Thank you, All The Right Movies, for digging up this old interview with Bob Hoskins. In it, the award-winning British actor talks about the time he got the job playing Mario in the 1993 big-screen adaptation of Nintendoâs series.
BOB HOSKINS with a sobering thought after finding out the Super Mario Bros. (1993) film was based on a video game. pic.twitter.com/UiP3KtOFVI
â All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) August 16, 2022
âI didnât even know it was a game,â Hoskins says, bemused, to the interviewer. âIt was my kids that told me. They said âWhatâs your next filmâ, and I said âSuper Mario Bros.ââ
âOh, thatâs the game!â
âOh, oh, what?â
âYeah, here, and this is you!â
âAnd Iâve saw this thing jumping up and down and thought [pause], âI used to play King Lear.ââ
The âKing Learâ thing is funny, of course, but itâs the pause that gets me. The pause that lets the world know that it was then, at that precise moment, that Hoskins realized the full gravity of the situation he found himself in.
He has played King Lear (as well as appearing in performances of Othello and Romeo and Juliet). He has also won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a BAFTA and a Best Actor award at Cannes. He was excellent as J. Edgar Hoover in Nixon, fantastic as George in Mona Lisa and lit up the screen in The Long Good Friday.
Here, though, he is Mario. Starring in a movie that, despite recent attempts at reconstructing its reputation, is abysmal by almost every metricâso bad it put Nintendo off making another movie for decades.
Weâve all been in this moment. When the passage of time seems to stop entirely, allowing us a rare glimpse back at the full scale of the cruel and calculating twists it has taken along the way, at the staggering distance it has covered in our lifetimes. We have all been King Lear at one point in our lives. And, eventually, we will all be Mario as well.
