Cowboys & Indians / June 2010 / Thomas Haden Church

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Thomas Haden Church

With his handsome, chiseled face and well-worn boots and blue jeans, actor Thomas Haden Church evokes the image of a serious cowboy, and in this case, looks are not deceiving. Church is both a successful actor and bona fide rancher.

You know that angular face from the big and small screen: in his Emmy-winning role as Robert Duvall’s estranged nephew in Broken Trail, as the Academy Award-nominated sidekick in the California wine romp Sideways, as Sandman in Spider-Man 3, as a regular on the ’90s sitcom Wings, as outlaw Billy Clanton in Tombstone. After years in front of the camera, he’s comfortable there. But Church is most comfortable away from the red carpet and driving cattle on his 2,000-acre Jake Short Ranch in Bandera County, Texas, 100 miles northwest of San Antonio. In and around Bandera, Church runs four cattle ranches and a commercial beef operation, but he calls the Jake Short home.

As a young boy, he went to church camp north of what is now his ranch and fell in love with the region regarded as “the garden spot” of the Texas Hill Country, boasting a huge variety of trees and wildflowers. He started to look for property in the area in the early ’90s, and when the 3,100 acres became available in 1999, Church was able to purchase 2,000 acres and another rancher bought the remaining 1,100. Along with his cattle partner, Tom Mauldin, Church now runs about 400 head of cattle, plus calves, on the two ranches and the surrounding properties that he and Mauldin lease.

Church comes by the ranching life naturally. Raised in Laredo, Texas, he herded his first cow at the age of 13 on the Sloan property owned by his father’s friend. “My childhood love for the outdoors came from my dad,” he says. “We hunted and fished in Texas, and my dad had friends that were ranchers. There was this kind of nobility to that community that I really admire.” But the romantic image of cowboys rounding up cattle does not hold true on Church’s rocky and hilly Jake Short property, with its few pastures and fields. He describes his cattle as “feed broke,” with livestock that come running at the sound of the feed bell.

“We periodically round up cattle on horseback,” explains Church, “but in the interest of efficiency we use trucks and ATVs. It takes a while to hunt them down due to the canyons, but when the cows hear the horn they usually come running. If they’re hungry enough, they are on the move when they hear the diesel engine. This type of roundup has been going on for more than 40 years, [ever since] Mr. Sloan tied a cowbell to the bumper of his old truck to bring his cows home.”

The ranch where he makes a life far from the hubbub of Hollywood has a history that reads like the back story for a good old-fashioned western. The Jake Short Ranch, formally established in 1905 and located on the famed Nueces Strip, has a fascinating history that dates back to the mid-1800s, Church says. Ranchers drove cattle up to the area and started to claim giant pieces of land through quitclaims. From the 1840s through the 1860s, the Nueces Strip was a dangerous part of Texas due to constant fighting between Native Americans, Mexicans, and the French.

The Nueces River runs parallel to the Rio Grande, about 100 miles to the north, and the land between the two rivers — called the Nueces Strip — runs all the way to the coast. “The Mexican government regarded the Nueces Strip as the international border,” Church explains. “But the United States, with the endorsement of the Texas Republic, regarded the Rio Grande as the international border. The Nueces Strip was almost like a demilitarized zone, where Capt. [Richard] King established the King Ranch, complete with a private army to defend his ranch. There was pirating all up and down the Nueces River, where riverboats housed ruthless gamblers, and the entire area was incredibly lawless, with Indian raids into that part of Texas until the 1880s.

“Most of this country became quitclaimed by the railroads and luggage companies. This ranch was actually owned by the Cleveland Trunk Company, as people only traveled then by railroad, stagecoach, and steamships and had to carry all their worldly possessions by trunk and valise. If the claimed land was not developed or homesteaded, eventually it was abandoned, and wealthy families who were migrating to the West would purchase huge chunks of this part of Texas. The Shorts came out in 1905 and made claims on about 40,000 acres of land that were not contested, and they still ranch about 5,000 acres that are adjacent to the property I purchased from them. I named the ranch after Jake Short, its original owner, as I like that historical tradition.”

