Longevity

Lang is particularly good at playing military figures. He considers his greatest performance to be as General Stonewall Jackson in Gods and Generals (2003). Apart from Quaritch he’s notched up a recent cameo as another senior officer in Men Who Stare At Goats, a lukewarm George Clooney comedy currently on release – and he himself wrote and starred in a stage play called Beyond Glory, a one-hander about war veterans. He also played Colonel Jessep on stage, a role later made famous by Jack Nicholson in the movie version of A Few Good Men. "The military has always intrigued me, in particular how humans behave under the stress of conflict with all the humility and bravery involved," he says. 

Lang, now 57, has certainly carved out a little niche for himself as martinets. The taut, lean physique so evident in Avatar is one he intends to nurture, describing himself as a gym junkie. "Having attained this level of fitness, I don’t intend to lose it," he says with a grin. "I don’t want people to say – ‘whatever happened to HIM?’"  So he doesn’t smoke, drinks little and eats carefully. Longevity runs in the family. So does a strict work ethic. His father, a famous entrepreneur and accomplished philanthropist, is now over 90 and yet still goes to his New York office six days a week.

Lang is playing it long; he dismisses suggestions that it would have been better for his career if he’d had a big break like Avatar a decade earlier because he thinks he’s only just hitting his prime as an actor. When I remind him that Ernest Borgnine, one of his heroes from The Wild Bunch, is still acting at 93, Lang smiles. "I don’t mind being the old guy drooling in the corner when I get to be that age," he says, not entirely frivolously, one suspects. 

His father, although a very wealthy man, offered only limited financial assistance to his children, believing that they should make their own way once they were given a good education. Kirk Douglas, the son of a penniless ragman, once said. "My kids (readers may be familiar with Michael!) never had the advantages I had. I was born poor." Before I finish, Lang repeats the mantra. He may be a rich man’s son but as he says, it was always made clear that "there was not an unlimited supply of wealth".

Cameron stories
Some actors had a hard time of it with James Cameron, the director of Avatar. I cite Kate Winslet (star of Cameron’s earlier smash hit Titanic) as saying that she would be wary of working with Cameron again. Others are much less polite. Lang appraises his friend carefully. "You can’t dismiss rumours. It’s true that Jim is ferocious and intimidating but he’s also a good listener and brings a huge amount of fun to the set. He’s a man who’s very happy doing what he’s doing. He’s into learning about himself. Jim certainly doesn’t believe that success vindicates bad behaviour."

Perhaps Lang is saying that Cameron can be difficult but that it’s the search for artistic perfection that drives him.

Some critics thought that killing Quaritch at the end of Avatar was a mistake, removing the chance of Lang reprising his role but, as Lang points out with a wry smile, his "DNA is still intact", implying that, at least for him, a follow-up is not impossible.

He relishes Avatar’s success. "It’s been wonderful for my family because they’ve endured some ups and downs during my working life." He doesn’t even mind people coming up to him in the street and saying – jokingly – that they "hate" him. He admits, however, to being "disgusted" when Avatar failed to carry best film at the recent Oscars. "We (Cameron and Lang) weren’t that surprised because we saw it coming but even so – without offending the other films in question – I thought Avatar was best," he says. No doubt Cameron, bested by his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, felt the same way.

Given Avatar’s box office bonanza, big movie offers should now start pouring in for Lang. Between 2003 and 2007 he acted mostly on the stage, but he concedes that acting on film is more lucrative at this point in his career. "Acting in a stage play really does take such a piece out of your soul," he says. In the pipeline is a production called Dance Tall, a murder mystery that could serve as the pilot for a TV series.

‘The perfect synthesis’
Unlike other actors who belittle their craft and occasionally made interviewers feel that getting blood out of stone was easier – Robert Mitchum and Brando come to mind – Lang is happy to talk of performances, both his own and other people’s. He has an unabashed admiration for certain actors and believes that talent should be used to the full. He has no time for the antics of Brando who regarded acting as a job unsuitable for adults and who, later in his career, had his lines fed to him through an ear piece. "I stoop to nobody in my admiration for some of Marlon’s early performances but it was so disappointing he did that, and so frustrating. I wanted to shake him," says Lang.

For Lang the great actors are those – like Humphrey Bogart – who really become somebody different without losing their star quality. "Bogart was the perfect synthesis of actor and star. His Queeg (The Caine Mutiny 1954) and Charlie Allnut (The African Queen 1951) were miles apart." One of the greatest performances on screen, he says, was George C Scott’s in Patton (1970). He also mentions Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer (1960) and Albert Finney in Under The Volcano (1984).

Formerly the co-artistic director of New York’s famed Actors’ Studio, along with veteran actress Lee Grant, Lang has now given way to Ellen Burstyn.

He has just two weeks’ filming in Bulgaria, his first ever visit, and is very impressed by the facilties and general level of professionalism at Nu Boyana.

We were debating the possible redemption of Mel Gibson following racist comments he made in 2006 – "a brilliant filmmaker...it’s not as though he’s killed anyone" when a knock at the trailer took Lang back to the world of Conan, 5000 years ago. My master class was over.