Anything For Jackson Star Julian Richings on Injecting Humanity Into a Hostage-Taking Satanist

June was a big month for Julian Richings. The veteran character actor played two wildly different [...]

By Russ Burlingame

June was a big month for Julian Richings. The veteran character actor played two wildly different antagonists, both compelling in completely different ways, in a pair of indie films that could hardly be more different. In Anything For Jackson, Richings plays one half of a Satanist couple, who kidnap a pregnant woman in the hopes of using her baby as a vessel for the soul of their own child, who died. In Spare Parts, he plays The Emperor, a warlord in a punk dystopia. In both, he brings an intensity and a quiet energy that allows him to have menace, as well as nuance.

There's an argument to be made that in the case of Anything For Jackson, Richings plays a character (Henry) who doesn't even see himself as a villain. In Spare Parts, the Emperor has no illusions about who he is or what he's up to.

"I guess as an actor, I tried to get some complexity," Richings told ComicBook. "In Anything for Jackson, there's a clear story arc. His ideas is, he is not a baddy. The thing that drives both Henry and Audrey is love, and loss, and those are very human -- ultimately extremely human -- qualities. They're drivers that we identify with, and they're beyond judgment. The problem is that in his love for his wife, he enables her determination to make very bad decisions. The decisions are completely irresponsible, especially for a man of his stature in society, and that's a very interesting thing to play. And it's very interesting to play with another actor, because Sheila and myself really are a couple. We were fused at the hip. It's really about the two of us, and our interactions, rather than just one of us. I think in Spare Parts, there's an authority, and abuse of power similarly, but it's a very different medium. It's a very different world. It's the world of post apocalypse junkyard gladiators."

For an actor like Richings, who tends to do four or so films a year, he says there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to his craft. You can't go in feeling like you know your character better than the filmmakers, but when you're a character who only appears in a handful of scenes, it's hard to come up with a fully-developed person in only a few minutes of screen time. The secret, then, is getting to a project and determining what its needs are.

"If you go into them too deeply, you start to dissertate the actual strength of the thing, which is dependent on an existing set of conditions, so you just have to go along with them," Richings explained. "I think my job as an actor is to get in there and to ensure that it's not just a one-note stereotype, that feels like a repeat of something somebody did in three other movies."

You can get Anything For Jackson and Spare Parts on DVD, Blu-ray, digital platforms, and streaming video on demand services now.

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