Church, of course, is known not as a rancher with a love for history and Western tradition but as an actor with a 20-year career of portraying a diverse series of memorable characters, including the slightly dim mechanic Lowell Mather in the endearing ’90s television series Wings; his Oscar-nominated character, the egomaniacal Jack in Sideways, who accompanies his friend Miles (Paul Giamatti) on a wine-tasting road trip through California’s Central Coast; and Peter Parker’s (Tobey Maguire) arch-villain Sandman in the mega-hit Spider-Man 3.

Church’s most recent project is John Carter of Mars, a huge-budget special effects science fiction film based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs short story series, Barsoom. Though the movie is tightly under wraps, Church is able to reveal that it opens on Earth in the Old West and that through a series of events John Carter is magically teleported to the planet Mars. “The young actor Taylor Kitsch who plays John Carter is really terrific,” Church says, “and Disney did an exhaustive search to find him.”

How Church got from the small screen to science fiction Mars is an up-by-the-bootstraps story. Midway through his successful run on Wings, Church donned hat, boots, and holsters to saddle up as an outlaw in Tombstone starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. After being so well known for his role on Wings, Church wanted a change in tone and character in his work and Tombstone afforded him that opportunity. Although cast in a supporting role, he spent six weeks working 1,800 calves and honing his riding skills on a big ranch in West Texas before going to Arizona to begin work on the film. Church started his days at 4 a.m. roaming the 140,000-acre ranch doing self-described “cowboy work.” The work was so hard that he would drink a beer or two in the early evening and be asleep by 7 or 8 p.m.

Church played Billy Clanton, one of three members of the notorious Clanton gang of cowboys killed in the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Reflecting on the role, Church believes Tombstone was a huge turning point in his career. “The movie was an amazing opportunity for me,” he says. “It was in the spring of ’93 and both Wyatt Earp [starring Kevin Costner] and Tombstone were being cast at the exact same time and [were] sought after by most of the young actors in town. I read the script and met with the head of casting, who thought that I was authentic enough to be cast in the film. At the time I was doing a small-budget detective movie with Sam Elliott [Fugitive Nights: Danger in the Desert] and he asked me one day if I had met the casting director for Tombstone. I told him I had and that I wanted to be cast as Doc Holliday.

“Sam told me that that was not going to happen as Val Kilmer had the part. He started going through a murderer’s row of actors who I really admired, and I thought, S--t, I’m not going to get cast in this movie.”

But Elliott convinced him otherwise, encouraging him to go back in to read for one of the smaller parts. “Sam told me, ‘You really do want to be in this movie.’" So Church spoke with the casting director for several hours and mentioned the role of Billy Clanton; the casting director had another actor in mind but wasn’t sure if he was the right choice for the role.

“A week later Sam and I had just driven to a location in Palm Desert, California, where we were filming the detective movie,” Church says. “I got to the set for the first night shoot and Sam came over to me and asked me how I was doing. Then he said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to get you on a horse,’ and that was how I found out that I was cast as Billy Clanton. To me the centerpiece of the film was the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Clanton was the one who started the fight and was the last one to get killed, which was factually true. He died in his mother’s arms the day after the shootout.

“Later on Sam told me that if I was playing a cowboy, I’d “ damn sure better have the swagger.’ ” The better part of Church’s swagger was gained from sitting right in the saddle. To play a cowboy convincingly, he knew it was important to be able to get on a horse and ride in any situation that came up. So even though he didn’t ride a great deal in Tombstone (he did some “ride ins” and “ride outs” in the town and rode while filming a scene where he and the cowboys got several of their outlaw brethren out of jail), he trained as if he did.

