After one legendary moment, actor Rolf Saxon chose to accept another 'Mission'
So it was for actor Rolf Saxon, who appeared as a befuddled CIA analyst in the very first "Mission: Impossible" film. The sequence, in which Tom Cruise dangles from the ceiling of a stark white vault room to infiltrate the computer system overseen by Saxon's character, is now the stuff of action-cinema history.
From a throwaway punchline in that 1996 film — exiling Saxon's William Donloe to a remote radar station in Alaska — comes one of the most unexpected storylines in the new 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.' His part in the new film is substantially larger and provides the film with some of its emotional heft, making Saxon's return as Donloe a triumph. (A rather memorable knife makes a comeback as well.)
For Saxon's work in the first film, he was in the same physical space as Cruise but their two characters never interacted and had no dialogue together. So a moment late in the new film when Donloe makes a heartfelt expression to Cruise's Ethan Hunt of what his life has been like all these years in Alaska provided relief for the character of Donloe — and for the actor portraying him too.
'It was something I was hoping for, and then it happened,' says Saxon, 70. 'It's a great scene. Working with one of the biggest movie stars in the world, that's kind of cool too.'
Finally sharing a proper scene with Cruise also gave Saxon some insight into the reason Cruise has been one of the world's biggest movie stars for more than 40 years.
'There's no question why he is,' Saxon says. 'The energy that he personally brings into a room, I've never witnessed before. It's focused, it's practiced. I know this sounds like I'm supposed to say this about him, but it's true. This guy's unbelievable. And he does those effing stunts."
Saxon is impressed, too, by the real-life mission Cruise is often vocal about. 'His whole raison d'être is to enhance the industry that's given him so much and bring people in, bring them back to theaters. And I just applaud that on my feet.'
Having had a steadily successful career between his two "Missions," Saxon lives in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California but was recently on a Zoom call from New York City the day after attending the new film's U.S. premiere there. It was Saxon's second time seeing the movie, having also attended a premiere in London just a few days earlier.
Born in Virginia, Saxon studied acting in England, where he would land parts in numerous British TV series as well as assorted film and theater roles. Throughout his career he has also done voice-over work for video games, including the 'Broken Sword' series, and was the narrator for the American edition of the popular children's show 'Teletubbies.'
Read more: The 18 summer movies we're most excited about
According to Saxon, much of the business of what Donloe does onscreen in the first movie directed by Brian De Palma came from an unexpected interaction on set.
'I was given the script," he recalls, "I read it and I thought, OK, there's not a lot to do here. And then one day I was messing around on set, joking around, there was some downtime. And I got a tap on the shoulder from the first [A.D.], who said that Brian De Palma wanted to have a word with me. And I thought, 'Uh-oh.'
'And I walked over and he had a very stern demeanor. Great guy, but he just always looked angry and he said, 'You're playing around on set.' I said, 'Yes, Mr. De Palma.' He said, 'Could you do that again?' I said, "Sure, of course." What am I going to say to say, no? He said, 'OK, after lunch, we're going to have you messing around onstage. We'll film that.'" All of Donloe's memorable physical mishaps — the vomiting, the double take — were Saxon improvs.
The vault sequence has become one of the signature set-pieces of the first film, seemingly lifting from both the silent heist in 'Rififi' and the spacewalk of '2001: A Space Odyssey' and setting a stunts-centric guide for the franchise to come. To perform the scene, Cruise spent hours in a harness suspended from the ceiling.
'I mean, it was a long time,' says Saxon. 'And they'd bring him down sometimes, but he's that guy. He does what needs to be done. I was in the room a number of times with him, while he was filming it, but [our characters] never were supposed to meet.'
Saxon recalls that while shooting the first 'Mission' film, he and Cruise shared a makeup room at the studio in England. One day the woman who did Cruise's makeup wasn't there because her son had an accident at his school. As soon as Cruise heard the news, he called his private on-call doctor and sent him to attend to the boy.
'And he hung up the phone, said, 'Shut the door,'" remembers Saxon. "And he said, 'This stays between us. If this comes out, it's somebody in this room. I'm going to find out who it is and that'll be your last day on the film.' He wanted no publicity. He did it for this lady and her son. And the boy was fine, he was mildly concussed. When she came back the next day, there was a massive bouquet of flowers, saying 'Welcome back.' And then nothing was ever said of it again. That's the kind of guy he is. And it took me two years before I would tell that story.'
