Gotham's Julian Sands: 'Nasty people can be perfectly loving'

Many of us might simply think of actor Julian Sands as the obsessive romantic lead in A Room With A View alongside Helena Bonham Carter. But 30 years after the incredible success of that Merchant-Ivory movie, this Yorkshire-born actor, 57, has carved out a striking career, across the spectrum, not least in horror roles.
Like many British actors based in Hollywood, he does “baddie” well. Indeed, in his latest role for the US TV drama Gotham, he is channelling no less than Dr Gerard Crane, father of Batman villain the Scarecrow.
But not, he insists, as the “brilliantly unpleasant” character I suggest.
In dulcet, clipped English tones he says: “Well, I just found him brilliant as a character. I didn’t set out to be intentionally unpleasant. He set out to save the world but, in order to do that, he was leaving a big body count.
“I think a lot of thoroughly nasty people can be perfectly loving and charming within their own families and the relationship he has with his son, who ultimately becomes Jonathan, the Scarecrow, is one of a paternal, caring, doting father.
But, of course, it’s also utterly and completely destructive, because he is certifiably, off-the-chart insane!”
The Batman franchise, with the Dark Knight movie trilogy and now Gotham, is more popular than ever.
“I even think in the campy days when I grew up, in Yorkshire in the 1960s, Adam West as Batman was something we all watched.
Even for all the camp and for what would seem now a dated playing of the roles, there was still this sort of strange allure and vulnerability of the leading goodies, and the splendid baroque, Grand Guignol splendour of the baddies.”
After the success of A Room With A View, Sands moved to America to forge his film career.
With his first wife, journalist Sarah Harvey, he had a son called Henry in 1985. Divorced from her in 1987, he then married Guinness heiress Evgenia Citkowitz after they were introduced by his friend, actor John Malkovich.
They are still together and have two daughters, Natalya, 18, and Imogen, 15.


Are both daughters fans of comic-book stories on film and TV? “In truth, I don’t think they are themselves real fans of comic books, but they have enjoyed what they’ve seen.
I think they’re a little anxious when they hear that I’m playing another dark and demonic character. Like, ‘Oh Dad, what are you up to now?’ It’s more a, ‘Here we go again,’ sort of thing with them.”
In Gotham, his character wants to eradicate fear, but as a keen mountain climber Julian seems to have done that already for himself.
“Well, the thing about fear in the mountains, or on a rock, is that it keeps you very careful. You manage your fear, the way you manage the conditions. When you go up a mountain, there’s always an anxiety, and concern for the dangers that await. I know a lot of young climbers who are full of derring-do and bravado, but I don’t know too many older ones who aren’t just as circumspect and cautious.”
It’s almost the same as going on stage, Sands reveals: “There is that sense of putting one foot out there, and anything can happen.
I’m doing a performance tonight, here in Los Angeles, of a show John Malkovich and I devised called A Celebration Of Harold Pinter.
Hundreds of people turn up and sometimes, it can be like being on the Mittellegi Ridge on the Eiger, where I found myself 14 months ago.”
Doesn’t your wife ever ask you to stop climbing? “No, no, no, she knows me far too well to say that. She’s sympathetic. I think she enjoys the fact that I enjoy the wild outdoors. She likes it out there, too. When I’ve made plans to go to some of the bigger Himalayan mountains, she’s been supportive.”
Hollywood, he says, has become a “very settled base camp” for him. “All actors are born with wanderlust and it’s essentially a nomadic existence.
I mean, I do enjoy being in LA very much, but most of the time I am on the road. Already this year, I’ve done a film in Istanbul, with John Malkovich directing, I did a Pinter tour in Florida and Arizona, I’m about to go to Mexico City to do a film, then that will complete in Barcelona.”
It’s “incredible”, he says, to think that 30 years have passed since A Room With A View. “What’s amazing about that film is that I’ve presented it over the last year to various college and university audiences who weren’t born when the film was made, and yet their response to it has been utterly thrilling because it has not dated.”
“The film had integrity and authority, but no one knew if it would have an audience. The people who were backing it tried to cancel it a few days before we started shooting.
They really tried to pull the plug and here we are talking about it 30 years on. Amazing.”