Looks Like An Accountant
by Neil Norman
Face Magazine

When Greystoke was released I wrote that, off-screen, Christopher Lambert had all the charisma of a chartered accountant. He remembers it well. "I was so upset at the time. People can write anything about anybody and that's their privilege. Bud we didn't even meet!" It was not for want of trying. Lambert had been virtually held prisoner in a hotel room by the increasingly paranoid director Hugh Hudson who refused to let the press anywhere near his new Tarzan. That was then, this is now. Sitting opposite me at the dinner table in Blakes, Lambert still doesn't give the appearance of the machismatic hero of Greystoke-- nor does he remotely resemble the ethereal boy punk of his latest film Subway.The peroxided chic which he substituted for the long hair and loincloth has once more given way to the unshaven, unkempt, bespectacled hard times look that prompted my initial comment.Still appearances can deceive and the man is undoubtedly photogenic. The camera loves him. In Subway Lambert stars with Isabelle Adjani as a safecracker-about-town. He takes refuge with a gang of urban lowlife who inhabit the labyrinth behind the Metro doors. A perfect reflection of Eighties lifestyle, it is chic, vacuous and obsessed with style. As a metropolitan fairytale, it has cosmetic similarities to Diva and is just as entertaining if less cynical. Lambert plays Fred, a new-wave naif with a primitive innocence that recalls his performance as the Lord of the Apes. "He is good and evil, child and adult. For me he is a mixture of the little prince and mad Max, he's an optimistic nutcase." Definitely the body eclectic. Born in New York of French parents, Lambert was brought up in Geneva - and did military service in France before being hustled off by his father on a Barclays Bank business course. Four months later he fled to Paris and the Florent school of acting. A couple of low-budget French thrillers and a TV film kept him alive before Hugh Hudson summoned him to play Tarzan. The rest is some kind of history. Since Subway, Lambert has been working on Russell Mulcahy's Highlander with Sean Connery, a medieval SF thriller set in present day New York in which Lambert plays an Immortal. While at first glance this character doesn't seem to have much in common with either Greystoke or Fred, Lambert sees a connection. "All three characters have freedom of choice. They choose a path and they go to the end. They don't stop in the middle, they don't analyse." Like Lambert, himself? "Nobody wants to choose. You'd have to take yourself too seriously." Subway opens in Britain in September. Neil Norman