78 / STAR WARS INSIDERINTERVIEW: JULIAN GLOVERbeyond the possibility of using my own
face (Donovan ended up ageing about
180 years), they made models for the
very fi nal sequences of the skeleton.
When we got to the end of the fi lm, they
handed me the death mask and asked if I
wanted it. So, I took it home and showed
it to my wife [actress Isla Blair, who
played Donovan’s wife in Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade ], and she said, “I’m
not having that in the house, put it in
the garage.” I knew what she meant—it
did look awful—so I put it in the garage.
A few years later we were having a
clear-out, and I found it again. Isla said,
“I can’t bear to look at it... Bin it!” So I
got rid of it. Then, about 15 years ago,
I was telling a dealer the story while I
was at an event, and he said, “I’d pay
you $35,000 for that.” The lesson there
is never to throw anything away, and I
haven’t thrown anything away since.
I’ve got a few things and signed them,
so when I go there’ll be a nest egg for
my son. I’m sure it won’t add up to verymuch,butit willbesomething,soat
least he can have a good party.Was there ever the potential for you
to come back as General Veers in Star
Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)?
There was. He was written in as a
possibility—although I don’t know
what the scenes were—but not in a
very large capacity. I was working on
something else and couldn’t do it. I’d
already been in a Star Wars fi lm, but now,
looking back, it would have been nice
to have been in two. That came over the
backyard fence again, from Robert Watts.
He said, “We’re doing Revenge of the Jedi,there could be a bit for you. Do you want
to do it?” But I couldn’t, and that was the
end of that.What is your approach to playing
villains? Do you even consider Veers
and Donovan to be ‘bad guys’?
Playing a villain is really like playing
a hero, in that you’ve got to know
your background. Is he being horrible,
and why? Veers in The Empire Strikes
Back certainly isn’t a villain. He’s a
professional soldier who fi ghts bloody
well for the people who pay him to do
it. I see nothing evil about that: he’s a
solider, and a good one, too.
In Indiana Jones, what Walter
Donovan does is wrong. He’s ruthless
about it, but as I always say, “What
would you do for the secret to eternal
life?” Would you kill your own mother?
People think about it and realize that yes,
they probably would. That’s what this
guy fi nds in the fi lm, but then he screws
it up. He’s not a Nazi, he just needs their“all the things that had
been introduced, the
characters and situations,
all the mystical stuff like
the Force—it all came to
fruition in Empire. ”01
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