on-set sangfroid. He insists on training enemy units, plans battle sequences
and embeds his team into productions. For Private Ryan’s celebrated
opening scene, Warriors, Inc. had men on the beach as special, earpiece-
wearing extras — partly to ensure veracity, partly to ensure that no-one
got squashed by a tank. As Spielberg prepared to call action, a thousand
men stood poised and ready. The sequence, a ferocious reset button for
big-screen combat, is one of Dye’s proudest moments. “Steven turned
and looked at me and gave the thumbs-up,” he says.
Not every collaboration has been as fruitful. He met his wife, then
Julia Rupkalvis, on the set of Starship Troopers, where she was playing
a soldier and he was helping director Paul Verhoeven sketch out the mobile
infantry from Robert A. Heinlein’s source novel. They bonded over their
love for the book, and their shared horror at Verhoeven’s unfolding
adaptation. “He’s an asshole,” shoots Dye. “Once I realised he wasn’t going
to pay attention to the book at all, I just put the men to work training the
actors. I tried to stay away from him. He wasn’t interested in much that
I had to say, either.”
That fractious relationship didn’t stop Dye cameoing as a general in the
movie. Since Tobe Hooper fi rst stuck him in front of the camera on
Invaders from Mars, he’s combined acting gigs with his regular day job.
“I had to fi re an anti-tank missile at a Martian,” he remembers fondly of
the 1986 sci-fi. On Platoon he petitioned Stone for a more signifi cant role:
gruff offi cer Captain Harris. He still gets Harris’ lines quoted back to him.
“I’ll be standing in a grocery store and some guy will say, ‘It’s a lovely
fucking war,’” he says. Since then, he’s played captains, colonels and a
“potful” of generals. “Usually I play some military offi cer who comes in in
Act One, explains the jeopardy, then shows up in Act Three and says, ‘Well
done, boys. Here’s a medal.’”about his acting credentials, it’s maybe because
the craft taps into things he’s long-since buried. “You have to expose parts
that for years you’ve been taught not to expose,” he says, “and that’s
diffi cult for a guy who served 20 years as a Marine. I didn’t wear my heart
on my sleeve — and you couldn’t.”
In truth, Dye is far from his granite-hewn Hollywood persona. He was
wounded three times in Vietnam, but still shudders at the memory of his
daughter’s birth (“I never want to go through that again!”). “I have this
gooey nougat centre,” he admits. He loves the fi lms of Sally Field and
Audrey Tautou, is a Sherlock Holmes diehard, and enthuses about British
television staples The Great British Bake-Off and Call The Midwife.
As unlikely as it sounds, makeover show Queer Eye For A Straight
Guy was appointment viewing in the Dye household. “I thought the
interior decorator guy was brilliant,” Dye raves. “Julia contacted the
show and said, ‘Listen, Dale’s house is really special, you guys need to come
out.’ And they did send someone out. She looked around, and we tried to
appear like normal, civilised human beings.” Sadly, nothing came of it —
presumably because a man who keeps a whaling harpoon on his wall is
beyond tszujing.
As Empire prepares to take its leave, Dye refl ects on a recent, emotional
trip back to Vietnam — his fi rst since the war — with his fellow Marine
correspondent buddies, ‘the Snuffi es’. “You live with ghosts and images for
50 years and then you have a chance to go back and confront them. You
spend your life as a Marine, trying to be this rock-solid I-can-take-anything
kinda guy and then that shit happens and you just crumble.” With Platoon,
he’s proud to have done his bit to help his fellow vets go through something
similar. “These people had been stuck in a closet, ashamed of themselves.
When it came out, all of that ice melted away.”
The mission, though, is far from over. He’s inching closer to getting his
fi rst directorial gig over the line, a D-Day fi lm called No Better Place To
Die, and there’s a memoir to publish.
For now, it’s back to basics. Soon, he’s due in Costa Rica for Todd
Richardson’s The Last Full Measure, a war drama set partly in Vietnam and
well-stocked with Oscar types. Somewhere out there is another bunch of
actor weenies about to be beaten into shape. Thirty years on, Dye still has
that tiger by its tale.Above: “You live
with ghosts and images
for 50 years and then
you have a chance to go
back and confront
them.” Dye remembers
Vietnam and his fellow
Marines, the Snuffi es.CAMEO-FLAGE
DALE DYE IN FRONT OF THE
CAMERA: STILL INTIMIDATINGCasualties Of War (1989)
Plays: Captain Hill
In Brian De Palma’s Vietnam War fi lm,
Dye opens a can of US Army issue fury
on Michael J. Fox’s G.I. when he reports a
rape by his comrades. “They’re gonna be
out of the stockade before you can fl ick
fl ies off a shit,” he tells him. Even the
combination of persuasion, threats and
poo metaphors can’t change Fox’s course
in a blistering three-minute scene.Mission: Impossible (1996)
Plays: Frank Barnes
In Brian De Palma’s spy thriller Dye plays
an IMF agent whose primary function is
to be bollocked every time they fail to
catch Ethan Hunt — which is often — and
wear a natty trenchcoat. Barnes is
itching to do some disavowing of his own,
but is kept on a short leash throughout
by IMF wonk Kittridge (Henry Czerny).Band Of Brothers (2001)
Plays: Colonel Robert F. Sink
Easy Company’s resident hard-ass in HBO’s
World War II spectacular, Colonel Sink offers
Dye his meatiest, and possibly fi nest, role.
Responsible for sending his airborne
infantry on more impossible missions than
the IMF, he’s never far from the front line.
His moustache alone is worth 20 Nazis.Knight And Day (2011)
Plays: Frank Miller
Dye appears as Tom Cruise’s cranky dad
in this espionage caper. He only has three
minutes on screen, but works quickly and
still fi nds time to pull a shotgun on
Cameron Diaz. Unrealistically, Frank
doesn’t know that his son has faked his
own death to become a secret agent.
The real Dye would have better intel.US SHOOT PRODUCTION: RACER MEDIA