Every movie franchise has its worker bees, the supporting players working somewhere along the bit-part spectrum. Three, maybe four lines of dialogue. Lines such as: “Such as?” or “Here, I got you these,” spoken to the more dynamic and prominent characters we’re supposed to be watching.
Statistically speaking, these bit-part mayflies of the movie world have next-to-zero odds of returning for a sequel. But next to zero is not zero. And a faintly absurd long shot just came in for the actor Rolf Saxon.
You may not know Rolf Saxon’s name, which is Rolf Saxon, but you may know about his latest film. “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” the super-expensive $400 million franchise finale (though who’s to say), now off to a strong $200 million global box office launch in its first weekend, a record for the eight-film series.
Twenty-nine years ago, Saxon, a veteran stage and screen actor who makes his home in northern California, was hired for a small role with four lines of expedient dialogue in the first “Mission: Impossible,” directed by Brian De Palma.
Remember the CIA break-in scene, with Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt lowered by wires into the impenetrable maximum security vault? Remember the CIA analyst, a tall fellow with glasses and the vaguely beaten-down air of an ill-fated company man, whose coffee is spiked with drops of something nasty but not fatal by Emmanuelle Béart? That’s Saxon. The character’s name is William Donloe. His lines:
1. “Can I get you anything?”
2. “William Donloe” (for voice-activated security entry)
3. “William Donloe” (again, for security entry, after throwing up)
4. “Oh, my god.”
And that’s all he says, though Donloe comes and goes a fair bit, wordless, puzzled and sometimes puking, in that still-dazzling suspense sequence. Last we hear of Donloe, Impossible Mission Force director Kittridge, played by Henry Czerny, orders him banished and “manning a radar tower in Alaska by the end of the day. Just mail him his clothes.”
Seven “Mission: Impossible” films later, a crazy thing happened. Donloe came back, and Saxon with him, in a greatly expanded supporting role. In “Final Reckoning,” he brings a steady, reassuring presence to a character now given the larger dimension of a beautiful marriage (Inuit actor Lucy Tulugarjuk plays his wife), some hardy sled dogs and a useful role in saving the world at the film’s first climax. (It has two, maybe three.)
Saxon, who turns 70 in July, has worked extensively on stage in England and the U.S. and on TV and larger screens for decades. In “Final Reckoning,” what sounds like a one-joke nostalgia callback to a character of little narrative importance becomes something more, and not a joke. “A total fluke,” he says of Donloe getting a second chance in the franchise. “It just kept getting better and better and better.”
Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: When the first “Mission: Impossible” came around, where were you in your career?
A: I was doing the David Mamet play “Oleanna,” touring around Wales. I got a call from my agent, saying they wanted me to audition for a Tom Cruise movie. I said great, I took a three-hour train ride to Pinewood Studios near London and I met with Brian De Palma for three and a half, four minutes. I thought, well, that was a waste. I thanked the casting director for calling me in, but told her I didn’t think it went very well. And she said, “No, no. No! Oh, no. He loved you! You were in there the longest of anybody.”
Q: So you got the part. How long was the gig?
A: They offered me the gig, but I had another film job to finagle a little, to make them both work. It meant working three or four weeks, seven days a week, which was fine. Great, actually. Three weeks on “Mission,” then another week or so finishing up while I did this other film. I was younger then.
Q: At that point in your career were you thinking, well, good gig, small part, big movie? Or did you have anything like a hope of it turning into something more?
A: No! I mean, I got to do a Tom Cruise movie directed by Brian De Palma, and to be honest, if it hadn’t been for those two, I probably wouldn’t have gone in for the audition, because it meant six hours on the train back and forth from Wales and I had a show that night. Donloe was a tiny part, walk-on stuff. That’s how it started, although it did develop a little bit more as shooting went on.
Q: How so?
