Christopher Lambert: THERE IS ONLY ONE
By: Tanya Ann Fletcher

THOUGHT the singular actor is busy enough for two, he finds the time to chat about his work in Highlander, The Hunted and Mortal Kombat.

THERE ARE TWO SIDES to Christopher Lambert, the renowned international actor who debuted in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan and within a year garnered the Caesar Award ( the equivalent, in France, of an Oscar) for his performance in Luc Besson's surreal Subway. What is most apparent to his legions of fans is his sensitive action hero side--the egalitarian gentleman capable of easy camaraderie with his friends and tenderness with his intimates, yet just as capable of decapitating his enemies with one swift swash of his sword. His other side is the calm, reserved professional, continually striving to diversify his already eclectic screen career.

"I love to act because it allows me to be different people and to do things I wouldn't be able to do in real life," says Lambert. "So obviously I lean toward the fantasy epics, since of course that gets me away from the reality of everday life. But that doesn't mean one day I won't do a love story."

With the start of 1995, Lambert may finally enjoy the level of stardom that has eluded him over the years, in spite of his consistent film output. With three films releasing within the first six months of this year, audiences will not easily forget the thirty-six-year-old actor's chiseled mug (and bod), if the publicity machine does it's job.

Even though it is the third Highlander film, Highlander: The Final Dimension is the "official" sequel to the original fantasy epic released in 1986, which dealt with a race of immortals who roam the centuries engaged in battle and mass decapitations. This third film resumes the story where the first one left off, simply ignoring the existence of the second, Highlander 2: The Quickening. The newest Highlander pits Lambert's character, Connor MacCleod (sic), against Mario Van Peebles as a shapeshifting magician who is determined to become "the one" by separating MacCleod (sic) and his immortal head.

Last year, the same two actors appeared in the action thriller Gunmen, as antagonists who ultimately joined forces. In the third Highlander, however, they're out for each other's heads to the bitter end.

"Mario's pretty scary in the film, and he shows his dark sense of humor," notes Lambert, who says their chemistry in Gunmen was a minor factor in the casting for Highlander. "People thought we worked well together, but it wasn't planned that way. It came out of the blue when Miramax asked what I thought about Mario playing the bad guy, and I went for it."

After the miserable critical and box-office reception given to Highlander 2, one wonders why Lambert would return to the role at all. Lambert is, in fact, fully aware of the large cult following that Highlander has gained in the years since its first release, and the disappointment of fans in The Quickening. And the star is just as displeased with the picture as the fans.

"I basically did this picture because of The Quickening," says Lambert. "With that one I wanted to do a real sequel and couldn't. That's why we made the third one, to go back to the qualities that made the first film work."

"MacCleod had been a fun character in the first film, and I wanted to finish the trilogy with a real Highlander movie. If we had called Highlaner 2 by a different name, people would have said 'cool movie.' The problem is, that picture had nothing to do with Highlander."

"It was a producer decision. They said, 'we want to do a sequel that has nothing to do with the original,' and I said, the purpose of doing a sequel is that people would like to see what they loved in the first one in a different way."

"The problem was, they wanted to explain who these guys are and why they are immortals--and nobody cared. They didn't ask in the first one why they were immortal. They were immortals--period. That was the first mistake. The second mistake was to set the movie in the future. The third one was to say we came from another planet. And then it was a mistake to bring Sean Connery back. We had already established the rule that when an immortal gets his head chopped off, he's dead, and then we brought him back."

"I would like to have had Sean Connery back in this one instead, with a transition in the past-before Scotland, maybe. But we didn't bring him back because he had died twice already."

"By the end of the day, we didn't have a story-but I had to do the movie because I was signed to it. It's pretty difficult to do a movie when you don't know where you're going iwth it, so when they approached me for the thrid, I said, 'Listen, if we go back to the original, I'll read it and I might do it.' "

Filmed from a script written by Gregory Widen while he was still a film student at UCLA, the original Highlander met with overwhelming foreign success and a lukewarm response in the States; but it's U.S. cult following has only grown over the years.

"It was just badly promoted, "Lambert explains. "But it is very difficult to pick a movie and say that it's going to be a hit. Each time I hear friends of mind saying a certain movie is going to be huge, it usually comes out and it's a flop."

"So I do movies I care about. You try to do your best and if it's a hit, great. If it's a flop, it's a flop. You cannot calculate it. It just works out that way. So I did Highlander and it eventually became a cult movie all of a sudden, and no one expected that."

Fans have made much of the cut footage from Highlander, a total of eight minutes trimmed from the printe originally submitted to the MPAA ratings board which was found to be "too violent" for the desired rating. Lambert opines that little was lost in the cutting--mostly head-butts and impaling--but laments the loss of one two minute scene that pits Connor against a gang of Nazis. "It was important because it explained the character Rachel, my assistant in the antique store, " he says. "It had a purpose--it was also a touching scene." The flashback showed that "Rachel was really a little girl I found during World War II that I adopted as my daughter, who in 1986 could have been my mother. So again, it was an interesting idea, because it's exactly what this guy's life was about. Here we had this little girl whose parents were killed and he was taking this little girl with him, who grew up, and one day she was forty-five, fifty-and so their relationship had been constantly changing."

