Getty Images. Ian Shaw: Nick DriftwoodJESSE
EISENBERG
Hi, Jesse.
Hi. Is that an Irish accent?It is. Do you know Ireland?
I only know Enniskillen.
I stayed there in a castle.
Or a house that would have
belonged to somebody who
worked at a castle. I didn’t
stay at the actual castle.What was your Irish
experience like?
Oh my God. It’s the most
beautiful country.How about your London
experiences? You’ve done
a play there, shot films
there and you’ve just been
to a restaurant [Ducksoup]
I’ve never heard of.
I know that place like
a local. I went in and said,
“I haven’t been here for five
years and suddenly there’s
so many people there.”Can you travel on the
[train] there?
Yeah. I do everything I would
do if I wasn’t in movies,
and then, occasionally, get
sidetracked. It doesn’t affect
my life in any way.What do you get
recognised for most?
Depends where I am. If I’m
in downtown New York,
people like to prove their
street cred by quoting
something obscure.
But I was in this movie,
Zombieland, and I’ve never
seen a reaction to a movie
like this.CHRIS HEWITTVIVARIUMIS IN CINEMAS FROM
21 MAYSMALLTALK
How the behind-the-scenes story ofJawscame
to the theatre — courtesy of Robert Shaw’s sonIAN SHAW WAS around seven years old when he
fi rst watched his dad play salty fi sherman Quint
in Jaws. “I remember being very scared,” he
recalls. “There were a couple of times when I had
dreams I had sharks circling my bed...I would
call out and my dad would actually come and
save me. I somehow managed to separate the
fact that he wasn’t Quint.”
Fast-dolly-zoom-forward and Shaw has
co-written and stars in The Shark Is Broken,
a play examining Jaws’ tempestuous shoot,
that was a hit at last year’s Edinburgh festival.
Born from a literal moment of self-refl ection
(“I looked in the mirror and thought I looked
like Quint because I had a moustache”), Shaw
identifi ed the behind-the-camera story’s
potential for compelling confl ict. “You had three
actors, all at diff erent stages of their career,” he
says. “It was ripe for drama.” Yet before he put
pen to paper, he had reservations.
“I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ I have always
avoided association with my father in my own
humble acting career. And then I spoke to my
family. I thought the last thing I wanted to do is
embarrass everybody by playing my father in
something that wasn’t any good.”
His family members proved supportive, even
unearthing the late actor’s “drinking diary” that
documented his alcohol abuse. The resulting play
takes place on board the set of the Orca fi shing
boat with Robert Shaw (Shaw), Roy Scheider
(Demetri Goritsas) and Richard Dreyfuss (Liam
Murray Scott) locking horns. For Shaw, it’s therelationship between his father and rising star
Dreyfuss that provides the engine for the story.
“We’re not quite sure how much my father
was winding Richard up to get a better
performance out of him and how much he was
genuinely irritated by this young, brash
Dreyfuss. I thought that Robert was playing
a father fi gure who was quite hard on Richard.
He was also drinking. So that adds to the fi re.”
Shaw is in awe of his father’s handiwork
(“I think it’s a brave performance because it’s
a big performance”) and the experience has
“made me feel very proud of him”. But if an
actor portraying a father is a potentially strange
proposition from the outside, Shaw doesn’t see
it as a stretch.
“When you are doing it, it feels quite
natural,” he observes. “It feels like he’s my
blood.” IAN FREERTHE SHARK IS BROKEN IS PLAYING AT THE AMBASSADORS
THEATRE, LONDON, FROM 11 MAY-18 JULYYou’re gonna need
a bigger stage...
No. / 5
Above: Ian
Shaw in costume
as his father,
Robert.
Below: A scene
from the play,
unfolding on
the Orca set.PREVIEW