Lin Shaye recalls an Insidious cult career

    1 of 3 2 of 3

      For some of us, Lin Shaye will always be the lady who turned cunnilingus into a wheezing, tobacco-stained nightmare in the Farrelly Brothers’ Kingpin. She played a “whore” in Joan Micklin Silver’s 1975 movie Hester Street, Shaye’s first ever job in an impressive career that includes a hefty number of roles in cult faves like A Nightmare on Elm Street and three great Walter Hill movies (The Long Riders, Brewster’s Millions, and Extreme Prejudice).

      “Walter, I haven’t seen him for years and years now but he really did have an impact on me,” says Shaye, calling the Straight from Toronto. “Watching him work, there was a focus, and a gentility, and a sureness that he had that made me go, ‘I hope this is the kind of director I get to work with forever.’ He’s a wonderful guy. And James Wan is up there. These are wonderful people with wonderful visions.”

      Wan was Shaye’s director for the first two Insidious movies. The third, opening Friday (June 5), puts the always game actor front and centre in a prequel that gives her character, the psychic Elise Rainier, something of an origin story, with Wan’s co-scripter Leigh Whannell calling the shots in his debut as a director. The scuttlebutt around the production is that Whannell went out of his way to frighten his actors into some kind of screen-ready shape. Most of them, anyway.

      “He didn’t do it with me because he knew better,” Shaye says with a boisterous laugh. “He knew I could kick ass. But apparently, Stefanie [Scott] got an earful of Norwegian black metal. I’m sure it helped. All that stuff that plays on your nervous system is real. My favourite expression is: ‘Your body doesn’t know that you’re pretending.’”

      Lin Shaye demonstrates the delicate art of oral love in Kingpin

      To clarify: Whannell really did stuff his 18-year-old lead, Scott, in a closet for 30 minutes with an iPod full of Carcass and a guard stationed outside, possibly equipped with a cattle prod (or more likely not, but still.) Shaye, meanwhile, has nothing but praise for her director, who also resumes his on-camera role as the nebbish ghosthunter, Specs. If she didn’t require half an hour of torture to find her motivation, it’s probably because the veteran character actor came in pre-spooked.

      “I believe everything is possible because there’s so little we know,” says Shaye, when asked if she’s a paranormalist in her off hours. “Even the whole idea of radio waves, if you really wanna go nuts and bolts—there’s so much around us that we can’t see but we know exists. And we know that people are energy, and that energy is not destructible. So who knows what happens finally to all that?”

      Good answer. In Shaye’s case, what happens is another 12 features awaiting release. Not bad for a 71-year-old with a taste for the superstitious. “I’m busier than hell,” she says. “It’s the best ever. I’m knocking on wood as we talk.”

      Follow Adrian Mack on Twitter @AdrianMacked

      Comments