Gimli, Sallah actor ready for comic con

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This article was published 26/10/2017 (2988 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Any one of actor John Rhys-Davies’s many credits would justify his presence this weekend at the Central Canada Comic Convention (a.k.a. C4) at the RBC Convention Centre.

Most noteworthy is his work as the combative dwarf Gimli in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Or the role of Sallah, Indiana Jones’s Arab confederate in both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Here in Canada, he has fans of his sci-fi series Sliders (1995-2000) in the role of Professor Maximillian Arturo.

But the genial 73-year-old actor, who stopped by the Free Press Thursday morning, says he is often recognized for work beyond the genre favourites at a comics convention.

“If you were a 25-year-old woman, you might say: ‘I loved you in The Princess Diaries 2.’

“There are a number of people who say, ‘Loved you in Victor/Victoria.”

It gives the actor pause.

“I’m a lucky son of a bitch,” he says, shaking his head.

“Every few years, I manage to pick up something that’s better than just entertainment. And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with pure entertainment,” he says.

“But when you’ve done I Claudius and The Naked Civil Servant and Shogun, Raiders and Lord of the Rings, you’ve had more luck than most actors ever get.”

Rhys-Davies would be the last person in the world to look down his nose at the fan meet-and-greets that are a part of the comic con experience.

“When I first started doing these, I was very leery of doing it,” he says.

“I thought: ‘Oh, God, I’m just going to meet wackos.’”

“And there were a few wackos.

“There is always going to be a wacko or two that you’re going to meet,” he says.

“But what I found was: there are a number of people in any sort of communities who are bright, imaginative, they like science fiction, and they considered themselves oddballs because they like the idea of dressing up as Star Trek (characters) or things like that.

“And they went to these things and they realized that they were part of a community of people who all felt the same thing,” he says. “It’s important culturally.

“There is a strange new cultural thing that’s happened, and it’s just wonderful to watch before your eyes.”

Rhys-Davies says he gets more out of the experience than the fans get from meeting him.

“They have changed me, because I have got semi-skilled at being able to ask them to talk about themselves.

“And when you do that and you start to listen, you just realize how rich and brave and remarkable ordinary people are,” he says. “They are changing me.”

“When I was a young man, I didn’t really much like humanity,” he says.

“But the older I get, the more I just like people.”

The Central Canada Comic Con is on at the RBC Convention Centre all weekend.

Tickets are $24 on Friday and Sunday and $35 on Saturday.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing