ANDY LUTHER REMEMBERS DARK KNIGHT ROLE, HEATH LEDGER & ACTING CAREER -- Part II

In the second and final part of our conversation with Dark Knight actor Andy Luther, we dive deeper into the hostage scene between himself and Heath Ledger, how his thoughts on the film has changed the past 10 years and what he's up to today. 

The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan and first saw light in July of 2008. To this day, the film has earned more than $1 billion and is ranked No. 4 in IMDb's list of greatest films in history.

CLICK HERE for Part I

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Zach Catanzareti: Where were you two during that scene? It looked like a meat factory room?

Andy Luther: It was shot in Chicago at the old post office station. I believe it's being turned into condos now. It's an old, historical building. A lot of scenes were shot in that, I believe the bank scenes were shot in that building. The meat locker scene, it was basically on the second or third floor in a room they basically turned into a meat locker.

Was it just you two in the room? He turns around and starts talking to the camera. Did everyone else leave and let you guys work it out?

It was all essential people in the room. The director was in there, I don’t even know if the assistant director was in there, but sound people. Everybody essential. That’s what’s happened after we did our first run-through -- I think some people cleared out because they thought, 'OK, this is going to be an interesting scene.' So, they wanted it quiet. I don’t know if Heath was like, 'Hey, you can see the crew when I flip the camera back.'

But those are things we worked out in the first take. By the second or third, everyone was on point. After they told me not to worry about camera angles or this stuff, I was like, 'Fine, I’ll let them do their jobs and I'll do mine.' That's what I’ve learned about being a professional, you have to know your role, stay in your lane and let everybody do their job. That’s how something great happens.

What kind of camera was used? I guess a small, homemade amateur camera?

Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the documentary on Heath Ledger where it shows him going around with a video camera all the time. It was very much that. He definitely knew his way around a video camera, shooting stuff, playing with me while he was filming. It was really quite fun. It was like a psychotic person grabbed a video camera and was like, 'I’m going to have as much fun with this tied-up person as I possibly can.'

His most captivating line was when he yelled "LOOK AT ME." I was looking at YouTube comments earlier and everyone was like, 'THAT’S what got me. Of the entire scene, it was when he yelled 'LOOK AT ME.'" When it came to you and that line, you looked terrified. You did it perfectly. I guess that was almost real, right?

Yeah. In the script, it was bolded, the 'look at me' when he yells that. Like I said, we had gone through it a couple times, but the first couple times he would [say quietly] 'look at me, look at me.' I just didn’t look at him. It says [in the script] that it's big so I’m going to wait until he does something to make me do something.

Man, he made me wet myself [laughs]. When he was like 'LOOK AT ME,' I was like, 'Woah!' That’s what I’m saying that if you focus on your attention, things happened. To me, it felt spontaneous.

He really led that scene. It was fun to work with him. It unfortunate what happen to him but he was a great person and very generous and gracious in that whole scene. In the trailer, the whole experience I had with him, even afterward, he walked down with you the entire way.

It was pretty humbling. Its great to be at this level because everyone is doing what they love and they’re so nice. I’ve also been told that is a rare experience on a set, even a typical Chris Nolan set.

Everyone knew it was a great script, a great movie. It's a superhero movie but I like to think it was one of the best ones.

I bet your family and friends have watched that scene. Have they given you any feedback on what they thought about that scene? I bet they’ve never seen you in a scene quite like that.

It was a big deal for a long time, people still talk about it. I’m on a construction crew now, I run a crew and every once in a while, people will find out about it and I get random people coming up behind me going, 'Oh my God! That was you!'

To me, it's always surprising because I thought it was such a small scene. It's nice to know, at some point in my career, I impacted people or made some kind of dent. For you to say it was a turning point in the film is how I felt about it, but to hear people say it, it's like, 'Oh OK, maybe that was a pretty cool thing.'

Aaron Eckhart once told Larry King -- he was in a scene with Heath in the hospital -- and how Heath would kind of walk around his bed and make weird noises and do weird things with his face and hands. Was he in character a lot around you?

Only when filming. I remember -- this is kind of a faded memory now. But when we started our scene, they were like 'Action!' And all I hear is this, 'WAAAAAAAAA WAHHH WAHHH WAHHHHHH"

"And then, next thing you know, here comes the Joker."

But before that, it was Heath Ledger talking to you in Joker makeup, you know?

As far as him staying in character the entire time, that may have developed along the movie, I can’t speak to that. But for me, he seemed to be able to go back and forth quite simply. When an actor's performance develops, the more they get into it. That stuff may have happened.

During the scene, I’m sure if you were able to watch all the outtakes, you would see him pulling those antics and things like that.

