Kurtwood Smith is one of the oldest veterans in the entertainment industry, but he might as well be one of the most underrated ones. Besides portraying Red Forman in That ’70s Show and proceeding to do the same in the spin-off sitcom That ’90s Show, he has also managed to score a one-way ticket in the superhero world, including playing Vernon Masters in MCU’s Agent Carter.
But while those roles have garnered him enough recognition and acclaim from fans worldwide, Kurtwood is also credited for playing a rather ferocious villain in a film that predates even the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This movie in talk was his $53 million action/sci-fi from 1987, RoboCop, which not only marked his debut in the super-verse but also served as his breakthrough role.
Kurtwood Smith Played the Big Bad in 1987’s RoboCop
A critically praised super-flick that came out before the MCU even existed, RoboCop saw a terminally wounded police officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) returning from the brink of death to his dystopian city as the titular cyborg law enforcer. But standing in his way is none other than Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), the nefarious crime boss and his sworn enemy.
While he took it on at the beginning of his career, which kickstarted with minor roles in pieces like 1981’s Zoot Suit and 1983’s Staying Alive, playing the crime boss in the 1987 feature served as Smith’s breakout role. And he himself admits to it holding significance in his life and career, as he told The AV Club while talking about it, “Well that was a big deal for me.”
During another interview with Esquire, the now-81-year-old actor recalled how the film was “an exciting prospect for me” as his career was “just getting started” at the time since “I hadn’t done anything big at that point.” He further candidly emphasized, “I thought RoboCop was going to be a B-movie, but that was fine. It looked like it would be fine.”
That film, of course, turned out to be more than just fine as it crushed perfectly at the box offices for a first-timer. On a reported budget of only $13 million, it went on to make around $53 million from its total box office performance (via Box Office Mojo). Not to mention the 92% critical approval it still holds on RT, a 4.8/5 rating on Amazon Prime Video, and 7.6 out of 10 stars on IMDb.
Kurtwood Smith Shared How He Fit in the Super-Verse
On the one hand, while scoring a role in a superhero universe when superworlds like the DC Universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t even exist was one thing, managing to fit in such a world, on the other hand, was another. For one, even Kurtwood Smith couldn’t help but admit how new it all felt to him as he wasn’t sure what he was getting himself into.
At the same time, it was the creative freedom allowed to the actors that allowed Smith to explore and create his own space for his villainous character, resulting in one of his best performances to date. While going candid with his confessions for Esquire’s oral history of the 1987 action-superhero masterpiece, the actor went on to reveal the same, saying:
I didn’t really know what I was getting into. But they gave us a great deal of freedom, and I tried that out on my first day. It’s the scene where I’ve been arrested, and [Robocop] says, ‘Book him, he’s a cop killer.’ It was a little trying. The make-up girl and I had to put a lot of little scars on my face without having shot the scene where I get them.
That was until the perfect idea came to him, pulling him on the same page as director Paul Verhoeven. Smith continued to share:
I got this idea that I wanted to spit blood on the desk and say, ‘Just give me my f****** phone call.’ I asked Paul, ‘What if I spat blood on the desk?’ And he said [in Transylvanian accent] ‘Ooh… you want to spit blood!’ He got this little smile on his face, and we did it. It was an interesting reaction, but it got Paul and I off to the right start, working on the set.
Either way, all of this creative freedom helped the movie become a one-of-a-kind masterpiece that had ideas stemming from the imagination of some of the best industry talents of all time. Plus, it also launched Smith in the industry, allowing him to star in masterworks like That ’70s Show, so it might as well be agreed that it all worked perfectly in pretty much everyone’s favor.
RoboCop (1987) can currently be watched on Prime Video.
