He's from acting aristocracy and from the real aristocracy, too. No wonder Jack Huston, star of Paddy Breathnach's new film, has made a smooth screen entrance, writes Donald Clarke.
All kinds of indignities befall foolish youths in Shrooms. The new Irish horror film from Paddy Breathnach, director of I Went Down and Man About Dog, follows a gang of American tourists as they head into the countryside in search of hallucinogenic fungi. Unhappily, the mushrooms send them all crazy and put them in the way of a mad monk, a feral adolescent and two slavering backwoodsmen. Only Jack Huston, playing some sort of Anglo-Irish pharmaceutical know-all, manages to retain his poise and dignity throughout.
This is, you might argue, hardly surprising. Huston, who is sinuously good-looking and has a witheringly posh voice, is the product of not one but two forbidding dynasties. His father's family - John Huston is his grandad, Anjelica his aunt, Walter his great-grandad - constitute theatrical aristocracy. Big deal. His mother's family - his maternal grandfather was the sixth Marquess of Cholmondeley, a direct descendent of William the Conqueror - are real aristocracy. "That never really came up at school," Huston says. "I didn't go to Eton or Harrow, where every other guy is a lord or viscount. It wasn't really talked about. I think people were more aware of the Huston side than the toffery."
Huston's uncle, the current marquess, is a bit of a creative sort himself. Some years back, under the name David Rocksavage, he directed a film version of Truman Capote's novel Other Voices, Other Rooms.
"It's funny. I feel like the background can be something of a hindrance. My uncle had a very hard time. 'Oh you have this title. You couldn't possibly be artistic if you are a marquess.' That sort of thing. In fact he has far more of an artistic education than many people who think themselves steeped in film."
Huston and his mother, Lady Margot Lavinia Cholmondeley, grew up on a small farm in the shadow of Houghton Hall, in Norfolk. The house, one of two mighty piles owned by the Cholmondeley clan, was built by Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of Britain, and is among the grandest stately homes in England. By a merry coincidence, the producer of Shrooms is another, younger Robert Walpole. "Isn't that the funniest thing?" Huston says. "I am sure I must have said it to Rob a few times. I can't quite remember. 'Do you know, we are kind of related?' "
For all the grandness of his mother's family, Jack's achievements will, inevitably, be more often set beside those of the formidable Hustons. His father, Tony, who wrote the script for The Dead, John Huston's final film as director, divorced his mum when Jack was still a lad, and he now spends his time practising falconry in New Mexico. The family has a collective reputation for being both generous and irascible, and, if Jack's testimony is to be believed, Tony was a Huston through and through.
"You know, my dad wasn't very good with kids," he says, slightly ruefully. "He wasn't great with kids, and we're both alpha males, I think. He was a real tough son of a bitch, and, in that way, was somewhat like my grandfather. But my dad has mellowed a lot with age. He lives off in New Mexico, and, you know, falconry is one of those things that takes over your life. It becomes your life."
John Huston, the great American director, long resident in Galway, died in 1987, just five years after Jack's birth. It hardly seems possible that the young actor can remember him. "I did meet him, and I do remember it," he says. "And, of course, my dad would speak about him a lot. I was five when I met him. He was in a wheelchair and he had an oxygen tent, because he had emphysema. He was a lovely guy. He was not a tough guy to me - not the guy like in Chinatown. I had a lot of energy and must have exhausted him, but he didn't let it show. He was, I suppose, just like a grandfather to me."
Jack Huston was only six when he secured the lead in his primary school's production of Peter Pan. He claims that he immediately became fixated on the profession and began seeking any opportunity to declaim. His parents, clearly tolerant of his ambitions, sent him to a prominent theatrical school called Hurtwood House, where, alongside contemporaries such as the coming star Emily Blunt, he set about catching the eye of visiting agents.
One assumes that he must now feel the burden of expectation that comes with his surname, but he can hardly have been aware of the significance of the Huston dynasty when appearing in Peter Pan. "Well, yes, I didn't really understand it then. I was very young and, I guess, didn't really know what a film director was. So I think it must just be in my blood. I just got up and became Peter Pan, and that was it."
Things have begun happening for Huston. In 2005 he appeared in a nippy little thriller called Neighborhood Watch, and last year he was seen in a small role in Factory Girl, the fitful biopic of Edie Sedgwick. He recently came to accept the inevitable and moved to Los Angeles, where he spends his idle hours painting and writing.
Shrooms, though proudly low budget, marks a significant step forward in Huston's career. This is his first lead role in a feature film. "We all pitched in, knowing there wasn't a lot of money," he says. "We all had our little apartments, but we were working a lot of the time. My girlfriend would come over, and we would go on elaborate holidays to the most exotic parts of Ireland. But it was hard work. There is a real sense of everybody pitching in."
Though there is a supernatural element, the film is largely taken up with adventures in psilocybin abuse. It would, I guess, be useful for the actors to experience such trips themselves. Then again, that would be very dangerous and mildly illegal. Huston doesn't miss a beat. "Well, everyone has been asking me that," he says. "I would have thought that would be the worst idea possible. Mind you, Pearse Elliott [ who wrote the screenplay, as he did for Man About Dog] has had an experience or two. So we spoke to him, and he gave us a few clues. I don't think in the film we are wasted that much of the time. Or when we are we are shocked out of it quickly. Acting wasted does not always look that good on screen anyway."
And it just would be so undignified. Jack is, you remember, a man with two shades of blue blood intermingled in his veins.
Shrooms is on general release