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.
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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.
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