In fact, admits Molina: “My only plan was to stay employed.” Back at drama school – he trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London – he’d overhear his classmates, who were “strategising, planning, where they were going to go, where they wanted to be”.
‘I wouldn’t stand in a room with someone misogynistic, racist, or homophobic’: Stephen Graham on prejudice, social realism, and MatildaĪ meaty lead in a sophisticated crime drama fits Molina like a glove. Hollywood’s ‘nepo babies’ should just drag their privilege into the open. Daniel Craig’s Glass Onion super-sleuth is more than just Hollywood’s usual insipid queerbaiting. What hadn’t been a passion project initially was to become one, “just by sheer force of its own quality”. I’ve read all of her books.’ Just waxing lyrical.” He slams his hand on the table to evoke her urgency that he take the part: “She said, ‘You’ve gotta do it.’” Aware that it would be a time-consuming project, Molina had an appetite to be more than just an “actor for hire” so he proposed also becoming an executive producer. “She just went absolutely crazy: ‘Oh my god, she’s my favourite writer. When Molina was first approached about the adaptation, he mentioned Penny’s books to a friend. (Two episodes focusing on this particular story were directed by Tracy Deer, an indigenous Mohawk.) Gamache is sent to Three Pines to investigate the electrocution of a wealthy lifestyle guru at a curling match, but he is distracted by the disappearance of an Aboriginal woman – and accusations that police have neglected the case. Set in a tightknit village in Quebec, it’s as cold and small town-y as HBO’s Mare of Easttown while sharing many of the whodunnit characteristics of an Agatha Christie story. Molina’s latest disappearing act: as detective Armand Gamache in Three Pines, Prime Video’s moreish adaptation of Louise Penny’s murder mystery novels. And most widely known, there’s Doc Ock, the wielder of lethal metal tentacles in the Spider-Man films. The part of Dawn French’s husband in the BBC Two sitcom Roger & Val Have Just Got In. A twice-reprised performance as artist Mark Rothko in John Logan’s play, Red. His Bafta-nominated role as Diego Rivera, aka Mr Frida Kahlo, in Frida. The confectionery-fearing Catholic mayor in Chocolat. Then there was the coked-up, silk dressing gowned, moustachioed drug dealer in Boogie Nights. He was Joe Orton’s nervy, desperate lover – and eventual killer – Kenneth Halliwell in Prick Up Your Ears. There was his brief but unforgettable cameo in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, that ended with him impaled on a spear trap after double-crossing Indiana Jones, his first film role. “When I started working, I realised the beauty…” – even after 30 years in LA, the Londoner still slightly drops his “t”s – “… of being a character actor is that you get to do the most extraordinary range of stuff.” And he has. Alfred molina movies how to#
He knows how to spin a yarn the 69-year-old has told plenty.
Molina laughs a lot: there are the small crinkles that cut into his stories, threatening to capsize them in mid-flow, and then there’s the big boom that comes at the end of a delicious anecdote. “Leading man… character man… total loser,” Molina reels off, then bursts into laughter. He thought to himself, “So that’s it? After three years?” The term, handed to him like a “consolation prize”, seemed to suggest a kind of hierarchy. I think you have to come to terms with the fact that you really won’t work until you’re well into your forties.’” A dramatic pause, and then a flourish: “‘You’re a character man.’” The actor was deflated. (He’s the London-born son of a Spanish father and Italian mother.) Molina starts to summon the patronising RP of his tutor, creasing up as he does so. Back then, the Spider-Man star was still Alfredo, later advised to drop the “o” to anglicise his name. The reason for such emphasis on that word? A memory, perhaps, of a pep talk he was given in his final year of drama school. “There was a time when ‘character actor’ meant someone who wasn’t quite good enough to be a leading man,” the celebrated actor and owner of Hollywood’s best eyebrows tells me, leaning forward, “and I think that’s bollocks.” Everyone calls Alfred Molina a character actor.
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