Tim Roth: ‘We’re seeing what fascism looks like… in America right now’

Tim Roth is a British actor who has been around forever – more than three decades in the film industry, working in a wide variety of projects, sometimes with some of the greatest auteurs of the time. He’s played a lot of Americans and he’s done a lot of work in America too, and he’s never really been one of those British actors who bad-mouths LA or Hollywood. But he had a lot to say about Donald Trump several years ago, and he has even more to say about Trump and Trump’s America in a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter. Some highlights:

His chaotic career: “My feeling is that the career that I was after was anarchy. I always like that — and chaos. So, I always do a film to finance another film. Because a lot of these films that I love to do, these crazy films I love to do, have no money. They’re the little independent things that are trying and are struggling to be made even more now than ever. So you got to do the ones that finance them. But sometimes they are terrible, and sometimes they are great, and sometimes the little independents don’t work. I think my career is healthily messy. I don’t watch them, so they’re all for the audience. After I’m done, I’m done. So it’s over to the audience once I’m done, and then they can say what they like. But I think I’ve done some really bad stuff.

His thoughts on Donald Trump: “My father was American-Irish and grew up in the slums in New York and went to England to get jobs. Then he ended up running away from his family. And in the Second World War, he fought [the Nazis] and survived, but he was always very political. I remember my father telling me when I was a kid: “It’s coming. It is just a matter of time before it comes to America, and when it comes to America, it will be very dangerous.”

American fascism: “I think we’re seeing what fascism looks like, or dictatorial political theory looks like in practice, in America right now. It’s just the beginning, though. They’ve been prepping it for a while. In his first term, he was getting ready, but they got invited back, and now they’re really ready. So we’ll see what’s coming. I’ve no idea. It’s depressing. It’s sad.

Whether Trumpism affects how he chooses projects: “Not so much, because there’s often a political aspect to a film anyway. But there is one film that we’re moving ahead of with because we feel that it needs to be said now with the current climate and what’s happening in America and around Europe. But I think that making a film in America, with the exception of the fun stuff, will become harder. I think they will go after the industry, because they always go after what potentially could harm them. So I think they will go after the arts, [so] I think [filmmaking] will flourish more in Europe and around the rest of the world. I think what people will start doing is leaving to work elsewhere, which I do anyway. I think it’s going to be harder to make films of consequence, as opposed to films of a more general nature or the streaming thing.

[From THR]

I think everything he’s said here is 100% accurate. What fascism looks like in America, the immediate shift, the threat to the arts, the way artists will flock to Europe (and probably Asia as well). I think he’s correct about the shifts within Hollywood too, and that has been prepped for several years too, the way only mainstream and “family-friendly” movies will get made, and avant-garde voices will be silenced.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.