Henry Rollins: Portrait of a Hollywood Bad Boy

Henry Rollins? Go figure, as they say in the California locale in which he dwells, yet despises. He’ll denounce his president as a war criminal, though his physique and much of what he has to say hardly befits a pacifist. He rages against giant corporations and speaks eloquently about the sinister global omnipresence of the Nike swoosh, but he has previously appeared as a spokesman for Gap. He’s a confessed depressive, yet he lives more in the moment and the world than most happy-go-lucky types could claim. Just consider his colossal work rate, his prolific artistic output and his well-established reputation as a Rennaissance man.

Having gained notice as an author, actor, publisher, performance artist, record company executive and alternative rock frontman, it’s easy to see him as a bundle of tattooed contradictions, but no-one could ever accuse him of selling out. And truthfully, no-one would dare. For every Lollapolooza tour, there have been a dozen labours of love. His publishing company 2.13.61 has re-issued the writings of Hubert Selby Jr. and Bill Shields, as well as printing original work from musicians turned authors Nick Cave and Jeffrey Lee Pierce, while his record company has sought to bring bands such as The Fall to a wider audience in America.
He has also used the prominence gained from occasional solo crossover hits to campaign for many just causes. Most recently, he’s been involved with the West Memphis Three – three Arkansas youths convicted of child-killing in a dodgy trial amid an atmosphere of mass hysteria . The convicted men were accused of killing school-age boys as part of a Satanic ritual.
When not occupied with music/literary ventures and campaigning for social justice, Rollins has maintained a typically eclectic career in films. He began appearing in experimental films as early as 1985, during his performance art days with Lydia Lunch, but his level of visibility inevitably brought Hollywood calling. In 1994 he appeared in both the independent vampire story Jugular Wine and The Chase in which he played a highway patrolman. There have been many contrary choices since. He’s played a scientist in Johnny Mnemonic, a brutal prison guard in David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and a children’s hockey coach in Jack Frost.
His latest role, though, is eyebrow-raising even in the context of a film CV that includes Michael Keaton comedies and Jackass. He plays the head of a Cuba-bound SWAT team in Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer’s more bangs-for-your-buck mega-sequel Bad Boys 2. This movie is so BIG, it’s got cars crashing into boats crashing into trucks, Will Smith strutting around like he owns the planet, Martin Lawrence on ecstasy, whilst even the dead chicks in the morgue have massive, ogle-worthy silicone implants. No, really.
MovieHouse caught up with Henry Rollins recently to ask him how on earth he ended up invading Cuba.
TARA BRADY: What made you go for this kind of movie. It’s not very Rollins?
HENRY ROLLINS: Because it’s so thoroughly alien to what I do, and not necessarily the sort of movie I would ever go to see – it’s the kind of movie I’d see on an airplane. I live in Hollywood, I live ten minutes from any one of these studios, and I get offered all kinds of stuff – as far as auditions, it’s not like they’re begging me to go over there, but I can get several minutes with the casting director. And it’s not like my usual films where the guy knows me from the show or something, and you turn up, do the movie work and it’s fun and you never get to see the movie.
TARA BRADY: This is the second Bay and Bruckheimer production you’ve tried to sign up for…
HENRY ROLLINS: Yeah, I auditioned for Armaggedon just for the hell of it. I’m even starting to recognise some of the guys at auditions now. You know, you turn up and you see all these guys and they are as serious as a heart attack. They’re living on noodles out of the back of their car. This is their life. You see them in the waiting room, in the same places as they were two years earlier. It’s the real deal with those guys. I have a job. I’m not an actor, I’m a wiseass. But I turned up this time, and just went in there and hit it, and they called me up in London a few days later, where I was doing this TV show, and told me – ‘Guess what? You’ve got the part.’ I immediately thought uh-oh, now I’m actually going to have to do it. But it was actually cool. I went out to Miami for the shoot, and it was fun. Will and Martin are really cool people. You can’t fault them on the acting thing either. They’re doing action scene retakes for hours. Running and jumping, followed by more running and jumping, and they don’t drop a line. They’re pretty incredible to watch. I have total respect for them. They’re consummate professionals. It’s like this: once I’m doing a movie like this, then I’m serious as a heart attack. And if you’re smart, then you’ll pay attention to the professionals. I did a few scenes with Al Pacino in Heat, and that was acting school. You’re always ten per cent better in a scene if someone like that is in it too.
TARA BRADY: As with some of your other movie appearances, the film requires you to dress up as a cop. Do you get a giddy thrill from the uniform?
HENRY ROLLINS: It’s weird, cause I’ve met a lot of cops. Whenever you play a cop in a movie, they have real ones as advisers. And most of them aren’t racists, most of them are men who’ve spent their careers trying to catch bad guys. On Bad Boys 2, we had all these Miami narcotic special divisions. These guys are up against guys who shoot back, all the time, and their stories are incredible. They tell you stories about doing six-week stakeouts and ending up with three casualties. They’re all adrenaline junkies – they’re all like 26, and in the best physical shape you’ve ever seen. They mess around all the time putting each other in karate holds. I was playing their commander in the movie, but their real commanding officer was on-set, and he was hardcore. So it’s interesting for me hanging around with cops every day, cause you realise there’s a whole other side to the story. If you’re the kind of cop who wants to help my mom get into her apartment building safely, then I’m on your side, but if you’re the kind of LA cop who throws some Mexican guy in jail cause you don’t like the look of his tattoos, then you better believe I’m not on your side. But yeah, there’s a lot of irony in me playing a cop. I don’t get off on it sexually, but I do get off on the irony.
TARA BRADY: How do you reconcile Henry Rollins the counter-cultural figure with the guy who’s doing Bad Boys 2 for a major studio?

