‘The Thing’ ain’t heavy, but to Chiklis he totally was a bother
The Boston Red Sox have been known to drive their fans crazy. For longtime, wicked-diehard Michael Chiklis, they helped keep him sane.
While shooting the movie “Fantastic Four” in Vancouver, British Columbia, Chiklis spent long, arduous hours being transformed into the comic-book superhero The Thing.
“Sixty pounds of latex, it was hellish,” said Chiklis, best known for playing tough-guy detective Vic Mackey on the FX television series “The Shield.” “So I spent most of my time in the makeup chair watching the Boston Red Sox, which was phenomenal. This was during the playoffs and the series. I saw all of it,” said Chiklis, who turns 42 on Aug. 30 – the same birthday as Ted Williams. “I needed something, anything, to get me out of my head when I was in that.”
Chiklis had famously changed his body four years ago to win the part of Mackey, a cop with a fluid sense of right and wrong, which earned him a surprise lead-actor Emmy in 2002 and a Golden Globe the following year. He’d shaved his head and worked out two hours a day, six days a week, to shed the roly-poly shape he had from playing John Belushi in the 1989 film “Wired” – his first big break, which bombed – and starring in the ‘90s TV series “The Commish.”
But after preparing to play Ben Grimm, an astronaut who mutates into the hulking, orange Thing after being exposed to radiation, he realized, “I blew it – I did the wrong thing.”
“I thought, well, I’m gonna be in this suit all day, I’m going to need endurance, so I started running 10Ks,” he said. “What I should have done was put a 60-pound pack on my back and walked around with it for 12 hours.”
Director Tim Story (“Barbershop,” “Taxi”) tried to be attentive to how Chiklis was feeling. He shifted around the schedule with co-stars Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba and Chris Evans and used doubles whenever possible to get Chiklis out of the costume quickly.
Story, who’d watched “The Shield,” said Chiklis was his first choice for the role.
“He has this hard exterior but at the same time you know he’s a teddy bear,” Story said, “and that’s kind of how Ben Grimm is.”
Born in Lowell, Mass., and raised in nearby Andover from age 5, Chiklis said he knew he wanted to be an actor “since before I had memory.”
Having studied acting at Boston University, Chiklis still has ties to New England. His father now runs a salon in Pelham, N.H.; his mother, who’s divorced from his dad, is the right hand to the CEO of the Boston-based Partners insurance group.
But home is Los Angeles, the setting for the graphic police drama “The Shield,” though series creator Shawn Ryan admits he originally envisioned an unknown, young Harrison Ford type for Chiklis’ role.
“I remember the moment Michael walked out of the first audition – (director) Clark Johnson turned to me and said, ‘That was fantastic. He’s like a pit bull with a badge.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that was really interesting.’ It was something completely different than I had intended but it just immediately felt right.”
The Birthday Bunch
Actress Katherine Helmond (“Soap”) is 71. Actress Shirley Knight is 69. Musician Robbie Robertson is 62. Singer Huey Lewis is 55. Actress Edie Falco (“The Sopranos”) is 42. Rapper RZA is 36. Singer Jason Wade of Lifehouse is 25.