rifle and going to war.”

The 50-year-old Spall, a husband since 1981 to Shane Spall and the father of their three children (son Rafe is also an actor), has also had two other proofs of success: Having successfully battled leukemia (for which he was diagnosed in 1996) and, on Dec. 31, 1999, being named an Officer of the British Empire. He cites to us English stage and film actor Charles Laughton (of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mutiny on the Bounty and many others, and also a RADA alumnus) as an idol. Here’s looking forward to a younger generation of gifted and persevering actors citing Timothy Leonard Spall as their own role model.

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Co., Sweeney Todd is now showing in theaters.