But yeah, he did kind of like a weird spiral-dance thing and next thing I knew, he was coming across the room to put a camera in my face. It reminded me to when I was younger and I used to take big risks. This set, I was just sitting in a chair with my arms tied behind my back, so there’s not a lot of movement. But how cool it would be to be at that level and be able to make those kinds of choices and have that confidence.

I feel it would be tough to do that when you’re working with someone like him. You said you’re watching him going 'Wow.' All we do is watch, but you were there in person. What was it like working with someone who was so committed?

As an actor in the moment, you try not to get lost in that kind of stuff. You analyze it retrospectively. In the moment, you don’t. What it does to you as an actor in the moment, it helps you raise your game. If this guy is going to take this seriously, I’m going to take seriously. it becomes a tennis ball and the end is great work.

After we did our eight to 11 takes, there was a gasp that went out of the room because everybody was confident they had it. But Heath wanted to keep doing it again and again and again. Chris Nolan was like, 'Yeah, we got what we wanted, you guys can play around with whatever you want and if something comes out of it, we'll keep it. Right now, we're confident, you can stop whenever you want.'

As far as watching Heath -- once you’re in the cast, you’re invited back, you can get on set and watch people work. I did that one time, it was the night they were flipping the truck over and I caught the end of him doing his machine gun scene, the truck flips over and the Batman is coming at him.

I was like, 'Wow, this character has really evolved in a terrifying way.' The way he was committed to it, you could tell his confidence had gotten stronger as well.

To be in those shoes after Jack Nicholson. Everybody was comparing him to Jack Nicholson before he even got a chance to show them his work. To see him rise above that and focus on his Joker was enlightening to me as an actor. You’ve got to do your thing.

Was that the only scene you saw before the final product?

Yeah, I didn’t see the final product. They had a screening for the crew in Chicago and I went and saw that. I didn’t even watch my performance the first time until it came out on DVD and I could watch it by myself. I didn’t know I was one of those actors, but there were some things I thought in retrospect, 'Oh, it would’ve been cool if I did this or that.' The end of the day, I accepted it was a decent performance people responded to.

There was one shot when he set the camera down on my legs, I was doing the screaming and things like that and that was the only direction Nolan gave me, he said, 'If you’re conscience of him setting the camera down by your feet, it would be great to see while you’re screaming to see your legs do something.' I sat there like a rock, I didn’t even think about that.

That was a lesson to me on set. You have to act with your whole body. The more you get captivated in that make-believe world, the better off you’ll be as an actor.

Since then, unfortunately, we lost Heath the January before Dark Knight came out. How did you find out about his death?

People texted me because I wasn’t a big Facebook person at the time, social media person. They texted me saying, 'Hey, did you hear about Heath?' I found out pretty quick, but I found out when everyone else did, I didn’t have any inside-scoop or anything.

I was very saddened by it because he had become a hero to me. The way he treated me, how gracious he was, just what a nice human being he was. He really had this aura that made you think everything was going to be OK and everything you did was great.

Damn, it's too bad that his life ended so short because I feel he had so much more to give. Instead of the Joker being one of the biggest things he did, it could’ve sunk back and been one of the smaller things because I really think he was on a trajectory to do pretty amazing things.

When did you first meet him?

I met him in the makeup trailer, I want to say June 14. I was in a buzz that day because I had my costumes fitted previously and they were like, 'You know, you’re going to be with Heath. He's in the trailer right now.' And I said, 'That’s OK, I’m not here to get autographs, I’m just here to do my job.'

I just sat there, got my makeup on. It took a while because they experimented with a few different things. They had to take down the makeup in how beat-up I was. Heath was talking about his garage band, skateboarding, things like that.

He had his own makeup artist and at one point he got up, walked over and said, 'Oh mate, they’re really doing a number on you.'

And I go, 'Yeah, I think you’re doing this to me!'

And he goes, 'Oh, that’s great mate, you want to go have a smoke?'

I said no and the makeup guy kind of hit me on the shoulder [kind of saying] if an actor like that invites you out, you should go out. After we got our make-up on, we had a little session before we went out.

It was business. After he had his make-up on, you could tell the mode was starting to swing to focusing on the scene. There was so much stuff happening in the background and they really minimized that room for us. It was a special moment for me. I look back and I know it was cool that I got to experience that even at the 1/10th of what I could’ve if I pursued acting. I’m glad I had that experience.

Did you have any experiences with Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan as well?

Yeah, Chris Nolan, too. His attitude and Heath's were one of glee, you could tell they were enjoying doing the film. Cillian Murphy is someone I got to spend a lot of time with, I thought I spent the most time with him on a set.