Saxon had never had reason to encounter Cruise in the intervening years, because, as he says, 'I'm an actor but I'm not a star.'
The call for the new film first came in January of 2022, and Saxon began shooting on the film in August of that year, finishing in July of 2024. (Saxon's casting was announced via director Christopher McQuarrie's Instagram in March 2023.) This time around, Donloe becomes a vital part of the team and is in the middle of the action at the film's climax. In his years in Alaska he has even married an Inuit woman, Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk).
'The feeling on this set was one of warmth and inclusivity — welcoming,' says Saxon. 'I was on it for almost three years, but people were on it for over five years. This schedule for the filming was very erratic, and [McQuarrie] kept very calm. McQ and Tom, they worked very much in tandem. I loved coming to work every day. Not that I didn't with Brian's stuff, but this was just a joy, and I was much more a part of it than I was in the first one. I was much more part of the team, the core group that was working.'
For "The Final Reckoning," a sequence meant to take place in Alaska, with a team of agents arriving to the remote cabin occupied by Donloe and Tapeesa, was actually shot in Svalbard, an archipelago north of Norway.
'We were staying on a ship,' says Saxon. 'We went to Longyearbyen, which is the furthest most populated area in the world. Then we took a six-hour ride north on the ship, parked on the glacier. And that's where we lived for two weeks. Polar bears, walruses, reindeer and us. It was the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life.'
The cave sequence that is part of the movie's action finale is set in South Africa but was shot in the Middleton mines in England's East Midlands.
'This was in many ways a dream job,' says Saxon. 'The people I'm working with, the thing I'm working on and the places I got to go to work. It's just like, what would you really like to do? Here it is.'
From his initial conversations with McQuarrie, Saxon knew that his part would be significantly larger than in the first film. But even then it developed over the course of production. McQuarrie informed him that some scenes Saxon initially shot were no longer going to be used and due to rewrites, the actor would now be part of the climactic finale.
'He said, 'We really like what you did, but we've had a story alteration, so we can't use that. So we're going to put you in in other ways,'' says Saxon. 'And that was kind of like, 'Oh, no' and 'Oh, yeah' at the same time. Which is kind of the way this worked the whole way through.'
Among the actors in his scenes this time out, Saxon had previously worked with Simon Pegg on the 1999 British sitcom 'Hippies.' He also discovered that he and Hayley Atwell had attended the same drama school in London, though some years apart. Also returning was Henry Czerny, whose character in the initial film sent Donloe to Alaska in the first place.
As to whether he had ever imagined returning to the franchise, Saxon holds his arms out wide, saying, 'Just a little dream.'
He adds, 'I thought about writing Chris or Tom, 'Dear Tom, here's what I think we could do with Donloe.' Or, 'What about this with Donloe?' And at one point, after listening to a friend, I drafted a letter to him. The next day I woke up and I thought' — he mimes wadding up a piece of paper and tossing it away — 'That's never going to happen.' And then years later, bang, it did.'
Saxon said he has never been recognized by anyone for the part of Donloe. (That is likely about to change.) If pressed, his favorite of the 'Mission: Impossible' films has remained the first one. Up to now.
'I suppose closure is one way of putting it,' says Saxon. 'It's been much more fun, this one. The other one, I did my job and I enjoyed doing it. But this one I got to really investigate. It's like remounting a production onstage, or coming back to a project you did 20 years ago, 30 years ago and getting to redo it with what you know now, particularly with the excitement of a larger part. It's fantastic. It's another reason this is such a gift.'
Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
2 hours ago
250-year-old shipwreck discovered on Scottish island
LONDON -- When a schoolboy going for a run found the ribs of a wooden ship poking through the dunes of a remote Scottish beach, it sparked a hunt by archaeologists, scientists and local historians to uncover its story. Through a mix of high-tech science and community research, they have an answer. Researchers announced Wednesday that the vessel is very likely the Earl of Chatham, an 18th-century warship that saw action in the American War of Independence before a second life hunting whales in the Arctic — and then a stormy demise. 'I would regard it as a lucky ship, which is a strange thing to say about a ship that's wrecked,' said Ben Saunders, senior marine archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, a charity that helped community researchers conduct the investigation. 'I think if it had been found in many other places, it wouldn't necessarily have had that community drive, that desire to recover and study that material, and also the community spirit to do it,' Saunders said. The wreck was discovered in February 2024 after a storm swept away sand covering it on Sanday, one of the rugged Orkney Islands that lie off Scotland's northern tip. It excited interest on the island of 500 people, whose history is bound up with the sea and its dangers. Around 270 shipwrecks have been recorded around the 20-square-mile (50-square-kilometer) island since the 15th century. Local farmers used their tractors and trailers to haul the 12 tons of oak timbers off the beach, before local researchers set to work trying to identify it. 'That was really good fun, and it was such a good feeling about the community – everybody pulling together to get it back,' said Sylvia Thorne, one of the island's community researchers. 'Quite a few people are really getting interested in it and becoming experts.' Dendrochronology — the science of dating wood from tree rings — showed the timber came from southern England in the middle of the 18th century. That was one bit of luck, Saunders said, because it coincides with 'the point where British bureaucracy's really starting to kick off' and detailed records were being kept. 'And so we can then start to look at the archive evidence that we have for the wrecks in Orkney,' Saunders said. 'It becomes a process of elimination. 'You remove ones that are Northern European as opposed to British, you remove wrecks that are too small or operating out of the north of England and you really are down to two or three … and Earl of Chatham is the last one left.' Further research found that before it was the Earl of Chatham, the ship was HMS Hind, a 24-gun Royal Navy frigate built in Chichester on England's south coast in 1749. Its military career saw it play a part in the expansion — and contraction — of the British Empire. It helped Britain wrest control of Canada from France during the sieges of Louisbourg and Quebec in the 1750s, and in the 1770s served as a convoy escort during Britain's failed effort to hold onto its American colonies. Sold off by the navy in 1784 and renamed, the vessel became a whaling ship, hunting the huge mammals in the Arctic waters off Greenland. Whale oil was an essential fuel of the Industrial Revolution, used to lubricate machinery, soften fabric and light city streets. Saunders said that in 1787 there were 120 London-based whaling ships in the Greenland Sea, the Earl of Chatham among them. A year later, while heading out to the whaling ground, it was wrecked in bad weather off Sanday. All 56 crew members survived — more evidence, Saunders says, that this was a vessel blessed with luck. The ship's timbers are being preserved in a freshwater tank at the Sanday Heritage Centre while plans are discussed to put it on permanent display. Saunders said that the project is a model of community involvement in archaeology. 'The community have been so keen, have been so desirous to be involved and to find out things to learn, and they're so proud of it. It's down to them it was discovered, it's down to them it was recovered and it's been stabilized and been protected,' he said. For locals, it's a link to the island's maritime past — and future. Finding long-buried wrecks could become more common as climate change alters the wind patterns around Britain and reshapes the coastline. 'One of the biggest things I've got out of this project is realizing how much the past in Sanday is just constantly with you — either visible or just under the surface,' said Ruth Peace, another community researcher.
Chicago Tribune
3 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Science and local sleuthing identify a 250-year-old shipwreck on a Scottish island
LONDON — When a schoolboy going for a run found the ribs of a wooden ship poking through the dunes of a remote Scottish beach, it sparked a hunt by archaeologists, scientists and local historians to uncover its story. Through a mix of high-tech science and community research, they have an answer. Researchers announced Wednesday that the vessel is very likely the Earl of Chatham, an 18th-century warship that saw action in the American War of Independence before a second life hunting whales in the Arctic — and then a stormy demise. 'I would regard it as a lucky ship, which is a strange thing to say about a ship that's wrecked,' said Ben Saunders, senior marine archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, a charity that helped community researchers conduct the investigation. 'I think if it had been found in many other places, it wouldn't necessarily have had that community drive, that desire to recover and study that material, and also the community spirit to do it,' Saunders said. The wreck was discovered in February 2024 after a storm swept away sand covering it on Sanday, one of the rugged Orkney Islands that lie off Scotland's northern tip. It excited interest on the island of 500 people, whose history is bound up with the sea and its dangers. Around 270 shipwrecks have been recorded around the 20-square-mile (50-square-kilometer) island since the 15th century. Local farmers used their tractors and trailers to haul the 12 tons of oak timbers off the beach, before local researchers set to work trying to identify it. 