Eric Roberts isn’t known for playing warm and fuzzy characters.
“The first thing you get to know when you get offered as many bad guys as I’ve been offered since ‘Star 80’ — it all started with them – is that bad guys do not see themselves that way,” said Roberts on Friday. He’s been in the Augusta area filming “Holy Father.”
In “Star 80,” Roberts played Paul Snider, the estranged husband of Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratton, who killed her and then himself in August 1980. He’s played mob bosses, thieves and various brands of villains over the years. He has the distinction of being the only non-U.K. actor to play The Master in the 1996 “Doctor Who” movie.
Roberts is one of Hollywood’s prolific actors with nearly 800 film, television and podcast roles. Plus, he has another 95 that IMDb lists as “upcoming.”
“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “There’s a lot of luck involved.”
Of that body of work, six films stand out to him — “Star 80,” “King of the Gypsies,” “Runaway Train,” “It’s My Party,” “Purgatory” and “Love’s A Gun.”
In “Holy Father,” Roberts plays a priest who teams up with a psychic to find and stop a supernatural killer in this horror/thriller. It’s the sequel to “Holy Ghost” that was released earlier this year.
Written and directed by Shravan Tiwari, “Holy Ghost” focused on a kidnapped girl who was returned by mysterious police officer. The trilogy will wrap up next year.
But don’t let the title fool you into thinking that it relates to his character. Roberts said the good father isn’t quite what you might think.
“It’s a role that is a dichotomy, my favorite thing. You see red. It’s actually blue; black is actually white. When I play these kinds of characters, I don’t play them on the nose. You don’t see them coming, and they are much more fun,” he said.
Tiwari said he’s enjoyed working with Roberts on the film.
“He’s a good guy to work with. We’re already trying to explore other genres” to work together in the future, he said.
Roberts said he’s definitely on board for another Tiwari film. He does, however, have one role he’d love to play during his career.
“The true story I’d love to play is (Rudolf) Nureyev when he stopped dancing, because he was such a misunderstood and lonely character throughout his life. Being a Russian who was homosexual, he was on the outs with all of society. It was a real issue for him, but he was one of the greatest artists of his kind to ever grace the stage,” he said.
But the film would have to focus on Nureyev’s life after dance.
“Because I can’t dance,” he said.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s won multiple Georgia Press Association awards, is the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award and was named Augusta Magazine’s best local writer in 2024 and 2025. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