I loved watching his work now because I actually got to spend an entire day with that guy on a set. He would tell me, they’d give you director chairs to sit in and I told him that I was too small on the totem pole and he goes, 'Hey mate, that's your chair over there. You should probably sit in it. And it's OK to ask for things, if you want water, let they get water because they want to do something.'

We were both smokers at the time and we would have a couple smokes. He'd ask me, 'So, what is your experience like with this?' And he told me about his family, he had a boy at the time. It was just interesting.

And Christian Bale, to him, I have to say I was starstruck at the time. He is an incredible actor and someone I really looked up because of his style and how he gets into things. It was intimidating working with him, but he was very professional. I didn’t have the personal interaction with him, he had a lot of places to be.

I got to work with him in that scene, we did that take four or five times. [I say] 'What the difference between you and me?' [And he says] 'I’m not wearing hockey pads.' Those things where you can barely hear each other because you’re so far apart.

All around, it was a great experience. It's taken years to process all the little nuances that went on. It was a great opportunity for me and an experience I'll never forget.

That was my final question about how you’ve processed this. Its been 10 years and how your thoughts of your experience have changed over the years. Does it seem like a second life to you?

First of all, it doesn’t seem like 10, 11 years. He shot it in 2007, so it's been 11 years. Its such a popular movie and the funny thing is we're still getting residual checks for it. I’ve been told for years that those are going to run out and they keep coming.

Having that big of a thing happen in your career so early, right out of college, it put things in perspective for me. I got to see the hills I had to climb at the age I was. 'What can I actually get out of this?' I have always compared my other experiences to that one, but the ones I had after that, I brought more confidence to the set, more confidence in me and my choices.

It's something I look back on fondly. I’ve stepped away from it, I’m a character actor. I know I’m a utilitarian actor and I feel I could step right back into it if I want on my terms. I don’t have any spouses or children so my debt is all on me. It got to the point where I knew I had another career that I knew could take off.

Is that one of the reasons you chose to step away, to do something new?

I had a multi-million-dollar opportunity come my way and it required all my attention. Now, I have the responsibility of 30 + workers, I run an installation group and it s requires more of my time. It's a way to get some security.

It does tie back to the whole Dark Knight experience because when I got out of grad school, I had that feeling of security. I didn’t have any debt, I was able to focus 100 percent on my acting. The result was the scene people say turned the mood, so to speak. It turned the mood of the whole picture. I felt like a trained actor coming out.

I have an opportunity again to do that with my business. Everything I’ve learned through acting, I take with me every day, even if it's just recognizing when someone is upset, it affects your life.

I guess you’re a big movie watcher now and some sports as well?

Yeah, I’m a big Cleveland Browns fans, Cleveland Indians fan. All my sports teams are Cleveland, you can share in my misery there. Film is something to this day, it relaxes me. Post-retirement, one of the things on my bucket list is to take improv training in Chicago, audition and try to go through those two-year programs. Improv is something I’ve always wanted to do, I was told that was a skill I already had.

That is something I will go back to someday and maybe I’ll do improv comedy for a nursing home or something when I’m older [laughs].

(Below is some of Andy's work in 2013 and '14)

ANDY LUTHER REMEMBERS DARK KNIGHT ROLE, HEATH LEDGER & ACTING CAREER -- Part I

The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan and first saw light in July of 2008. To this day, the film has earned more than $1 billion and is ranked No. 4 in IMDb's list of greatest films in history.
One actor who played a role in the DC Comic hit was Andy Luther, better known as the guy who was tied to a chair by Heath Ledger’s 'Joker.' 

However, Luther was more than that.

In part one of our two-part interview for The Catch-Up, Zach Catanzareti spoke with 45-year-old Luther April 10, 2018, to discuss his dramatic role as Brian Douglas -- also known as "Fake Batman" -- in the Dark Knight film and his work with the Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy and specifically, the late Heath Ledger. We also dive into his childhood, beginning of his acting interests in high school and, later, how acting experience has affected his life today.

NEW! Listen to full interview on our SoundCloud channel: CLICK HERE

Zach Catanzareti: Let’s start with where it started for you in Twin Lake, Michigan. Grew up in the 1970s, did you have any siblings? How was your childhood growing up?

Andy Luther: I've got kind of the Brady Bunch of a family. My parents were divorced when I was around 7 years old, my oldest brother is my adopted brother Paul, then Matt my full-blood brother. Then I Have a half-brother whose 34, then a step-brother. So yeah, the Brady Bunch. I have two step-sisters as well. 

Was acting a part of your childhood? Was it something you strived for at a young age?

