I can’t remember calling him James. It was Jimmy from the off. An email came from his agent: Jimmy wanted to talk about my script but he’d prefer to meet me in person. Could I come to Los Angeles? I was on the next flight. I wanted him badly for the role of Tom Rockwell, a retired air-force colonel with a lot to hide, for my film Out of Blue, a neo-noir adaptation of the Martin Amis novel Night Train, starring Patricia Clarkson as the detective investigating the death of Tom’s daughter.
I met Jimmy at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills hotel, the beating heart of old Hollywood. I expected him to be late but he was already there, at his regular table, under the best light in the room. He was in his late 70s and full of life and stories. As I sat beside him, I couldn’t stop thinking of all the legendary characters he’d played, all the incredible directors he’d worked with, but I just knew, in order to ensure he said yes to playing Tom, I mustn’t seem in the least intimidated by any of this.
Jimmy eased the way, saying that even though he’d done some movies for the money – he’d lost a house in each of his four divorce settlements, so he’d had no choice – he wasn’t considering doing Out of Blue for that reason. Hell, there was hardly any money to be had. What was the budget? How was it possible? When I jabbed my fists in fight mode to say it could be done, he looked scornful and said, “That’s not how you fight! I’ll teach you to box one day!” He was determined to get me in the ring, and in a way, in the months to come, he did.
It was an hour into our meeting before we even looked at the menu, and at that point Jimmy made me feel like I was the only vegetarian he’d ever met. I chose avocado on toast, which he claimed never to have heard of before. But he ordered it too, and when it arrived it was the only time I saw him look stunned. It was giant and embellished with grapefruit. We began to laugh and found it hard to stop.
He brought me to tears though, and himself too, when he told me that after he’d made his first pile of dough, he’d bought his parents a limousine – surprising them with it outside the tiny Bronx basement apartment he’d grown up in and his parents still lived in. Though his father drove the car around the streets with pride, he couldn’t bring himself to be proud of his son. Even when Jimmy was a kid and had shone in a baseball game, his father had praised another teammate’s skill instead. All these decades later, Jimmy was longing for the love he never felt he had from his father. He was still hurting.
The moment Jimmy said yes to being in Out of Blue I was on a high. On my return to the UK, his daily phone calls began, and they continued into pre-production in New Orleans. Eventually, as much as I adored and was stimulated by all he had to say, I grew concerned: we only had 28 days to shoot the film and if he expected this much attention on set, I wouldn’t make my deadline. During the next phone call I told him that I didn’t have the luxury of time and we ended up fighting and shouting over each other. When we’d both calmed down, we were laughing, and I was charmed when Jimmy said that he’d loved his in-depth conversations with Karel Reisz on The Gambler, and felt we were doing the same.
When he stipulated that Tom should wear a particular kind of old-school golf shoe, the costume designer Abby O’Sullivan was shown a photo of Jimmy’s tatty golf shoes by his assistant. We speculated whether Jimmy just wanted some new shoes, and maybe he did. After all, when he finished the shoot he walked away in all of his character’s clothes, saying: “Thanks for my new look, kid.” But it was definitely not just that: he obsessed over his characters, and he loved refining the details, from the inside to the outside, from his shoes to his hat.
I asked Toby Jones, who played the chief murder suspect in the film, to go easy during a violent confrontation scene, as Jimmy wasn’t in the greatest of health. Afterwards Toby said that the thrill of being in the orbit of this generation of screen actors lasted all the way to Jimmy managing to find the power to pinion him against the wall and slam his walking stick to his throat. He gave everything he could, and it showed: his Tom was brilliantly twisted.
I will never forget the moment, as we were leaving the Beverley Hills hotel that day, when Jimmy and I passed by the piano player and he launched into the theme from The Godfather. Jimmy stopped in his tracks with delight. “Listen!” he said. “Can you believe it?” I loved him for retaining every ounce of fresh enthusiasm, and for never forgetting how far he’d come to be who he was: an amazing actor, a movie legend, one of the greats. There will never be another like him but, thankfully, because of all he gave of himself, to so many characters, he will always be with us.
