Nicholas Vince Chatters: An Interview with a Cinema Cenobite

Nicholas Vince has not acted in twenty years due to a combination of things, including the unfortunate passing of his father. Yet he remains in demand with fans at horror conventions today as much as he did decades ago. It is on the strength of two characters, both created on the page by Clive Barker and brought to life by Nicholas Vince - the "Chattering Cenobite" in Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and the role of "Kinski" in Nightbreed.

 

Nicholas was in town recently for the Monsterpalooza Convention, and swung by Dark Delicacies to drop off copies of his latest book. Nicholas is a delightful man, with a very evident lust for horror. The following interview was conducted in the car as I drove him from Dark Delicacies to his hotel room prior to his flight back to England.

 

 

 

NICHOLAS VINCE: I was encouraged by Clive (Barker). He said, "You're intelligent enough to write. You really should have a go." This was back in the days when we were doing Hellraiser and he encouraged me to do the comic books.

 

 

Yes, absolutely. I mean it was a fascinating thing to do because you have to think "How much dialogue, how many panels have I got, how am I going to tell this visually as well as with the dialogue?" Then, when I left the business, I left writing because I had to eat. Then, a couple of years ago, I thought "Okay, I'm going to do this now," and it was just brilliant. I'm going to sit down and write stories. That was it, really. It is what I want to do, and I'm going to do it.

 

 

Well, one of them particularly, "Green Eyes," which appears in What Monsters Do (August 25, 2012). I originally wrote it back in the 1980s. I had this idea and I found whole loads of notebooks with story ideas, stuck away in drawers, a lot of which were basically story ideas that were nightmares that had been written down when I woke up in the morning. 

 

 

Just a springboard. Like all of these things, you've got an idea, there's a scene... as a matter of fact, when I published the second book (Other People's Darkness and Other Stories, March 1, 2014), I thought: Great, I didn't have to write short stories for a while and could take just a little bit of a breather. Literally that night I had a nightmare. I had a complete scene in my head and I just heard the voice of the narrator. Yeah, I'm writing again.

 

 

Yes, in two ways. I'm going to be doing a horror anthology film, which actually kicked off last year, but then got delayed.

 

 

I've written a section of it. I'm working with a director who's worked with Doug Bradley (on a short film called A Hand to Play). He's a gentleman called Mike Clarke. He's a really talented guy, a really nice and interesting guy. So I wrote that script last year. The idea is to get some other writers and directors in and we'll write together. Then I'll probably begin acting in another story as well… I'm going to return to acting as well. So I'm writing film scripts and I'm also working on a new play. We've dramatized two of the short stories from What Monsters Do.

 

 

A horror play. Two one-acts, an hour long. It received 4 out of 5 stars fromViews from the Gods, a London website. This was for the London Horror Festival. I'm now writing a full length play which is about ghosts. It's told from the ghost's point of view, and theater ghosts. 

 

 

I'm really hoping my short stories are going to grow up into full-length novels. In my second book, the short stories got longer as I kind of gained confidence. The word count went from an average of about five or six thousand to around about nine or ten thousand. So what I've agreed to with my editor and my husband and a really good mate of mine is that I'm going to produce three proposals for novels, which they are then going to review. Then I'll take their advice as to which one to work on next. I'll probably really start work on that in June or July, which will probably be July/August.

 

 

 

I'm getting back into acting. I was really fortunate that a couple of people have asked me to do things for them.

 

 

Twenty-odd years. I actually went back to drama college. I went back to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama for an 8-week course, "An Introduction to Acting." Acting 101. This is twenty years. I don't feel comfortable. I just need to go back and think about this and remember what it's like. I did one day's filming for a thing called M is for Metamorphosis. A short three-minute film; one day's filming. I play a nefarious doctor. I was also recently asked if I would like to play a really evil clown.

 

 

Funnily enough, in May I should be shooting a movie which my husband might actually watch (he's not a horror fan at all). In the film I play a manager of a home for people with Down Syndrome. A nice guy who is worried about the hero of the film, who is a Down Syndrome guy who is going through that whole thing about growing up and leaving home. Put it this way: I was in tears when I read the script. So I've got that as well, and I'm appearing in a documentary about Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in Great Britain. It has Reece Shearsmith from The League of Gentlemen in it; very prestigious. I'm really looking forward to it. 

 

 

Yes, I'm in Texas the beginning of May, and I'm going to be in Atlantic City and Chicago later in the year. I'll also be at Dark Delicacies. I'm looking forward to that. Cheers.