Cliff Curtis on Playing a Man with Bi-Polar Disorder

I first met Cliff Curtis earlier this year while interviewing Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi about their vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows in a little IKEA-like green room at the Q Theatre in Auckland. They were doing a Script to Screen talk, and Cliff was there to host them. The then 45-year-old sat in the corner observing the interview, stony-faced but inexplicably mesmerising. We briefly talked afterwards – only enough time for him to sharply observe a small collection of hieroglyphic-like symbols drawn on my palm – visual tracts of topics I wanted to cover during the interview – and for him to take a formal line of inquiry into the specific meaning of each little symbol. The intensity of his curiosity stunned me. After that I knew I needed to meet him again, properly.

One month later I was sitting in a sunny little private room in Arthur's on Cuba Street in Wellington making idle chit chat with the PR lady Samantha while Cliff was laughing and finishing up a phone interview with the Gisborne Herald. His latest work The Dark Horse, a film about Genesis Potini, the bi-polar ex-chess champion who helped rebuild his community through chess, was a week out from its release date. I had arrived half an hour early, wanting to climatise myself before meeting Cliff again. Instead, I opened the door and was surprised to find him inside the café's private upstairs room already, talented The Dark Horse co-actor James Rolleston and PR person in tow. I sat sheepishly and made small talk with James while passively witnessing him exude over the phone that same full-blown intensity of character I had encountered a few weeks back.

The Hollywood actor who's worked with names like Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino and George Clooney, as well as starring in and producing local hits like Whale Rider and Boy, was wearing a suave black coat and green tweed scarf tied in an Ascot knot, as well as a pair of red crocs (which shyly hid underneath the table for the duration of our interview).

Rotorua-born Curtis, known in Hollywood for playing every non-white ethnicity imaginable - due to his talent for picking up accents, speaking languages phonetically, and the authenticity he brings to each role – started his life going down quite a different track. At the age of three Cliff lost his mother and sister to a road accident, and became a ward of the state at the age of twelve. His father had left overseas so that his extended family members could claim extra financial support. A youth-at-risk course in traditional Maori culture learning taiaha, was the "first juncture that changed the course of my life" Cliff told Mana magazine early this year. As a teenager he went on to take up rock n' roll dancing, becoming a two-time national champion.

He was in his twenties and working as a builder when he decided to try acting, attending the New Zealand Drama School (now Toi Whakaari). Cliff didn't really fit in "I was a builder, a bloke. I didn't know what to wear to drama school. I turned up in my work boots because I was going to work". After a stint there, he studied in Switzerland's Scuola Teatro Dimitri. His break came in 1993 with a minor role as Mana in Jane Campion's The Piano. The following year he starred in Once Were Warriors as Uncle Bully - the role which established him as a regularly paid actor.

Years later, and many more roles under his belt, Cliff was approached by director James Napier Robertson and producer Tom Hern to play the role of Genesis Potini, based on the real life bi-polar ex-chess champion from Gisborne who uses chess to bring together a community.

Cliff was heavily reluctant to take the part – initially refusing to wear the dentures and gain the weight needed to become Genesis. It was only after watching Jim Marbrook's 2005 documentary about Gen that Cliff became convinced that he should play him. "Gen was really unique in terms of bringing a community together. He created a vision for the community - he said, 'okay cool, here's the story, here's a kid who's surrounded by gang life or whatever it is, and here's a lawyer or a judge who's had every advantage in life. These people will only meet in a certain context: chess. They'll never get to know each other outside of that context… That's the fascinating thing about how he used chess – it's how he brought people together… Chess has got nothing to do with anything except two people sitting across from each and exchanging this common energy." he told me.

Finally convinced, he submitted himself to the necessary weight gain, the dentures, and even let himself become Gen for the duration of the shoot. Curtis is known for character acting, but for The Dark Knight Cliff used method acting to play Gen instead – a style of acting created by Constantin Stanislavski by Lee Strasberg where the actor creates within themselves the thoughts and feelings of the character. Dangerous grounds when playing a man with a mental health problem. But even more unfathomable is how a sane person can get into that mindset. "I used the game of chess as a way into that. By playing thousands and thousands and thousands of speed chess games. Like playing really really bad chess, really. Um, but feeling like you're brilliant." A flash of Gen passes over his face.