A: I was very at ease on set, having a good time, and I was sort of messing around one day, you know, cutting up, making people laugh. I don’t even remember how. But then I got a tap on the shoulder from the first assistant, who said: “Mr. De Palma wants to speak to you.”
Q: And he fired you.
A: (laughs) You’re joking, but believe me, that’s what I thought was happening. The look on the first assistant’s face — we’re still in touch today, a great guy — seemed to indicate exactly that. All he said to me, as we walked over to De Palma, was: “Watch me. Watch me when you’re talking to him.” So he stands behind De Palma and De Palma says to me, “I saw you messing around up there.” And I say, “Yes, sir.” And he says, not smiling at all, “Yeah. Everybody seemed to be enjoying that.”
And I started to say something, and right then Chris, the first assistant, who’s standing behind De Palma, just does this (holds his finger up to his lips in a “shush!” gesture). So I didn’t speak. De Palma says, “Uh, well, could you do that again, whatever it was you were doing?” And I said sure, and he said, “Because I have an idea for something. After lunch we’ll film for an hour or two.” So that afternoon, and then the next morning, we improvised all the throwing-up bits, and Donloe running to and from the bathroom. And that came from just messing around on set. Most of it ended up on the (cutting-room) floor, but it was fun.
Q: You barely talk in that entire scene, which for a lot of people was the best thing in the first movie. It makes Donloe seem like an accidentally crucial figure.
A: That’s De Palma. I’m forever in his debt for that scene. A masterful filmmaker.
Q: And you had no reason to hope, any time over the last 25 years, that Donloe might find some excuse to return to the “M:I” universe?
A: Only in my own mind (laughs). I did draft a letter years ago: “Dear Tom: What about if we did this?” Some ridiculous excuse to bring back Donloe, you know. Then I thought, who am I kidding? I crumpled it up and threw it away. And then years later this happens.
Q: You’ve told the story of how you got word from your agent that Christopher McQuarrie (director and co-screenwriter of several “M:I” films, including “Final Reckoning”) was setting up a Zoom meeting to talk to you about the movie, and you were convinced it was a friend of yours, punking you.
A: Right, and then I’m on the Zoom call, and there’s Christopher McQuarrie. He offered me the job within two minutes, and we spent the next hour talking about where (the script in development) could go, and what could happen. I didn’t see a final script until about three days before leaving to do the project, two and a half years later. I was hired in July 2022, and I finished in May 2024. The pandemic, which we were still recovering from, plus two strikes (the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild strikes), all meant massive, expensive hiatuses. I was probably on set four, maybe five months total, mainly in London, and in Norway (doubling for St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea).
Q: I gotta say, watching you bring Donloe back in such a satisfying way is like a victory for all the actors out there.
A: Very gracious, thanks. I mean, I can’t remember a part of that size coming back 30 years later. I’ve never heard of such a thing. And originally I was supposed to be in only one section of the new film, the Alaska segment, when there was a very different storyline.
The idea that this is happening to me at my age, at this point in my career, well. It’s cool.
Q: This is your biggest part in a big-budget studio film?
A: By far. I’ve done some smaller roles in other big movies. I was in that film with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones, what was that called …
Q: The one with the laser-wire acrobatics, right …
A: Oh, golly, this is what age’ll do to you. (Interview devolves momentarily into two men in their 60s trying to remember a movie title).
Q: “Entrapment!” Just looked it up.
A: That’s it! (laughs)
Q: Also, you’re in the opening of “Saving Private Ryan.”
A: (pause) That one hurt. I had a wonderful part in that film at first. Tom Hanks played the good guy and Lt. Briggs, who I played, was the adversary, this (jerk) in the platoon nobody liked. And then the first 20 minutes of the film were rewritten, and a lot of us lost material as a result. I lost the most. Couldn’t go to the premiere. I couldn’t face it.
Q: Maybe “Final Reckoning” is karma coming around for you.
A: Maybe. Maybe. I’ve been very lucky.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