HENRY ROLLINS: It is weird going into such a mainstream portal. It’s not the kind of movie I’d ever watch, and it’s not the kind of people I’d normally hang out with. As for being a counter-cultural figure, okay, I’m against Britney Spears, but I don’t want to hurt her, I just wish she would stop. I defend her right to do what she does, but I’m not showing up in the cheering section. There’s probably a lot of people who see me in a movie like Bad Boys 2 and go ‘what is he doing there?’ but it’s interesting for me to walk into that world, drop my toe in, and walk straight back out again. But it’s not like the people I meet on these kinds of movies are calling me up and inviting me to premieres.
TARA BRADY: So you won’t be showing up for Bad Boys 2 with Britney on your arm, then?
HENRY ROLLINS: I have actually been to two premieres in my life. When I was in Europe my agent’s boyfriend dumped her, so she called me up and said ‘I need you to take me to a premiere’ – it was the premiere of 8 Mile. Literally there’s a couple of thousand people outside the movie, there’s cops and dogs and limousines, and I found myself standing next to people like Lucy Liu. And then all of a sudden one guy in the press pack recognises you, and starts screaming your name. Then BAM! Everyone around him starts screaming your name too, just in case you are somebody. It was surreal, crossing the street and all you can hear is ‘Henry! Henry! Henry!’ But that whole scene is sick. You see 35-year-old women who have starved themselves for weeks to fit into some dress. There are girls standing around with looks of pain on their faces and their bones sticking out, just to get into some dress that they probably couldn’t have worn when they were 12. Even their smiles make them look like they’re pieces of machinery. I looked at those people and thought – I don’t want anything that these people have. I don’t want to worry about how I look all the time.
TARA BRADY: But are you completely immune to the body fascism of your locale? You have always looked after yourself…

HENRY ROLLINS: Yeah, but I don’t buy into that world. I wear shorts and a T-shirt. That’s my summer uniform. I buy my own groceries and do my own laundry and cook my own food. I don’t go to clubs and I’ve got three pairs of shoes. I have grey hair, and I don’t put anything in it. I look like I’m 42, because hey, I’m 42. I’m not trying to look like something I’m not, and it’s depressing and pathetic how many people my age spend their time trying to look 30. If that’s your obssession, then stop right there. It’s time for you to go. I’m ancient in rock ’n’ roll terms. I’ve hit the ceiling. Anything over 35 is VHI material. So I’m in Lemmy territory now. I’m at the stage where people point and say – “Oh my God. That guy is still alive!”
TARA BRADY: So do you find it difficult to burn at the same intensity at this age?
HENRY ROLLINS: Yes. Absolutely. When you you’re younger it’s easier to get pissed off. When you’re 42, you don’t feel the need to blow, to gesticulate wildly as intensely. But I haven’t calmed down exactly. I decided the other night that I wanted to get old like Celine, not Celine Dion. I want to be pissed off to the dying breath. Celine put down his pen on the evening he died, he told his editor he was done, and the stuff he wrote that evening was still boiling.
TARA BRADY: So the comforts of the establishment aren’t seducing you yet?
HENRY ROLLINS: It does not cost very much a month to live like I live. I live far below my means. I’m just as happy in a trailer, or sitting in Heathrow, or in a hostel. I don’t like getting comfortable; I think there’s a danger in that. Because then you start buying into a lifestyle that doesn’t seem to be all that good for you. You start eating foods that make you fat, you start being zapped by mediocre culture. To take your eyes off the road in America is a very dangerous thing. I have a bed now, but that’s recent. I have a car for getting around in LA, but I wash it once a year. But to be honest, I’m not sure the car is permanent because I’m going to move soon.
I need to get to the east coast, or to Europe so that I can actually get to have conversations with the people around me. I’m sick of the semi-literate mediocrity. I want to meet people that feel pain when they see people getting killed in Baghdad. It sickens me that more people don’t get angry. I see some kid soldier walking into a supermarket in Iraq and getting killed on the news, followed by a piece about Bush petting some elephant. The people here, the people in this country, so many of them are disenfranchised. We know so much about the welfare of the Iraqi people, but this country serves only old money – the Dick Cheney set. If you do a lot of travelling like I do, you not only see that, but you start seeing how much of the planet is enslaved to the American elite. I’ve been to the desert in Africa, and there in the middle of nowhere you see some kid with a Nike shirt. He’s hungry, but he’s got the swoosh. You really just want to apologise to him.

Bad Boys 2 is released October 3