Lance Henriksen talks Near Dark & Bishop knife trick

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Like many of you guys out there one of my absolute top genre movie actors is the amazing Lance Henriksen. The man has been in more classic flicks than perhaps Jeffrey Combs and Tony Todd combined! Maybe not Kane Hodder and Robert Englund, but you get the point.

Recently, Henriksen sat down with AV Club for an epic interview on most of his classic roles, including my personal favorites of the bunch, NEAR DARK and Bishop from ALIENS. Henriksen goes on at length on NEAR DARK and then adds a fun bit on his ability to do Bishop's knife trick from the James Cameron classic.

You can read through Henricksen's quotes below and then let us know what you think of Mr. Henrikson and what your favorite role of his is on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram! 

Lance Henriksen on NEAR DARK:

Yeah, I loved doing that movie. We were a real family. Billy Paxton was in it, Jenette Goldstein, and all these people. It was a great movie to work on. Kathryn Bigelow was my first experience with a female director, and it was great. It was a real matriarchal situation.

But we all loved doing it. The minute we finished that film, I remember Billy and I standing in the middle of the road, and it was literally the very last shot of the movie, and we both had the feeling right away that we should do the prequel right away. Like, we should start it right now. And we would’ve. If they’d said, “Let’s go, let’s do it.” We would’ve gone. But they never did.

We had the whole story. Billy and I sat for hours after hours talking about it, about what could be in it and that kind of stuff. It was great.

Henriksen on doing the Bishop knife trick:

Yeah! A cop pulled me over at one point—this was really funny—and he tapped on the window, and then he looked down at me and said, “Bishop!” And he said, “Do the knife trick!” [Laughs.] Yeah, I’ve been asked to do that about a million times.

Did he still get a ticket?

No. He said, “Get out of here. Just don’t do that in front of me."

Lance Henriksen can be seen next in the upcoming short film adaptation of Stephen King's short story ONE FOR THE ROAD. Release date TBD. Until then you can read the whole Henriksen interview right HERE.