Ian McShane on Playing ‘An Angel of Death’ in Gonzalo López-Gallego’s ‘American Star,’ Waiting for a ‘John Wick 5’ Call
variety.comTodd Gilchrist editor Ian McShane is 81, but you’d never know it watching him in “American Star.” Also a producer of director Gonzalo López-Gallego’s new film, the English actor plays Wilson, a seasoned assassin who visits the Canary Islands’ Fuerteventura for a job, but instead unexpectedly becomes involved in the life of a French expatriate (Nora Arnezeder) and the lonely child of a vacationing couple (Oscar Coleman).
From the first scene, McShane dances across the screen with the same effortlessness of a performer a quarter of his age as his character reckons with an escalating series of disruptions to a sequence of events whose outcome is inevitable: someone dying of a bullet from his gun.
Though he’s been working in film, TV and theater for more than six decades, McShane has become well known in America largely in the last two, playing mentors and authority figures on series like “Deadwood” and “American Gods,” and film series like “John Wick” and its forthcoming spinoff, “Ballerina,” who seldom move quickly — because they don’t need to move for anyone.
Reuniting with López-Gallego after starring in his 2012 film “The Hollow Point,” he’s candid about why he felt Wilson needed to have a different physique and a different gait than he’s brought to past roles. “Nobody wants to see a fat hitman,” McShane tells Variety.
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