One of Cary Elwes’ first jobs in Hollywood was dessert gopher for Marlon Brando.
The 59-year-old “The Princess Bride” star worked behind the scenes of the 1978 Richard Donner film “Superman” when he was only 16.
One of his duties was to coax Brando out of his trailer and come to set. The legendary “Godfather” actor portrayed Jor-El in the superhero story.
“My job was to get Marlon out of his trailer,” Elwes told the Telegraph on Thursday. “Marlon had no incentive to be on time, because his agent had struck the most amazing deal for him. Every day that the picture went over, he got another million dollars. So he drove poor [Richard] Donner up the wall, because he just strolled in whenever he felt like it. Sometimes before lunch, sometimes … not before lunch.”
“How did I manage it?” he continued. “Mainly with food. Once you fed Marlon, he was in a much better mood. So I tried to find delicacies that appealed to him, which were limited at Shepperton at the time. He mainly wanted desserts.” Shepperton is a film studio located in Surrey, England, where “Superman” was filmed.
Elwes then shed some light on his iconic “Princess Bride” role. The British-born actor played Westley, a k a the Man in Black, in the 1987 romantic fantasy film.
“The trailer was a challenge because they didn’t know who to sell it to. Was it a kids’ movie, a fantasy, a comedy? And of course it was all these things,” he explained.
Elwes can next be seen in the Netflix romcom “A Castle for Christmas” alongside Brooke Shields. The flick is the first romantic comedy that the “Saw” actor has been in since acting in the 1980s Rob Reiner film.
He opened up to the New York Daily News about why he decided to take part in the romance film for the streamer.
“I avoided picking that genre simply because that film had pretty much covered that for me, and I didn’t feel like I wanted to try and compete with it,” Elwes told the publication recently. “But here I am, some 30 years later, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of doing this one. Firstly, because the role was so interesting to me, to play someone so totally different.”
“A Castle for Christmas” stars Elwes as a Scottish duke named Myles, who runs a picturesque castle in Scotland. Shields plays Sophie Brown, a world-renowned author escaping to the countryside following a scandal. The pair (spoiler alert) fall in love.
Elwes said of his character, “Myles has run through all the money, and now he’s looking to sell his castle. The buyer who shows up is this character played by Brooke who is the complete antithesis to Myles.”
“She’s an extrovert and she’s filled with joie de vivre, which he’s certainly not, and she really rubs him the wrong way, so there’s great elements of comedy there. They’re very much oil and water, the two of them,” he added.