INTERVIEW: Michael Ironside on connecting life with art

Photo: Michael Ironside stars in the new movie Skipping Stones. Photo courtesy of Dreamality Entertainment / Provided with permission.

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Michael Ironside is one of the most recognizable actors from the past few decades. He has had memorable roles in everything from Top Gun to Scanners to V: The Final Battle to Total Recall. Audiences probably cannot forget his turns in Starship Troopers, The Perfect Storm or TV’s The Alienist. He is one of the most well-known and respected character actors in the business, and one of his most recent movies is called Skipping Stones, now available to stream.

In the film, Ironside and Patricia Charbonneau (his colleague from seaQuest) portray the parents of a young man whose life is taken too early by a tragic accident. Skipping Stones, directed by S.J. Creazzo, explores the depth of grief experienced by family and friends following an unexpected death.

A few months ago, as Skipping Stones was searching for distribution, Ironside talked with Hollywood Soapbox about his impetus for joining the cinematic project and how he connects his real life with his acting process. Here’s what he had to say …

On how he became connected to Skipping Stones …

“The genesis of that story for me is Patricia Charbonneau who plays my wife in that. We go back to … seaQuest. We met on that years and years and years ago and became very good friends, my wife, her husband and Patricia and I. … She called up and said, ‘Look it, I’ve decided to do this project. A friend sent it to me. I’ve got a director that hasn’t worked in a couple years. He’s interested. We’ve raised some money. Would you mind having a look at it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll have a read.’ I read it, and I kind of fell in love with the idea of the empty nest syndrome and the shame and guilt.”

On how his character connects to the real world …

“The idea of memory and shame and that kind of generational lack of communication that goes from generation to generation, from sex to sex, it just spoke to me. We’re all going through it in the last possibly 10 years, socially, politically, all over the world. We have so many opportunities to communicate, and so little is being said. I wanted to put some effort into that couple and bring them to life, plus the added joy of working with Patricia. She’s a consummate professional. I really love working with her.”

On how his own life experiences influenced the role …

“I’m older now. I’m 71. I’ll be 72 in the spring. … There’s this wonderful thing that happened during the pandemic. A company in Canada got in touch with me, and by Zoom, they had started teaching on Zoom, classes and stuff. They started getting all these questions from children about literature and the movies and poetry. They started getting questions: ‘Well, if you could ask somebody a question, who would that be, and what would you ask them?’ And they were getting this online stuff from all over the world. They were getting questions from Kenya and England, and a bunch of kids wanted to ask me, of all people, based upon characters I played in Top Gun and Free Willy and a whole bunch of stuff.

“And they wanted to ask Michael Ironside a question, and they asked me very basic questions: Did you always want to be an actor? What was it like learning how to act? When you were born, were you in a theatrical family? It was very, very interesting. They were looking for some kind of guidance or some kind of explanation of how you do what you do, how you get where you’re going. …

“I’m from a very, very financially poor family from the east end of Toronto, working-class east end of Toronto. We didn’t even have a television until I was 11 or 12 years old. I read books. Dad and Mom allowed us to read just about anything. I remember my mom once saying to a reporter when I started to get a little bit of success, ‘Well, we couldn’t just send our children anywhere, but we sent them everywhere with books.’ So I was answering these questions, and I was talking to some kid on Zoom for about two or three minutes. He asked me, ‘Do you have any advice for me, if I wanted to be in the arts.’ I talked about reading. I talked about the idea that a book, or literature, could take you anywhere. Allow yourself the privacy of that, allow yourself to commit yourself to reading.

“Another kid asked me, ‘Where do you come from? Was it hard having no money as a kid?’ because they read something about that. … When it was all over, I finished with a three-hour session of this, I got off the phone. I was standing there. My wife said, ‘What’s going on? You all right?’ And I burst into tears. I started crying. She walked over, and she held me. I was absolutely sobbing. I had never really looked at where I came from to where I am now. Talking to these kids, I had been disarmed because I was so open about it. In that moment, with my wife, I realized I’m safe with her, physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually naked. I’m safe. She’s a safe place for me.

“That’s the kind of commitment that goes with a long-term relationship when it works. … She’s my wife. There’s a word that I don’t think is its true value. She’s my wife. I’m her husband. We’re not soulmates. We’re not best friends. She’s my wife. It has weight to it, that word. That’s what I was talking to Patricia about over the phone. We were trying to find a way of getting that into that relationship.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Skipping Stones, starring Michael Ironside, is now available to stream. Click here for more information.