He was Oscar-nominated for his unforgettable work alongside Jack Nicholson, in one of the greatest films of all time. It was the start of his career as the ultimate character actor. He discusses David Lynch, Ian McKellen and the joy of playing a murderous doll
Brad Dourif knew it was time to retire from acting when he stopped feeling … well, anything about the parts he was being offered. “I got to a place where if somebody offered me something, all I felt was an empty: oh.” It had started in 2013, after a production of Tennessee Williams’s The Two-Character Play. That had been an extraordinary experience, with his co-star Amanda Plummer “by far the best actor I’ve ever worked with”, but left him wondering if there was anything he still wanted to do professionally. Acting no longer got him excited; it just left him tired. “It became clear to me after a while that I just really didn’t want to work any more.”
We speak over video call from his home in upstate New York, where he lives with Claudia, his girlfriend of 30-plus years, a poet and songwriter, and his tabby cats Honey Mustard and Snapdragon. Instead of working, he is building and decorating a swimming pool-sized enclosure for them, so that they can be outdoors safely at night. “You might call it a catio but we call it kitty city!” he says. “My friend who helped me build this thing gave it a once-over and he went: ‘Expensive cats!’” Dourif, 75, is enjoying retirement so much that it takes a nudge from his agent to pull him away from the fantasy novel he is immersed in to alert him to the fact that he is 20 minutes late for our call.