No, it was something I got into in high school. I was involved in athletics and it was kind of an after-school thing I got involved in. I joined the high school musical in around 11th grade. I just pursued it loosely after that. I really picked it up and started thinking about it professionally when I was 19 or 20.

I moved up to New York City when I was 22 years old and that’s where I got my formal acting training. Before that, I was just doing community theatre and school plays.

Was theatre what you were really aiming for at that age or were you looking at the big film productions?

No, it had always been theatre for me. For me, it was about the craft of acting. This really took place in NYC when I got my training at a company called the Acting Studio Inc. That’s where I started getting an appreciation for the craft and how to break down moments, character analysis.

What was your first role in any type of acting? Was it in theatre?

I would say that was in NYC and it was a character called Charles. That was at the acting studio, they had an off-shoot company called the Studio Lab. That's where their current students could do performance-based things. The play with Charles was called 'Heat,' that was the first graduation project we did. 

How much did you learn? For me, when you do something for the first time, you study it and then you finally get to do it. How much did you really learn when it came to that first project?

I always looked back on my training in NYC at the acting studio, I consider that to be the foundation of all my acting principles and techniques. I’ve always fallen back on that. Before, I was just ad-libbing and being funny and performative. 

Something they always told us during training was, 'We're going to give you all the tools you need to become an actor but you’re going to spend the next 20-25 years learning to master these tools.' I was always very stressed to hang onto everything I learned, keep your notes. These are all things I’ve always done.

You mentioned being funny. Was humor something you aimed towards or were you the more serious role?

It's funny, in life I’m always the guy cracking jokes in the classrooms, but the roles I tend to get are more serious roles. I never got cast in many comedic roles, I’ve done them before and have had a great time, but they’ve definitely been the smaller percentage of what’s I’ve had in my career.

That will definitely lead me right into the Dark Knight. All that experience growing up really seemed to pay off. You had a fascinating experience with the movie but how did it really start for you? When did you decide you wanted to go for that movie?

Well, after I went to the acting studio I went back to school at the age of 27. I was going to become a teacher at that point. I went through some personal things, we had called off our marriage and I was 27 and forced to figure out, 'OK, what am I going to do with my life?' 

I went back to school and got into Western Michigan University in the Communications program. Within a few semesters I got a scholarship for the theatre program, so I kept going after theatre. From there, I went to grad school and that’s when I really started to look at my career as professional and taking advantage of the opportunity.

I get to Chicago, I was able to get an agent and they started sending me out on auditions and that was one of the first ones I went out on. It was called 'Rory's First Kiss' because they had a code to change the title to protect it. 

I didn’t expect anything out of it, so I was very loose in the audition, I tried to experiment with a lot of things. They actually didn’t read me for the character they called me in for. Brian Douglas was a different character. They said, 'We want to look at you for this role.' The rest is history.

I was going to ask if you tried for other parts, but I guess they didn’t let you know what you were going for. How tough was that not knowing what they were eying for you?

In film, when you’re doing the auditions you have to do all the work and the backstories and everything you’re going to bring to the actual audition. I knew at that stage in my career I was going to be doing a series of one-liners, this is what I considered to be one of those. 

The characters I went for were supposed to be scheduled for one day on set. After I got the Brain Douglas casting call, they said, 'Congratulations, you got the role,' next thing I knew I was going to be on set for three days. I was like, 'Oh my goodness, this is going to be a little meatier than I thought.'

Then we started to dissect things with the Joker and I was actually going to have a scene with Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy. I don’t like spending a lot of time analyzing 'What if I got this role?' because so many times -- I’ve gone out for thousands of auditions and got nothing. You get so used to not hearing anything back. If you fuss over every role you don’t get, you’d be psychologically insane. 

You just become a professional auditioner. I think it's the professional way to go about it: go in, do your job and leave. The phone call is up to your agent.

When you realized you were going to be a part of the movie, were you more nervous than usual? This was just a massive movie that blew up.

Yeah, I started to think about that. if I have any regrets, its that I allowed those kinds of thoughts to creep in. I went out and did the scene with Heath Ledger, I guess the video portion of it. I was still kind of in that mode of doing my job. 

But the day I was on set with Cillian Murphy and Christian Bale, it was a longer day. I had a lot more time to think -- there were some doubts that crept in, I got nervous. I was the quiet guy sitting in the back like, 'Holy cow, I’m sitting on this big production film and working with Christopher Nolan.' 

