| Supporting the young actors are a number of great veterans who have been acting for many years, appearing in both small and large productions. One of those is an actress who has worked with a wide range of extraordinary actors like Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Fred Astaire, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Melvyn Douglas, Sir Derek Jacobi, Mickey Rourke, John Hurt, and many, many more. She is Alice Krige. Best known for her role as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact, and the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager, Alice Krige plays the part of Rosemary, mother of Katie Carr's character, Marion. Alice was born in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa. At the age of 8 years, she made moves to Cape Town, Johannesburg. Then moved to Port Elizabeth for a time, before going to university in Grahamstown. Finally, she left South Africa and settled in London, England, where she took acting school for three years. "I had one free credit in my under-graduate course. My parents said to me, 'why not do a year of drama. It'll be good for you.' . . . I did, and it became very fascinating to me. . . . I was totally absorbed by it. . . . I can remember towards my 3rd year of my first degree--I was doing three majors: English, Psychology, and Drama-- . . . sitting in an English tutorial that was about a very beautiful poem by Blake . . . and I looked around the class . . . and 90 % of the class was bored out of its brain!" At that point, the English Department also wanted Alice to drop her other subjects, and focus completely on English. But she found all that to be too dissatisfying a choice personally. Especially, since she found her Drama course to be much more enjoyable and challenging, and "requiring that you use yourself on every level--emotionally, physically, mentally. And I thought at that point, very idealistically, that theater could change the world--and I've understood since that it doesn't." In the end, Alice is very happy with the educational choices that she made, summarily saying, "I'm immensely grateful that I chose to do what I did." As an actor, Alice clearly acknowledges how fortunate she has been in the acting field. Since beginning her career on a professional level, she's been consistently working on one project or another. "I have worked almost without stopping (with) 1: wonderful people, and 2: 80% of the time on things that I wanted to do." The diversity in which Alice has worked as a professional actor is impressive. After finishing work on a huge project like Star Trek: First Contact, she immediately began work in Winnipeg, Manitoba on a film directed by "a really wonderful Canadian film director named Guy Maddin. . . . The contrast of going from a $70 million dollar picture, that was state of the art technology--which was wonderful. I had a ball on that picture. I had such a good time. But I had just as illuminating and as exciting and as wonderful a time on (the) picture I had done in Winnipeg, on a budget so small, that we couldn't afford a sound-proof space. We filmed in a soap factory while one half of it was still being used . . . . But it was wonderful because everyone had a really passionate connection to it." Though the experiences were vastly different, the level of enjoyment and commitment on both pictures were equal for Alice--the budget and size of the films made no difference to her on a personal or professional level. Alice also worked on the children's movie The Little Vampire. She recalls that particular project as a very positive movie. "It was a lovely thing, that had a sort of sweetness to it. . . . It was very charming, and it was actually very good to go to the cinema . . . I went to the press screening . . . Lester Square, on a Saturday morning, with a theatre full of children. And they loved it! . . . The kids adored it!" When asked about why she wanted to do Dinotopia, Alice honestly replies, "There's actually not that much made for children, that just has a sweetness to it. And I thought that Dinotopia stood a chance of being that. It's full of lovely ideas. The idea that we as a species can live in harmony with dinosaurs is somehow a wonderful idea. . . . It's like a metaphor for being able to embrace something completely different from yourself." Her character, Rosemary, is a very likeable character, which is one of the main reasons why she enjoyed playing the part. "I liked her because I thought she was very down to earth and good. I think she's a very good person . . . living her ideals in a very practical way" and having "no crisis of conscience." Rosemary is a very strong character in her own right, being mother of Marion, wife to Mayor Waldo, and reverend matriarch of Dinotopia. The challenges of working on a project laced with CGI and blue screen special effects were not as daunting for Alice as it was for the young actors. She already had experiences with similar special effects in Star Trek, The Little Vampire, and other films. Naturally, she prefers to work with other actors rather than blue screen, in which no actor is present and a CGI character is later inserted. "It's not as much fun, by any means, as having a real actor. One of the great joys of acting is to work with other actors. And to have that taken away, it's nowhere near as much fun as actually working with an actor." But for her, she was more fortunate than some of the young actors in that respect. "In fact I always was surrounded by actors. . . . So I had it comparatively easy." However, that still didn't mean that it was an effortless shoot. For her part, Alice was filming from October 2000 to January 2001--and working on two other projects at the same time. But comparing the experience with Star Trek: First Contact, one must accept that it must have been much easier in at least one respect: make-up! For the Borg Queen, Alice had to endure 7 hours to put the make-up and costume on, and another 2 hours to remove it! There were also two different Borg Queen costumes--the second having been made after they found that after a 22 hour work day, and after the first costume had been taken off, Alice couldn't get back into it the following shoot. It had shrunk and she had swollen. So, a second costume was made, which fit very tightly but more comfortably. Alice can't recall whether the producers asked for her or her agent thought she should try out for the role of the Borg Queen, but it was a part that she fervently wanted, even though it was no more than three (maybe three and a half) scenes. "I was sent (only) the three scenes by my agent," Alice says. Expecting the entire script, she asked for the remaining scenes. But, according to her agent, they only sent specific scenes out to each cast member. No one got the entire script. The producers were too afraid that the whole script might fall into the wrong hands and wind up on the Internet. Which it probably did by then anyway. Currently, Alice Krige is producing a feature to be directed by Paul Schoolman. It's set in modern times, but relates the life of a young Julius Caesar, as seen through the eyes of a man serving a life sentence in prison. Aside from the aforementioned movies, Alice Krige has also appeared in such movies as Ghost Story, The Commissioner, Chariots of Fire, Barfly; miniseries such as Attila the Hun, Ellis Island, A Tale of Two Cities; and many stage productions, like Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, and Cyrano de Bergerac, to name just a few. |
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| Interview with Alice Krige from Hallmark's 6 hour mini-series Dinotopia by A. Jaye Williams |
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| This interview was reposted with the permission of the author. To read other interviews by A. Jaye Williams, please visit the SILLWILL Press Web site. |