John Rhys-Davies laughs loudly and often — almost baroquely so. During an interview with The Washington Times to discuss his new film “Winter Thaw,” the Welsh actor said it was partly the affinity between his native Wales and the Russian source material for the film that initially drew him in.
“The Welsh are temperamentally very like the Russians — full of moroseness and exhilaration and equally sly,” the 72-year-old veteran actor said before unleashing a major guffaw.
Based on a short story by Leo Tolstoy called “Martin the Cobbler” — alternately known as “Where Love Is, God Is” — “Winter Thaw” stars Mr. Rhys-Davies as Martin Avdeitch, a disbelieving, penurious cobbler who, through a series of interactions with strangers, begins to again feel the touch of the divine.
“It’s that eternal question that Christians must pose to themselves: Lord, what must I do to gain eternal life?” Mr. Rhys-Davies said. “For the rich man, it is ’Give up [wealth] and follow me.’ That just wracked Tolstoy,” the author of “War and Peace” who lived an extravagantly wealthy life in czarist Russia while wrestling with such questions of faith versus materialism.
“Winter Thaw” was filmed on location in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania, whose buildings most closely resemble the 19th century architecture of Tolstoy’s day. Mr. Rhys-Davies, who studied the Russian authors while in university, enthuses that the Lithuanian crew was more attuned to details of history, set design and properties than English or American craftsmen might have been.
“It’s very easy to find the background that you can transform very easily into Russia 1875,” Mr. Rhys-Davies said of the location. “And so it looked right.”
As Americans gorge themselves at the trough of giving thanks for all they have — and/or heading out for Black Friday deals to buy yet more — Mr. Rhys-Davies says he hopes that “Winter Thaw” might perhaps act as an antidote to Thanksgiving football games and also nudge audiences to take stock of what they already possess.
“As we come to the end of the year … my spirits start to fall,” Mr. Rhys-Davies, who said he suffers from seasonal affective disorder in the winter months, said of the closing of the 2016 calendar. “You start sort of summing up what you’ve done with yet another year of your life. And by and large, it’s little enough,” Mr. Rhys-Davies said of the angst that also pervaded much of the 19th century Russian literature he has studied.
He connects this existential ennui back to his native Wales, and to John Donne, a 15th century diplomat who proclaimed: “I run to death, and death meets me as fast. And all my pleasures are like yesterday.”
“That last line is not wholly true,” Mr. Rhys-Davies then said before unleashing yet another uproarious belly laugh — and somewhat upending his entire premise.
Mr. Rhys-Davies’ deep Welsh timbres are instantly recognizable without his face ever being seen. Little wonder then that he has done so much voiceover work in addition to a career spanning over 200 films, including two of the four Indiana Jones adventures and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, in which he portrayed the grumpy dwarf warrior Gimli.
“I was fortunate in that my parents were both Welsh-speaking. And the offspring of Welsh speakers have a bit of an instinctive sense of rhythm and the musicality of language,” Mr. Rhys-Davies said.
His father was a colonial servant in Africa after World War II, where Mr. Rhys-Davies learned to speak what he called “colonial English,” which was far different from any of the dialects he’d known in Britannia. As a young man Mr. Rhys-Davies believed he would follow in his father’s footsteps as a colonial civil servant, but the end of the Second World War presaged the beginning of the end of the British empire’s grip on much of the globe, including Africa.
“My father gave me the lecture on that, and I burst into tears as I learned there was no future for the white man in Africa,” the actor recalls now.
Instead he returned to the U.K., where he pursued other interests in writing and acting. Shakespeare was an early stimulant, with the Bard’s words giving him “the words to articulate my adolescent rage.”
Setbacks, as they are for any actor, were constant. Mr. Rhys-Davies chortles again recalling a rejection letter he received from BBC Radio:
“Dear Mr. Rhys-Davies, thank you so much for attending the audition last month,” he says from memory. “Unfortunately, we have many actors with your qualities on our books, and it is unlikely we will be able to offer you work in the near-future.”
He would soon enough prove the BBC brass wrong, working steadily in British theater and television in the 1970s, including in the iconic miniseries, “I, Claudius.” In 1981 he was cast as the friendly Egyptian Sallah, an ally of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in a race against the Nazis in the search for the mystical Ark of the Covenant in the deserts of Cairo.
Mr. Rhys-Davies reprised the role in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in 1989. He was asked by Steven Spielberg to do a cameo — via blue screen — in the wedding scene at the end of 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” but he felt that would cheapen the character.
(“I politely declined on the grounds that I think the character is a bit more interesting than that,” he said.)
Asked if he hopes Sallah might return in the fifth — and presumably final — Indy film, set for release in 2019, Mr. Rhys-Davies is philosophical about regrouping with series co-creator George Lucas and Messrs. Ford and Spielberg.
“Sallah exists if there is the Egyptian desert. If Egypt is there, then it’s possible that Sallah would be there,” he said, adding that he has told Mr. Spielberg that the two films in the series not featuring Sallah weren’t necessarily as good.
“Now what is missing?” Mr. Rhys-Davies said, again chuckling good-naturedly. “He is a marvelous filmmaker, Spielberg. He still has that magical contact with his childhood that most of us lose, sadly.”
For his role as Martin Avdeitch, Mr. Rhys-Davies had to spend a significant time in the makeup chair, however, he is quick to point out that it was far less arduous than that required to turn him into Gimli for his adventures in Middle-earth.
“My dear boy, after doing ’Lord of the Rings,’ where I had someone in my face doing makeup for eight hours a day, I don’t even bother to count the minutes anymore,” he said, laughing.
Key cast members from J.R.R. Tolkien’s film trilogy famously all went to a tattoo parlor in New Zealand to mark their bodies with the Elvish sign for “nine” to signify the Fellowship of men, hobbits, elves, dwarves and wizards sent to destroy the One Ring.
All went. All that is, save one.
“They insisted, it had to be nine,” Mr. Rhys-Davies recalls. “So I did what all self-respecting actors do when faced with a physical challenge that might be life-threatening: I sent my stunt double, and he has the tattoo.
“If I had a tattoo of every bloody film I’ve done, I’d look like the illustrated man.”
Mr. Rhys-Davies said that if “Winter Thaw” has an overarching theme, it’s that it is always possible to allow one’s faith and imagination to be reignited.
“It is never too late to try and make good the relationship you’ve neglected or abandoned or discarded or damaged. And that’s probably a Thanksgiving theme,” he said. “It does have a Christian message because Tolstoy cannot write without it … because he is a Christian” writer.
Mr. Rhys-Davies says he believes strongly in “Winter Thaw”’s message, and he hopes viewers will connect with Tolstoy’s ideals as well.
“I’m rather proud of this one. And you can’t say that of everything ones does,” he said.
“Winter Thaw” airs Thursday at 8 p.m. EST on BYUtv.
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