As with any time in the saddle, that training would come in handy later when Church had the opportunity not only to ride but also to work with one of his favorite actors in AMC’s 2006 western Broken Trail. Set in 1898, the miniseries stars Robert Duvall as Prentice Ritter, who, along with his estranged nephew Tom Harte (Church), becomes the reluctant guardian of five abused and abandoned Chinese girls. The plot revolves around the good guys avoiding a group of renegades intent on kidnapping the girls and selling them into prostitution — lots of the action on horseback.

“When Broken Trail was being cast, I was already deep into physical training for Spider-Man 3,” says Church, “and it just so happened that my trainer, Mike Michaels, was also working with Walter Hill, the director of the miniseries. When he told me that Walter was prepping for a western with Robert Duvall, I think that I literally dropped the weights I was holding. I’d attended the Directors Guild of America Awards for Sideways just weeks earlier, when Walter won an award for his direction of the HBO western series Deadwood, but I knew nothing about this project and asked Michaels to mention my name. He did, and Sideways happened to be Walter’s favorite movie that year, so Michaels put us in touch with each other and we started a dialogue on the phone. [Walter] sent me the script, which was then written as a feature film, and I loved it. I loved the authenticity of the dialogue and the story in general. We met and I had a lot of ideas for the story and he really liked my take.

“So then Bob [Duvall] wanted to speak with me, and I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, afraid that he wouldn’t think that I was authentic enough. We talked about every western from True Grit to The Culpepper Cattle Co., movies that were gritty and real as well as authentic and not corny. [Duvall] ultimately called [one of] his producing partner[s], Rob Carliner, and told him that ‘we need to get him in the movie as he knows the script at least as well as we do and has some great ideas about storytelling.’

“I immediately had six horses delivered to my ranch, different ages and breeds, including a high-strung Thoroughbred ex-racehorse. Every now and then I would ride that Thoroughbred to get a sense of different energy. To make sure that I could really ride well, I went to the Canadian location several weeks early to pick out my horse, hat, saddle, and guns.”

A pivotal story point in Broken Trail comes when Church’s character, Harte, meets Scott Cooper’s character, Gilpin, and they decide to ride together. Church says Duvall was adamant about not having another western cliché of meeting over a drink or fighting in the local saloon. Church came up with a different kind of saloon scene where Harte buys several bottles of whiskey to take back to camp and Gilpin is in the saloon panhandling. Gilpin is playing the violin, annoying several of the customers, and the saloonkeeper tries to throw him out. Harte then steps into the fray and brings Gilpin along on the trail.

“Bobby said, ‘ Okay, you guys write it and when you shoot it I want to be there,’ even though he wasn’t in the scene. He was an executive producer, and it meant a lot to get his approval on something he wasn’t sure of in the beginning,” Church says. The scene worked well, and so did the whole miniseries, which was honored with four Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries, Outstanding Supporting Actor (Church), and Outstanding Lead Actor (Duvall).

Church has nothing but praise for Duvall: “Bobby was something else,” Church says, “just flat-out something else.”

Winning an Emmy in a Duvall vehicle is never a bad thing FOR an actor’s career, and Church continues to be in front of the camera plenty. During the same time that he is filming John Carter of Mars in England this summer, he will be traveling back-and-forth to Iowa to start production on Butter, a contemporary comedy about the butter carving world in which he stars opposite Jennifer Garner. “Butter carving is a big deal in the Midwest dairy country,” Church explains. “I read the script — it’s incredibly well-written. I had lunch with the director around Christmastime and we really hit it off. I’m playing Jennifer’s husband, and as she is a producer on the film as well as the star and a big fan of my work, she really wanted me for the role.”

Church will spend May and June in Iowa to start work on Butter, which will be released in 2012. In the meantime, he’ll be herding cows, tending to his beef business, and mending fences on the Jake Short Ranch and his surrounding properties. From Texas to Hollywood and back to Texas, Thomas Haden Church has followed his childhood passions to fruition as an adult. It’s a rare role he gets to play every day: a guy who has succeeded in both of his youthful dreams — working in the West’s great outdoors and finding fulfillment as an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated actor.

 

Issue: June 2010

Filed under: Art-Entertainment, Film, TV