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In “Unforgiven,” the late Richard Harris played English Bob, a killer with royalist pretensions who is savagely beaten by Gene Hackman. A brilliant role, which owes much to the actor’s ideas, validated by Eastwood.
“Well my friend, again, I don’t mean to offend you, but I think this country should choose a king, or even a queen, instead of a president. You don’t shoot a king or a queen that quickly. The majesty of royalty, you see? […] Let’s shoot some pheasants! Ten shots. And say, a dollar a pheasant. I’ll shoot for the queen, and you, by Jove, for whoever you like…”
If you’ve seen the masterpiece Unforgiven, you’ll definitely remember this exchange introducing the character of English Bob, the “Duke of Death”, brilliantly played by a fabulous Richard Harris, shortly before he gets savagely beaten up by Gene Hackman, aka the sadistic Little Bill Daggett.
“Tell him it’s Clint Eastwood calling!”
Brilliant idea of Eastwood to have entrusted the role of English Bob to the late Harris. In an old video Inside Actors StudioEastwood also told a tasty anecdote on this subject. “I wanted Richard Harris to play this character in the film. At the time, he was living in the Bahamas. I called him, a woman answered and told me to wait, she would pick him up.
“Tell him it’s Clint Eastwood calling!” She came back on the line and said, “Who is that?” Then he came over and said, “Hello, it’s Bob!” Ironically, he was downstairs in his living room watching The High Plains Man ! He was delighted with my proposal, because he loved westerns.”
Richard Harris has indeed made him a wonderful character. An arrogant and contemptuous killer, supposedly English but who is not at all English. In a promotional interview around the time of the film’s releaseHarris explained that he understood the character of English Bob, “because he understood this type of English people, because they lived on the backs of my nation, for five or six hundred years.” An allusion to the occupation of Ireland, where Harris was born, by Great Britain. A colonization and occupation that left bloody traces in History…
Warner Bros.
“It would be great if I could do that”
Harris thought that a man like English Bob would not be a true English aristocrat, but a wannabe with blue-blood pretensions. Since the character was to be humiliated according to the script, he suggested adding an extra layer.
“When I read the script, I said to Clint, ‘You know, it would be great if I could do that, it would be great if I could play this guy as some kind of fake upper-class guy.’ At the end, when he gets beaten up by Hackman, all that deception falls away, and you really see that underneath it all, he’s really kind of a very low-class guy. So Clint said, ‘Yeah, great, go for it.’ I was a little scared to go that direction sometimes on set, but he kept encouraging me to go for it.”
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