David Bennent

When he was a twelve-year-old boy, David Bennent played Oskar Matzerath in Guenter Grass’ film, “Tin Drum.” The role made him internationally famous.

STERN:  At that time you were 1.14m.  And today? 

BENNENT:  Right now I am 1.55 m, like many other adults.  And I am still growing.

STERN:  Did you recognize yourself the last time you saw the ' tin drum '?

BENNENT:  That was at least ten years ago.  I have better things to do than watch old movies.  Also, I do not have a television.  I do not have a place for such an ugly box in my dwelling. 

STERN:  What is located in your dwelling? 

BENNENT:  As little as possible.  Presently, my sister Anne lives there. She is having a baby and is on a visit in Paris.

STERN:  In one seductive scene, you slip under your nanny’s bedsheet, pour lemonade powder in her bellybutton, and then lick it off of her stomach.  That is quite a hot scene for a twelve-year-old boy ... 

BENNENT:  Why?  Children already know everything by the age of ten.  It was fun for me. 

STERN:  Was difficult for you to be a small boy, David? 

BENNENT:  Sometimes I came home crying.  Children can be so brutal.  My father said, do not go.  So I didn’t go anymore. From then my mother taught me in homeschooling. 

STERN:  On the Greek island Mykonos, where you spent your childhood? 

BENNENT:  Yes, also. We’d been there for many years, because we had very little money and our family could live one month there with one hundred Marks in a hut at the beach. Very simple, but beautiful.  Anne and I ran around halfnaked in the summer, in the winter in dirty clothes.  But we constantly traveled because my father’s occupation, as an actor, made us like vagabonds. 

STERN:  Did you want to become an actor because of that?

BENNENT:  No. First, I wanted to become a cook, then a baker and then a horse Jockey. My father had always warned me away from the plays as a total occupation. But I got stuck somehow.  The theatre was simply present in our family: in books, in discussions, at the midday table. 

STERN:  After starring in films with Lee Marvin and Tom Cruise you only did theatre.  Were you typecast in films as a “dwarf” actor? 

BENNENT:  No, but the film offers were uninteresting.  Sex and violence do not interest me.  In the theatre I feel good.  As long as I can play Shakespeare’s fools, it is enough to live on. 

STERN:  What comes next? 

BENNENT: In August, I go to Japan, then Taiwan, and then Johannesburg for two months.  We will be performing the play ' The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. And someone finally made me a good offer to star in a motion picture. The Chilean director Marcelo Lagos, who lives in Stuttgart, wants to make a film in Havanna. It has great scenery, and finally it is a movie without sex and brutality. 

STERN:  No dwarf role? 

BENNENT:  No. I throw such offers into the trashcan immediately, anyway. I will play a photographer, who admires an alchoholic Bolero singer in Havanna.  The role fits me.  Like the photographer, I also oscillate around the world.  He lives in a self-made hut on the roof of an old house, and when I was young, so did we.  The Stuttgart dancer Benito Marcelino plays the son of the singer and Ben Becker a German tourist, who dies on Cuba. 

STERN:  When do you start? 

BENNENT:  As soon as Marcelo Lagos has the money.  A film without guns and naked women is difficult to finance.  The cinema dares nothing more meaningful these days.