Thomas Haden Church
The 43-year-old Oscar-nominated actor on the role of his lifetime, working with Brando, and the Hill Country ranch he calls home. “I knew immediately that they’d be serving ice water in hell about the same time I’d be cast in [Sideways].”
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In 2003. It came with a request, because I’d been in Texas full-time for almost four years. They said, “If you respond to the script, Alexander would like to meet you in Los Angeles.” And I called them back and said, “I don’t even need to respond to the material. This is gonna happen, because it’s him.” I read it, and I knew immediately that they’d be serving ice water in hell about the same time I’d be cast in the movie. But I flew out and we had amazing meetings, and I found out I was definitely in contention. Then I got a phone call that Alexander wanted to meet again, only this time it was going to be less formal. We had supper and hung out, just to get to know each other a bit. Probably two weeks after that I was out at the ranch, looking at my caller ID, and there was this “Alex Payne” with a 323 area code. And I was literally like, “Who is that?” Because if you’ve ever met him, you do not call him Alex. It’s Alexander. So I was like, “Alex Payne?” And then I was like, “Oh, Alexander. What the hell is he calling me for?”
You had written off the possibility of getting it.
Oh, totally. Even though I had gone back and had supper with him, I didn’t believe there was any chance of it happening, because I knew guys like Brad Pitt and George Clooney were pursuing the role. It got back to me through a casting director I know that Matt Dillon was seriously in the hunt. And I’m like, “Well, you know, that’s it. He’s perfect.”
So I listen to my answering machine, and it’s, “Hey, Tom, it’s Alexander Payne calling you. I sure would like to talk to you if you wouldn’t mind giving me a call.” And I’m like, “You know, here it is, one of the most defeating moments in modern history, and he’s letting me down in person.”
But, in fact, you got it. I guess it’s the case, isn’t it, that getting the part you want happens much more infrequently than not getting it?
I’ve certainly been the bridesmaid a number of times. I screen-tested for the lead in Ace Ventura. I screen-tested for Quiz Show.
For the Ralph Fiennes part?
Yeah. I screen-tested for Tom Sizemore’s role in Saving Private Ryan. I wanted to do that movie bad. Then again, Sideways was the only movie that I auditioned for in 2003.
The perception out there is that until it came along, you’d pretty much given up on acting.
I really have to give you the quick chronology of my career. From ’89 to 2000, I did nothing but television and the occasional movie. I did a lot of guest-star stuff, and I was supposed to do ten episodes of China Beach, but I got fired. But thank God I got fired, because that made me available to do Wings. I did six seasons of Wings, two seasons of Ned and Stacey, and then I had a two-year deal at ABC to develop and star in a series. So I did eleven solid years of television, and, yeah, I got to do Tombstone and George of the Jungle. In 2000 I’d already owned a ranch in the Hill Country for a couple of years, and I was like, “That’s enough TV for a while. I’ve made plenty of money. I’ve put it away. I’ve invested. I have property. I’m fine financially for a long time. Now I’m really going to relax and step back and try to figure out what I want my next choice to be.” My writing partner, David Denney, and I had already started writing scripts, and one of them, Southern Story, got green-lit, with Whoopi Goldberg directing. That was in the spring of 2000. Then the movie falls apart by the end of 2000. I’m like, “Okay, now I gotta refocus on acting, because I’ve kind of been fallow for a couple years.” So in January of 2001, I was cast in a movie, Lone Star State of Mind, and then right after that I was hired to play Billy Bob Thornton’s brother in a movie called The Badge. The guy who made The Badge found out about Southern Story through Billy Bob, who had read it and liked it. So he flew to New Orleans, where we were shooting, and said, “We would like to read some of your stuff.” So we sent them Southern Story and this other thing, Rolling Kansas. Southern Story was a drama, and they weren’t interested; they wanted to make a comedy. But they just flipped for Rolling Kansas. So they were like, “As soon as you wrap in Louisiana, we want you to fly back to L.A., because we want to have a meeting.” And in that meeting they said, “We want to make this movie. We want to be in prep by the middle of August.” That was on June 1, 2001.
Stuff generally doesn’t happen that fast, does it?
Oh, never. Never ever. In fact, I even said to them in the meeting, “You realize you guys aren’t doing this right. We’re supposed to develop this for a year.” They just laughed. And literally, about ten weeks after we had that meeting, I was in prep in Austin on Rolling Kansas.
I finished shooting that movie and pretty much cut it for a good portion of 2002, and then I went to Australia to do George of the Jungle 2. When I got back, Rolling Kansas got into Sundance, and then that spilled over into all the other festivals, in Maui and Croatia and Canada and all over the United States. I went everywhere with that movie. And then, you know, I went home for a few weeks and got sent Sideways.
So it’s not that you were lacking for work. You were busy.
I was busy. Somebody said to me, “Man, you’ve been off the radar screen for so long. This is a massive opportunity for you to have new life breathed into your career.” And I was like, “Look, they didn’t exactly pry the lid off my coffin with Sideways.”
Talk about your ranch. It’s around Ingram, right?
No, it’s equidistant from Kerrville and Uvalde.
But you grew up all over Texas. You lived in Harlingen
. . . Harlingen, Laredo, El Paso, and Fort Worth.
Why’d you move around so much growing up?
My dad had been in the military. He was kind of semiretired, but he worked for the government for the Department of Health, and, you know, we just moved around a lot. And then, on my own, I went to college in Denton, and then I worked and lived in Dallas. I actually had a house in Austin for several years, and I still own a house in Dallas that I bought four years ago.
But the ranch is really the place where you live.
This is where I live. I bought the ranch because I looked all over the Hill Country—as far north as Goldthwaite and as far west as Rocksprings and Menard and Mason and even out past Junction towards Sonora. Not too much farther south from where I am, because I wanted to be in the true Hill Country. My brother Andy was looking for me. We looked for five years, and then it just happened.
Wasn’t there a car trip down from Denton involved?
That was way back in the early eighties. He and I stopped at a rest stop that’s a mile from the gate of my ranch. We were having a rock-throwing contest, and I told him, “Man, I would love to be around this part of the Hill Country.” See, we went to church camp in Leakey all the way back in the early seventies, so I knew that part of Texas, and my dad leased ranches in San Saba County to hunt. So I knew the Hill Country very, very well. Then Andy called me in ’98, and he’s like, “Dude, I found the perfect ranch, and you’re never gonna believe where it is: a mile from that rest stop that you and I visited when we were in college.” I was in L.A., and I immediately got butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t want to let it get away. And it was the perfect size. It was a 3,100-acre ranch, but they wanted to break it up into 1,100- and 2,000-acre parcels. I wanted to buy around 2,000 acres.
It worked out perfectly.
As soon as I saw it and drove through it, I was like, “This is it, man.”
So much for wanting or needing to be in L.A.
You know, it’s one of those things where you don’t know what you’re missing, ’cause you’re not there. But on the other side of that, as cocky as it sounds, I’m an Academy award nominee, so how bad has it really been? I got a movie made that I co-wrote and got to direct, and the movie I directed went to Sundance. I got to go to Australia. Sideways was the massive event of 2003, and then last year it was all about promoting it. I did a few things in the spring. I did a little part in Jim Brooks’s movie [Spanglish]. I did a little part in Mike Judge’s movie [the forthcoming 3001]. This year started off great with Charlotte’s Web, and there’s another big movie looming.
My writing partner says that if I’d stayed in L.A. all these years, there’s a damn good chance I would have gotten sucked into another TV series or would have been doing another movie and wouldn’t have been available to do Sideways. And, buddy, let me tell you, that would have killed me.
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