Bi-polar disorder is a mental health problem characterised by recurrent and extreme highs (the mania) and lows (the depression), which is measured and diagnosed using by the episodes' levels of intensity, duration and frequency.  Cliff understood these arches from his own mental health problems that he suffered from when he was younger. "I learnt that when I used to suffer from depression, quite a lot when I was in my teens, and then in my early to mid twenties. So I was like okay cool, how often does it happen that my emotions get the better of me?"

It was something he wasn't fully prepared to let happen again while being in Gen's headspace. "When you're fully manic you think you've figured out the secrets to the universe and it's all gobbledygook… there's a line where you cross over… if you fall into total mania – we get close in the film – you just don't know where it's going to end. You know, I talked to people about it and you end up naked hanging off parliament building, you know, just talking to something that's not there and believing that you're God. So it can be really, really dangerous. So in order to function and manage the process I stayed in the zone of what we call hypomania… And I just kind of just stayed really hyped up you know, super charged. Some days I would just be running around screaming, carrying on like a crazy guy. Woooo!!!" Another Gen-like outburst.

I asked him what it was like 'being' bi-polar. "The whole thing of people that have mental health issues is that normal life is so boring that they don't want to come off the meds. Because it's depressing. They struggle with how great it feels to be in this full-flown state of mania. They get addicted to that. And so the struggle of normalcy is really hard work, it's hard work, to not get up on this table right now and starting dancing to this music. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to start throwing plates and pretending that I'm a rock star. And throwing stuff out the window. I'm going to sit here and not throw that table out there and believe that I am Jimi Hendrix. So the work is to keep it locked down. You know, to control that."

He begins to get excited, talking rapidly. "To not think that she's thinking really negative thoughts about me." He points to the PR lady sitting nearby, "so get out of the room before she does something bad to me because she's wearing black. And you've got a knife and fork" Again, he points, this time at my innocent set of cutlery currently helping me devour Arthur's delicious warm roasted vegetable salad, "…and it's like oh my god, you've got a knife and fork. And all the time you're trying to conduct an interview while thinking that you're going to do something with that fork. And I've got to protect myself. Or you're going to do something to her, and I've got to stop you from doing something to her. Dealing with that, you know the stress levels, my brain was freaking out. When you start getting into the mindset of someone in such a state, and you start thinking why – what are you doing with that fork?" my allegedly dangerous fork lifted mid-air through another helping of salad,  "…It's like oh my god, your brain starts freaking out." He falls back into his chair.

After immersing himself so fully into the character of Gen, it would be hard get rid of the remnants of the character, I ventured. "It took me a while to shake him. And even now, when I start talking about Gen I start getting quite twitchy. And then I just have to shake it off again." Wow. "Yeah, it gets a bit intense."

In order to keep himself safe, Cliff contained himself at a certain level, at "the intensity levels of someone who's on meds and someone who's constantly trying to stop himself from falling into a full mania" during the whole period of shooting which spanned a few months. He never left character though, even wearing the dentures and acting like Gen during the weekends at home with his family.

He also used the game to help draw the boundaries. "Chess was really awesome because it gave me an outlet where I could be really really manic. But it was contained within the confines of the game. So I could get really excited, really crazy, really worked up but I was safe. Because as long as I focused my mania here no one was going to get hurt. It could actually be productive. So I could stay in that state for days and days because I could just channel my energy here." He looked at the chessboard placed between us, "and when the cameras roll, and sometimes in other places too but I don't want to talk about that."

So we stop talking about it.  I changed the topic, swerving the conversation towards the Eastern Knights Chess Club, the club which Genesis helped properly establish. Visiting the Eastern Knights was an experience for both James Rolleston and Cliff Curtis who got "thrashed by little kids. You'd go play a kid and challenge them, and you're all confident and then boom they won." James tells me.

The real Jedi and Noble, who worked with Gen at the club and are still teaching today, taught both Cliff and James how to play chess using "aroha, you know they really loved the game of chess, they really loved sharing…they were really really kind. That's their teaching methodology at the heart of it. And then they're just really methodical ay… they'd start with the basics you know… and then weaving and weaving until the point where you're telling stories with your pieces." Cliff smiles. "A big part of their ethos is that playing chess is more fun if you win, so they teach you to win. I think most parents are like 'ah no no as long as you do something you enjoy' but they're like no, you're going to enjoy it more when you win."

And so with that he ushers in a game of chess that lasts less than 15 minutes where due to childhood background in playing chess, I beat Cliff Curtis.  Cliff did not enjoy the game.

The Dark Horse will be screening in New Zealand cinemas on July 31, 2014.