'That was really good fun, and it was such a good feeling about the community – everybody pulling together to get it back,' said Sylvia Thorne, one of the island's community researchers. 'Quite a few people are really getting interested in it and becoming experts.' Dendrochronology — the science of dating wood from tree rings — showed the timber came from southern England in the middle of the 18th century. That was one bit of luck, Saunders said, because it coincides with 'the point where British bureaucracy's really starting to kick off' and detailed records were being kept. 'And so we can then start to look at the archive evidence that we have for the wrecks in Orkney,' Saunders said. 'It becomes a process of elimination. 'You remove ones that are Northern European as opposed to British, you remove wrecks that are too small or operating out of the north of England and you really are down to two or three … and Earl of Chatham is the last one left.' Further research found that before it was the Earl of Chatham, the ship was HMS Hind, a 24-gun Royal Navy frigate built in Chichester on England's south coast in 1749. Its military career saw it play a part in the expansion — and contraction — of the British Empire. It helped Britain wrest control of Canada from France during the sieges of Louisbourg and Quebec in the 1750s, and in the 1770s served as a convoy escort during Britain's failed effort to hold onto its American colonies. Sold off by the navy in 1784 and renamed, the vessel became a whaling ship, hunting the huge mammals in the Arctic waters off Greenland. Whale oil was an essential fuel of the Industrial Revolution, used to lubricate machinery, soften fabric and light city streets. Saunders said that in 1787 there were 120 London-based whaling ships in the Greenland Sea, the Earl of Chatham among them. A year later, while heading out to the whaling ground, it was wrecked in bad weather off Sanday. All 56 crew members survived — more evidence, Saunders says, that this was a vessel blessed with luck. The ship's timbers are being preserved in a freshwater tank at the Sanday Heritage Centre while plans are discussed to put it on permanent display. Saunders said that the project is a model of community involvement in archaeology. 'The community have been so keen, have been so desirous to be involved and to find out things to learn, and they're so proud of it. It's down to them it was discovered, it's down to them it was recovered and it's been stabilized and been protected,' he said. For locals, it's a link to the island's maritime past — and future. Finding long-buried wrecks could become more common as climate change alters the wind patterns around Britain and reshapes the coastline. 'One of the biggest things I've got out of this project is realizing how much the past in Sanday is just constantly with you — either visible or just under the surface,' said Ruth Peace, another community researcher.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Ozzy Osbourne death: Sharon, Kelly, Jack, and Aimee release joint statement after legendary rocker dies
Ozzy Osbourne's family has issued a joint statement following the death of the legendary rocker at the age of 76. The founding Black Sabbath frontman died Tuesday morning, his wife, Sharon, and four of his five children confirmed in a joint statement. 'It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love,' the message shared on social media read. 'We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time. Sharon, Jack, Kelly, Aimee and Louis.' Alongside the caption, they included a photo of Osbourne — who had Parkinson's disease — sitting in a black-winged throne during his final performance two weeks ago at the Back to the Beginning charity event hosted by Black Sabbath. The proceeds from the 10-hour concert were donated to Acorns Children's Hospice, Birmingham Children's Hospital, and Cure Parkinson's. Osbourne, fondly nicknamed the 'Prince of Darkness,' was married to his second wife, television personality and music manager Sharon, from 1982 until his death. Together, they shared three children: Aimee, 41; Kelly, 40; and Jack, 39. The British singer-songwriter also had two children, daughter Jessica and son Louis, 50, from his first marriage to Thelma Riley. The pair were married from 1971 to 1982. He additionally adopted Riley's son, Elliott Kingsley, 59, from a previous marriage. The heavy metal artist has been mourned by fans and colleagues alike. Black Sabbath honored Osbourne with a post on Instagram that simply read: 'Ozzy forever.' Fellow singing icon Elton John paid tribute, calling Osbourne 'a dear friend and a huge trailblazer who secured his place in the pantheon of rock gods — a true legend.' 'He was also one of the funniest people I've ever met. I will miss him dearly. To Sharon and the family, I send my condolences and love,' he added. Former Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood said he was 'very sad' to hear of Osbourne's death. 'What a lovely goodbye concert he had at Back To The Beginning in Birmingham,' the rock guitarist wrote on X. Heavy-metal band Metallica paid tribute by posting a broken heart emoji, alongside an old photo of Osbourne and the band. Hours before his death, Osbourne made an eerie last Instagram post about going 'back to the beginning.' In the post, he shared a backstage photo from his farewell charity event of the sign above his dressing room. His name was printed atop the poster, with a picture of Osbourne and his four original bandmates Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, and Bill Ward below. 'Back to the Beginning,' it read. 'The Final Show.'
