‘We went bankrupt and had to set up the explosives ourselves’: Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine on making Richard III

Ian McKellen, actor, co-writer, executive producer

When we were doing Richard III at the National Theatre in 1990, the director Richard Eyre, the designer Bob Crowley and I felt there should be modern references in the design. Although it is a history play, if you look at the dates, there were people at the original production whose grandparents would have lived in Richard III’s time. Richard suggested looking back to the 1930s and fascism, which seemed like a modern equivalent. Just before the play opened in the US, I said: “Shouldn’t we film this?” He said: “Yes, you’d better write a screenplay.”

At the end of the tour, I sent Richard what I’d written. I’d cut every “thee” and “thou” – it’s always “you”. And the first spoken word isn’t heard for about eight minutes. I wanted the audience to think: “When is someone going to speak?” Richard said: “I thought you were doing a television adaptation. This is a feature film. I don’t have time to direct a feature film – I’m running the National Theatre.” Thank God, we managed to get Richard Loncraine instead – Richard II, as I called him. He knew nothing about Shakespeare but the partnership was perfect. He gave way on any point I made about the text and I conceded on visual things because he knew how to tell the story cinematically.

Annette Bening was lovely but Robert Downey Jr was in a pretty bad way – just not always quite with us

I’d done enough film acting to know you can’t just do what you do on stage. It was fun to realise that I could achieve just as much by raising an eyebrow, and it was exciting to speak Richard’s soliloquies straight to camera, which people had seemed nervous about doing before then. I wasn’t known as a film actor, so we wanted to get some American stars. I thought the Woodville family, which Richard III marries into, could be American, so we cast Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. It helped explain why everybody hated them – it was like people being appalled by the idea of Edward VIII marrying an American divorcee. Except Annette didn’t want to do it with an American accent. She said: “People will think I can’t do an English one. And I can.” We had to keep saying: “Please make it more American!”

I thought the film was probably 10 minutes too short: it was in danger of becoming a cartoon version. But, just as with Iago in Othello, you find yourself wanting Richard to succeed against your better instincts, just to see how far he’ll go – so it races along. Suddenly I was being considered seriously as a film actor. If Bryan Singer hadn’t seen it, he would never have asked me to be in Apt Pupil or X-Men. Richard III the movie changed my life.

Richard Loncraine, director, co-writer

Ian’s script was very theatrical but I was struck by Richard delivering “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse” from a Jeep with its wheels spinning. His great calling is to make Shakespeare accessible for idiots like me. I said: “I can’t direct a movie if I don’t know what every line means.”

Most of the imagery came from me, like the tank crashing through the wall at the start. I like setting things in the wrong place, such as when Richard is at the urinal halfway through “Now is the winter of our discontent”. It makes the audience go: “Hang on, maybe this is real.” Actors never look at the camera but Ian and I made the decision that he would do it for his soliloquies. I thought: “Will this blow up in our faces?” But it worked.

We needed to have movie stars to raise money for the film. Annette was lovely: never any bullshit. Robert Downey Jr was in a pretty bad way in those days: well-mannered, just not always quite with us, though his performance didn’t suffer. Dominic West got his first job. He was not a great actor then by any means – but he hadn’t learned anything yet.

On the first day, I knew we only had enough money for half the shoot. We went bankrupt after a few weeks, so I put my fee in, Ian put his in, and my assistant put her own money in. It was stressful. I remember laying detonators myself at Battersea power station in London because we didn’t have enough crew members to do it. I was setting up explosives while giving notes to actors, which isn’t the safest way to run a shoot.

The battle sequence at the end was quite chaotic. My favourite shot is when Ian comes out of the bombed railway carriage and there’s a guy on fire running backwards: a beautiful painterly image, with all that black smoke and the horses rearing up. Nothing to do with my talent – pure luck.

It was iniquitous that Ian didn’t receive an Oscar nomination. At the premiere, Warren Beatty, Annette’s husband, got down on his knees in the lobby and bowed to me in front of 150 people. I thought: “Fucking hell, that is praise indeed.” What I wasn’t prepared for was seeing him do it again five days later to another director, which tells you a bit about how Hollywood works.