‘I am quite tough’: Schindler’s List star Embeth Davidtz delivers explosive directorial debut after battling cancer and Hollywood inertia
LONDON – Embeth Davidtz, the actress known for roles in Schindler’s List and Army of Darkness, is defying expectations wiht the release of her directorial debut, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, a powerful film set during the final days of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).The film arrives as davidtz, who turned 60 last month, reflects on a career marked by both early success and a period of self-doubt following her breakout roles.
Davidtz expressed frustration with being offered unfulfilling parts. “But I don’t want to take any old part with long, boring days saying lines that are so-so. I’ve done that and it made me miserable,” she stated. This dissatisfaction surfaced as early as the late 1990s, after a rapid ascent from the Evil Dead sequel to a pivotal role as a brutalised housemaid in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Oscar-winner, schindler’s List. Davidtz now attributes her subsequent career slowdown to her own hesitancy.
“I was a deer in the headlights,” she sighs. ”I saeid ‘no’ too often. I overthought things. It would have been better to say ‘Yes’ and not take too much time off to prepare for the next thing.” Her next important role after Schindler’s List didn’t arrive until two years later, in an adaptation of H.E. Bates’s Feast of July. “Nobody saw it. I should have done two other films between Schindler’s List and that one.The train moves fast, and if you step off it, even for a minute, it keeps going. And the other actresses on the train, they keep going too. Than you’re left behind.”
The journey to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight was further complicated by a cancer diagnosis. ”Getting sick amplified everything for me. What do I want every day to look like? What do I want to accomplish with my life?” she explained.She described turning 60 as initially ”depressing,” contrasting it with the optimism she felt after beating cancer at 50: “I’m alive! Yeah!”
Davidtz views the film’s completion as a hard-won victory, comparable to her health battle.”Making Don’t Let’s Go became this do-or-die thing. Like fighting through all the surgeries and treatment and six months of chemo. It was imperative. There was nothing else to do but to do it.” She is already planning her next project, aiming to begin piecing it together during the frist half of her 60s.
Despite being widely recognised for her gentle portrayal of Miss Honey in Matilda, Davidtz asserts a hidden strength. “I am quite tough,” she smiles. “People think I’m not. But there’s grit in me.”
Don’t Let’s go to the Dogs Tonight is in cinemas from 3 October.
