Icon Lance Henriksen on How His Creative Flame Stays Ignited
The sci-fi and horror legend isn’t one to reflect on his past roles, but his recent role in the survival indie ‘On Fire’ has him looking back at family and the challenges in his early life.
Growing up, there was always something strangely avuncular about the performances of Lance Henriksen. Perhaps it was in the early 90s, in my youth, when my close friends and I imagined a movie about our lives, and what famous actors would play key roles. My best friend jokingly said Henriksen’s brand of stoicism would be perfect for my father’s gruff, and often-times intimidating nature.
It was strangely perfect, as my friends didn’t necessarily know everything about my father, and much like Henriksen, Dad could play both warm and scary, both stoic and laconic, and beneath a “robotic” exterior, there was real heart. From that day forward, I watched Henriksen’s career carefully.
While Hollywood’s writers have reached an agreement with studios, but actors still populate the picket lines, smaller studios have an opportunity to shine, proving to the L.A. elite, they need not ignore the needs of the writers and actors, that any studio can find an amicable place for the guilds to help their members, and more importantly, for everyone who works on a film to get what they deserve. For an icon like Henriksen, perhaps in the winter of his career, that brought him to On Fire.
On Fire follows the story of Dave Laughlin (Peter Facinelli), a salt of the earth man who finds his world suddenly torn apart as devastating wildfires rip through the countryside surrounding his trailer park home. With the fire surrounding them, Dave makes the decision to flee with his son (Asher Angel), pregnant wife (Fiona Dourif), and father (Henriksen) to survive the raging force of Mother Nature.
The 83 year-old Henriksen is used to fighting for survival, and not just because of his decades of experience on film fighting Pumpkin-headed ghouls, Aliens or Terminators. Henriksen truly had an exceptional and harrowing youth, akin to the old tales of your grandfather proclaiming he had to walk bare foot in the snow to school, and somehow both ways were up hill. “My mother was a waitress” reveals Henriksen, “she would bring half of a half eaten steak home because we didn't have the money. We were broke”.
But the struggle didn’t end there. Henriksen dropped out of school at a very early age, he joined the Navy as a teenager, and was functionally illiterate until his late twenties. When he looks back at his filmography (which he doesn’t often do), Henriksen realized that those real life struggles helped inform his decision to take on some darker, often horror-filled roles throughout his career. Why would he do that? “Because we know it's tripe. It's made up. That's painless slaughter.” That’s not to say he doesn’t take on roles that relate back to the struggles he and his family went through. On Fire gave the veteran an opportunity to shine in a touching and complicated supporting role. Lance’s memories of his mother’s struggles trying to support the family, and the bond it undoubtedly created is something he brings so beautifully to his character of George Laughlin. “[My life] is like the backdrop for the family in ‘On Fire’. It asks ‘what can you lose if this goes bad.’ Every moment of my life, I would fight for them, for my family. That's nature.”
So where did this fire come from in the first place? Not simply the spark that creates an unbreakable bond with his loved ones, but the spark to create? Henriksen shares the story of an awful educator (before he dropped out) who almost snuffed out that spark, but instead, gave Henriksen the motivation to fan the flame.
”I found a comic book in the garbage on the way to school, and I said, ‘What if I made this into a play?’ Then all my classmates and I would do it, and I'll write a script. I could barely write, could barely read, but I saw the images of it all. And my teacher said’ you're a plagiarist, you're stealing the story here’. I said, ‘so what? I didn’t ask for money’. [I just thought] it would be great to work on something together to make us a unified class.” It would seem that Henriksen has a way of finding ‘families’ and creating these important bonds through his work, as well. He’s not just the elderly patriarch of a family trying to survive, he’s not just my ‘movie dad’, he’s a man who, as mentioned, is a dark stoic uncle to us all, and it is undoubtedly that drive he has that creates that familiarity.
SAG-AFTRA has approved an interim agreement for On Fire since the film is being released by Cineverse, an independent, non-AMPTP affiliated distributor. Under the terms, members “may work on these productions without being in violation of the strike order,” per the guild. The entire team of On Fire expresses their gratitude to SAG-AFTRA for allowing the cast to promote On Fire during this challenging time for the industry.