It affected me a little bit, but I like to think I came through it. Hindsight is always 20/20, 'Ah, I should’ve done this.' But everyone seems to be happy with the product. It also taught me that if you do your job, you go home and you don’t think about it because it's down and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

That opening scene for you was high-action, you got a couple lines, fighting, gunfire. How difficult was it to balance everything that was going on?

That was done by stunt people, most of it. Physically for me as Andy, started sitting next to Cillian Murphy. They shot that stuff the day before we were on set, they told us very little about the action that had gone on. 

Again, they were keeping the script very close to their chest. They give you a brief rundown and what’s going on prior to this, you put that stuff in. I think I was on set for a full day that day. Basically, we were waiting for light most of the time. 

It was simple, [laughs] I wish I had something more interesting to tell you but I was sitting there and the piece they had me sit on was actually was piece of concrete so my legs fell asleep during that whole thing. It took about two hours and you start to get up and your legs are asleep. I think we did four or five takes and that was it, we were done. 'Well, alright, I guess that's it.' 

After that was your big part, arguably the most disturbing scene in the movie. It was known to silence movie theaters across the country, and that was the hostage scene you and Heath. First off, I want to know what that early process was like developing this scene. I heard Heath helped direct that scene, what was the early development process of getting that together?

How it happened was we [Health and I] had some time in the makeup trailer beforehand. We didn’t talk about the film at all. Its one of those things where we walked in and you’re supposed to know what you’re doing. For that scene, like I said, I was still confident, I had my backstory figured out of who Brian Douglas is. 

Prior to the movie coming out, I started to look into who this guy was and you could find very little about him. Basically, I just made up a backstory, basically of that this guy must have a family at home and this might be the last time they’re going to see him.

I started to think about things like that, pulling family members because you know I have a big family -- to have that conversation with yourself. Next thing you know, they yell action and here comes Heath Ledger with a video camera in your face. You just try to stay focused on your intentions. 

I go back to my acting training in NYC, in that moment, you cling to what you know best. I had been out of acting school at least 15 years by then. It was true, you start to pull on your old tools that are habit. 

One of the things I was very proud of was -- there was no screaming in the script whatsoever. That was something I put in, I added the fear to it. It's easy if you take the words off the face to make it seem like this guy thinks he's Batman, or best buddies with Batman. I took a different route to it and you could feel an energy change on set. Everybody got really excited.

I asked them when they were re-miking, 'You know, I want to do some vocalizations at the end of this.' And they go, 'Yeah, whatever you want to do, just go ahead of do it.' I said, 'Well, it might involve some screaming and it may blow out your mic.' [They said] 'Don't worry about that, you keep focusing on the acting.'

The really cool thing was after we finished that scene, we were walking out of the room and Heath kind of escorted me out. 

He was like, 'Hey, what did you think about that scene?'

And I was like, 'Oh, you’re doing amazing work' That typical phrase you give those type of actors. 

He said, 'No mate, I was talking about you. What do you think about your work?' 

I was like, 'This is my first time on a large set like this, I hope I did it justice.' 

He said, 'You did really great work man, you should be proud, mate.'

In retrospect -- while it's happening you don’t register a lot of that stuff. You're trying to get through the process as professionally as you can. At the time, I thought I could use this as a springboard to something else. It did in Chicago, but I never pursued film and kept my nose to the grindstone. I never saw myself a fit for L.A.

Heath's performance really took off. I don’t know if it was his first day on set, but I know it was very early in the process of shooting the film. He was very excited about it, too. It was a feather in my cap to say the least. It's something I look back on fondly.

Did you two practice the scene together? Were there multiple takes?

There was the script, the lines we both spoke were all scripted. But we went right into it. It was one of those things where they filmed the rehearsal. I'd like to think they kept the second or third take -- I think we did eight because we kept experimenting with where the camera sets down, how we can convey the story. We played with it a lot. 

A lot of that stuff ends up on the cutting room floor but it was a fun experiment. You could tell Heath wanted to work on that scene. I want to say we did eight takes, it could have been up to 11. 

They kept a lot of the spontaneous things. We didn’t have a lot of personal conversation or character study on-set -- he brought his work, I brought mine. And we just kept filming it as many different ways.

Do you think that is the best way to do it? Watching that scene, you did a great job, you looked terrified, he was in his character. It seemed more natural that there wasn’t as much planning into it.

I think that’s the best way any time. That’s what captivates me when I’m watching stuff, when something spontaneous happens. When you try to plan out a reaction, it falls flat. That’s the thing that catches people is surprise and if you can surprise yourself as an actor then you don’t have to worry about getting the audience watching. 

The rest falls in place. That’s where other films hit the mark -- they’re trying to get a specific reaction out of an actor. They’re coaching the person to that direction.

CLICK HERE for Part II