Tim Roth and the death of his son: “It is a pain that arrives in waves, everyone faces him in his own way and there is no cure”

When Tim Roth has finished shooting Poison, A film about mourning elaborationcould not imagine how soon that fiction would become part of its reality. A few months after the end of the filming, in October 2022, his son Cormac died at the age of 25, from a rare tumor.

“The film spoke of this, of loss and pain … and now, for my family, it has become something extremely touching,” says Roth al today Guardian, While recalling those months who have changed his life forever. “Everyone faces mourning in his own way. There is no single road, otherwise we would have already found a cure».

His Cormac, guitarist and composer, had been hit by an advanced testicle tumor. Tim was about to leave for the set, away from home, and had thought of giving up. But it was Cormac who pushed him to accept the role. “It wasn’t worried at all. Indeed, I think he also wanted to get rid of me too, “Roth says ironically -. «I wanted his approval: if he hadn’t agreed, I would never have left. If he had needed I stayed, I would have stayed ».

During filming in a real cemetery in Luxembourg, set of the film Poison, in which Roth plays a father who finds himself with his ex -wife after the death of his sonthought often returned home. “At that moment we tried to be positive, because he was still with us,” he says. “We shot in a cemetery, yes, but I tried to continue having hope.”

The film, based on a theatrical work by the Dutch author Lot Vekemans, is a sort of intimate duel between two parents unable to share pain. «Show a profound truth: Each elaborates mourning in a unique way, like a digital footprint», Roth reflects. “Now I see him clearly with friends and family: everyone is facing him in his own way, and we must respect him”.

The director Désirée Nosbusch, at his debut behind the camera, was aware of Cormac’s disease. She too, years earlier, had lived a difficult moment with his son, when he was diagnosed with diabetes. When he knew of Cormac’s death, Nosbusch was devastated. “I wondered:” What if my film had been a bad hope? “” But Roth reassured her: “I have no regrets for doing it. In a sense, he helped me prepare me».

After the disappearance of his son, Roth, his wife Nikki Butler and the other son Hunter wrote that The pain came “waves” And who had lost “a ball of wild and electric energy. They also quoted a motto of Cormac: “Make sure you do the things you love.”

And perhaps this is also how Roth manages to go on, continuing to do what he loves. “Acting is something I love more and more», He says today. “Once I had called it a hellish profession, not to wish anyone … but I probably only had had a crooked day.”

Roth’s career is long and varied, started with a school musical on Dracula: “It was a bad imitation of the Rocky Horror, But he took me immediately ». After a few occasional work (“I filled shelves to the Tesco, I sorted letters at Christmas, I tried to sell advertising on the phone … I was painful”) came The first true role, that of the Skinhead Trevor in Made in Britain (1982).

At 64, Tim Roth continues to distinguish between the works “to pay the rent” and those “what are you doing for yourself”. Someone confesses, it was definitely embarrassing. Yet even the flops, for him, have value. «Often it is precisely those who teach you more. Even if the film is ugly, you have to give the best. Sometimes, they are the most beautiful experiences ».