Michael Barber played DC Poirot in the BBC series Ashes To Ashes. Michael has also appeared in numerous television programmes and films including Doctor Who, The Bill, The Bourne Ultimatum, Harry Potter and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. In Eldorado, recently released on DVD, Michael plays Tommy, a deformed chainsaw wielding monster. How did you first get involved in the production of Eldorado? I think it was a case of they were getting a bit desperate basically! They’d had a lot of famous people in line for the part before me like Warwick Davis for example. But in the end, last of all, I ended up replacing Corey Feldman because Michael Jackson had died and he was too upset to travel to England (which was my luck and his misfortune). Some of Eldorado was actually filmed in Las Vegas, but your scenes were all filmed in England weren’t they? Yes, in Cornwall– I was down there for a whole month. And during that time you worked alongside some very famous Hollywood names. Of the cast that you didn’t film scenes with, who did you purposely seek out to meet in addition – Bridget Neilson for example? I couldn’t be bothered to be honest. I’m sure she’s a lovely lady, but the person I really wanted to meet was Michael Madsen. He was a really really nice guy. We had a good laugh. Was it true he gave you some advice on the ear cutting scene? Yes that’s true. He invited me into his trailer and he said “I believe you are later on sometime doing the ear cutting scene – the best way to cut someone’s ear off if they’re tied to a chair is to straddle them because otherwise it just doesn’t look right sort of leaning over them – you have to sit on the guy and chop it off!” And he was right. So I cut Oliver Tobias’ ear off (and he was another very nice gentleman – it was just a dream come true working with those two guys). What were your experiences of shooting in 3D? I found 3D an absolute pain in the arse. It just took forever. Instead of taking an hour
