Movies Made Me: Lance Henriksen Goes West

Joseph Maddrey, co-author with Lance Henriksen on the actor's biography Not Bad for a Human, and also co-host of this week's blogathon, submits this morning "Lance Henriksen Goes West." 

Joe's post, at blog MOVIES MADE ME, considers the overlap in Lance Henriksen's film choices with the Western film.

Snippet:

Lance loves making westerns and, as filmmakers Philip Kaufman (who directed Lance in THE RIGHT STUFF) and Walter Hill (who directed Lance in JOHNNY HANDSOME) both attest, he's a natural for them. Kaufman says, "When I first met Lance, I knew. He had an intensity. I felt he was one of those real-life cowboys." Hill adds, “I think it might have been better if Lance had come along thirty years earlier – because he was born to do westerns. He looks so natural wearing the hat and riding the horse. When he walks into a bar, everybody looks up. He’s got that quality.”

When I started writing the biography, I mainly thought of Lance Henriksen as a horror movie icon - one of those rare character actors who can bring life to the darkest roles: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price. As I was writing, I began to see him in a very different light... as an actor with just as much in common with Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Lee Marvin or Charles Bronson. Much like director John Carpenter, Lance has spent a large part of his career making "hidden westerns." I count eighteen western-themed projects over the course of nearly three decades... which is not bad for a guy who got into film-making three years after the western genre effectively died at the box office. Here's the list...