Bruce Payne
Payne is an English actor who found his lane early and never felt any need to leave it. He plays the villain who is better dressed and better spoken than everyone he is about to hurt, and he plays him with an ease that most genre films cannot afford.
He started in British pictures of the mid-1980s in small parts: a border guard in The Keep, Peter Howles in Oxford Blues, a character called Flikker in Absolute Beginners, Colin in For Queen & Country. Passenger 57, in 1992, is the film that fixed him. As the hijacker Charles Rane he is calm, courteous and plainly enjoying himself, exactly where the genre expects rage, and the performance has outlasted the film around it.
Two decades ran on that discovery. Jacob Kell in Highlander: Endgame, the title role in Warlock III, the Devil in Switch, Adam Garou in Full Eclipse, and Damodar in both Dungeons & Dragons and its sequel Wrath of the Dragon God. Alongside the acting he works as a producer, screenwriter and director for film and theatre.
The later career has largely been low-budget genre work, Prowl and Re-Kill and The Rizen and Age of Kill, with occasional bit parts in bigger productions, such as Getaway, where the credit reads Distinguished Man. His pleasure as a performer has stayed the same throughout: menace that comes entirely from how relaxed he is.
Movies (28)
- Passenger 57 (1992)
- Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005)
- Dungeons & Dragons (2000)
- Necronomicon (1993)
- The Keep (1983)
- Highlander: Endgame (2000)
- Switch (1991)
- Getaway (2013)
- Re-Kill (2015)
- Vendetta (2013)
- Oxford Blues (1984)
- Solarbabies (1986)
- Britannic (2000)
- Warlock III: The End of Innocence (1999)
- Carmen's Kiss (2010)
- Steal (2002)
- Absolute Beginners (1986)
- Pyrates (1991)
- Prowl (2010)
- Howling VI: The Freaks (1991)
- The Rizen (2017)
- Full Eclipse (1993)
- Sweepers (1998)
- One Point O (2004)
- Ripper: Letter from Hell (2001)
- One Tough Bastard (1996)
- For Queen & Country (1988)
- Age Of Kill (2015)
TV (2)
Where to start with Bruce Payne
Passenger 57 first, and not only because it is the famous one. Charles Rane is the clearest statement of the method: a hijacker who never raises his voice, treats everyone aboard with immaculate courtesy, and looks delighted to be there. Nothing since has improved on it.
After that, Dungeons & Dragons is worth watching for sheer commitment, since he gives a full theatrical villain performance to a film that does not deserve it, then came back to do it again in Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God, which is the better of the two. Highlander: Endgame gives him Jacob Kell and a great deal of scenery.
For the odd corners: he plays the Devil in Switch, turns up in the Lovecraft anthology Necronomicon, and appears as Michael Rafiel in the 1987 Miss Marple: Nemesis, one of the few times anyone asked him to be sympathetic.