Bruce Spence's height and distinctive voice have made him a regular choice for eccentric supporting parts. We value the comic relief he brings to Mad Max 2, but the repeated small roles leave us wishing he had been given more to do.
Fi1m perspective
Bruce Spence often enters a film already marked out as the eccentric: his height and distinctive voice have seen to that. In Mad Max 2 (1981), his Gyro Captain supplies comic relief while George Miller concentrates on precisely staged vehicle combat. We laughed at the Gyro Captain, and were grateful for a break from the brutality. The film pays less attention to its people than to its action, but Spence helps make that imbalance easier to forgive.
His earlier career offered more room than that familiar supporting position suggests. Stork (1971) gave him the lead as Graham 'Stork' Wallace; Werner Herzog's Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) cast him as Lance Hackett, another leading role. Then Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) returned him to the series as Jedediah the Pilot, a different character from the Gyro Captain. The leading roles are worth remembering whenever a later film seems content simply to cast him as someone unusual.
Dark City (1998) puts him in Alex Proyas's invented city as Mr. Wall, and again the surroundings receive more care than the people. We recommend the film for its unease and its sustained mystery, with a reservation about characters the writing never quite fills out. It is a worthwhile film, but not the first one we would choose to make the case for him.
His later work continued in Australian film and theatre alongside supporting roles in international franchises from the 2000s onwards. We would not dismiss those jobs as wasted effort: a harsh film can need a comic supporting player, as Miller's does. What we would welcome is another substantial part, rather than another invitation to be briefly peculiar. Start with Mad Max 2, provided Miller's violence is your sort of evening.
Biography
Bruce Spence is a New Zealand-born Australian actor. Born on 17 September 1945 in Auckland, he moved to Australia at the age of 20 and trained at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School before beginning his acting career at the La Mama theatre in Melbourne.
He joined the Australian Performing Group and later performed with companies including the Melbourne Theatre Company and the Sydney Theatre Company. Spence gained prominence for his role as the Gyro Captain in Mad Max 2 (1981) and reprised a similar character as Jedediah the Pilot in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). He has appeared in over 100 film and television credits, including Dark City (1998) as Mr Wall, voice work as Chum in Finding Nemo (2003), the Trainman in The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Tion Medon in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), and Lord Rhoop in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