As we spoke, The Final Dimension had not yet opened, but Lambert already counted it an aritistic success, a success he credits largely to the talented team behind it, including screenwriter Brad Mirman, Paul Ohl, William Panzer, and especially director Andy Monahan, a British rock video veteran.

"We wanted to have the Russell Mulcahy of the '90's, so we were looking for someone who was as visual as Russell and we found Andy," says Lambert. "He did a fantastic job and we also had a strong story this time. We stayed away from pure science fiction by having the movie set in the future. We went back with a transition between the past and present and going back to the love story to show the romantic side of the character."

After the sprawling vistas of the Highlander series, Lambert seges into big-city intrigue with his starring role in The Hunted. Owing a seed of inspiration to Richard Connell's classic and oft-filmed story "The Most Dangerous Game," Lambert plays businessman Paul Racine, who is on a trip to Japan when he witnesses the murder of a mysterious woman (Joan Chen).

He makes the deadly mistake of interfering and barely escapes with his life. Injured and far from home, he now has a lethal assassin (John Lone) in pursuit.

"My character is in a country where he doesn't speak teh language, he doesn't have any friends, and he's not a killer-he's a business guy. The concept is how far can you push a human being before he reacts and fights back. What's great is, he's a complete fish out of water in modern Japan being chased by these assassins. What's interesting is, every one of us has this survival instinct but we don't know at what point it's going to come out because we're so civilized. Are we going to be able to survive in the wilderness being chased and what are we going to do to protect ourselves?"

The fact that Lambert seems a logical choice for such a role clarifies the difference between Lambert and the other contenders in the action-hero sweepstakes. There's no way you can picture Stallone or Schwarzenegger comfortable in the guise of an average business man thrust into an action situation.Lambert can successfully display a vulnerable, human side before he goes into action.

"You can say 'action hero' but it's nice if you don't see it immediately, "says Lambert. "If you don't see immediately that this guy is the hero, the question is , how is he going to get out of this situation because he doesn't seem very strong."

Lambert's third feature to unreel before we reach the midpoint of 1995 could become his most successful film to date, Mortal Kombat. In this live-action adaptation of the video game, Lambert plays Lord Raydon (sic), the God of Speed and Lightning, who must defend the earth in a tournament to the death.

Lambert expects that MK will offer something more than the recent spate of gamesgone-big-screen. "The problem with something like Super Mario Bos or Street Fighter is that you don't have a story," says Lambert. "The only thing they do is kick people's ass at evrey corner of every street, and after ten or fifteen minutes , it becomes very tiring. I'd rather play the game-or go watch a kick boxing event. Mortal Kombat works as a story.

In addition to his front -of-the-camera activites, Lambert has joined the ranks of successful film producers, with executive producer credits on the modestly-budgeted French comedy Nine Months and it's American remake. The Chris Columbus-directed comedy, starring Hugh Grant, will be released by 20th Century Fox this summer.

"Nine Months is about a man who has to cope when his wife decides to have a baby, and he's very scared and unsure about it as we follow the nine months of pregnancy through his perspective. It's pure comedy."

Though born in Great Neck, New York, Lambert enjoyed multiple citizenship thanks to his father's career in the French diplomatic corps. After finishing high school, he went through a series of odd jobs before pursuing his dream full time. After two years of study at the Paris Conservatory, he landed his big break in Greystoke--and Warner Bros. has been talking about doing a sequel ever since. At this point, Lambert doubts he would be involved, indicating that Warner's ideas for Greystoke II, although true to the roots of Tarzan's pulp origins, betray Hudson's elegant version in the same manner as The Quickening betrayed Highlander.

Lambert has not ruled out the possibility of appearing in Fortress 2, the sequel to his 1993 SF/prison epic, directed by Stuart Gordon. The picture was ready to shoot earlier this year-until both Lambert and Gordon refected the script, which set the action on an orbiting penal colony.

"To be frank, nobody is attached except the writer, 20th Century Fox, and the producers," says Lambert. "They don't have a director and they really haven't got a script yet. The current script concept for Fortress 2, though is interesting."

By the time you read this piece, Lambert will once again be up to his ears in action, as he goes before the cameras on location in Norway. In Alaska, Lambert will play an Indian homesteader pitten against ten killers who are after his land. Asked if he longs for a rest, Lambert indicates that he wants to keep teh momentum going-and he continues to search for quality scripts and fresh directors to bring their own unique slant to his film personna.

"I've had a few directors who try to copy somebody else, " he says, "but most of them -Stuart Gordon, Andy Morahan and Paul Anderson, certainly-they're good because it's coming from them. Not from anyone else's idea of success."

"To me, that's talent."