Vladimir Kulich

The Job Pt. 1 - This Month’s Victim: Vladimir Kulich (The Beast on "Angel")

The Norseman Under the Lava- Part 1

Vladimir Kulich, first and foremost, is tall. Very tall. He’s also incredibly gracious, warm, funny and generous, and in view of the resounding success on DVD of the latest movie he was involved in (“Smokin’ Aces”), we wanted to catch up with him and see what he’s been up to, besides that movie, since his time on “Angel” and his unforgettable performance as Bulywif in “The 13th Warrior” with Antonio Banderas. Here’s the first part of what he told us, as he spoke at length. Be advised that the interview contains colorful adult language. Thank you.

1. Origins

Whedonopolis: How and when did you decide that you wanted to be an actor?

Vladimir Kulich: What happened was, my whole family were actors in Prague, and I really didn’t do any acting there. I hung out with my uncle; he had a theater in Prague, so I was around it, but I never did anything. The best I ever did was get beer for him between intermissions. We moved to Canada when I was 12. Where I lived was a blue-collar place, so there was no acting, no artists, just sports, and I became a hockey player. I forgot about it. When I finished hockey, I was 21, 22 years old, and I didn’t want to be an athlete anymore. I didn’t know what I wanted, and all of a sudden, I started to read more, and to try to paint, but I was a lousy painter. I found myself in Vancouver and they were shooting a TV show called “21 JumpStreet.”

W: No way!

VK: Yeah, and at the time I had a rafting company, for river rafting, and one weekend, a couple of the producers came rafting. They said, “Why don’t you come down? We’ll give you a job, a little role. You have an interesting look, come down.” So I did one show, and then I started doing all the other shows in Vancouver, like “Wiseguy,” and “MacGyver”...

W: You did “Highlander.”

VK: Yeah, “Highlander,” and “X Files” was also shooting there.

W: Right, you did the episode with the submarine... Russian?

VK: It was Norwegian, not Russian, yeah. It was a ship that looked like a submarine, and it was floating and everybody was getting old... except me. And people couldn’t figure out why, and it was because I was drinking water from the toilet! (laughs all around)

W: There’s always a smart one in those groups!

VK: It was good because the scenes were all in Norwegian, and the other actor was John Savage. I don’t know if you remember him, but he’d been nominated for an Academy Award for “The Deer Hunter.” He’s such a good actor, and what was really funny was, if you ever watch the episode, he couldn’t memorize the Norwegian parts, so when the camera was on him, I had to hold the card with the Norwegian part here, so he’s talking to me and he would go... (makes motion of looking at someone’s face and then dropping the eyes to chest level to read the card, and we all laugh once again) It was my first really good experience, and so it took off from there. Then I moved down here, I had a green card, and then I did “13th Warrior” and a bunch of B-movies, and then I did “Angel,” and “Smokin’ Aces...” It’s a long answer for “How did you start?”

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