Garret Dillahunt plays weirdos and monstrous sons of bitches, with the occasional son of God thrown in. He's best known for his work on TV: on the HBO series Deadwood, he killed Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and then, after he had been brought to justice for that terrible act, the show's creator, David Milch, ordered that he be shaved, have his wardrobe upgraded, and be brought back as a new character, one "Mr. W", who used his time off from his job fronting for a cutthroat capitalist villain to carve up the staff of a whorehouse. Dillahunt also played Jesus on the short-lived The Book of Daniel and currently plays a killer robot on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In movies, he was in No Country for Old Men (as Tommy Lee Jones's deputy) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, where his character paid the price for Robert Ford's taking so goddamn long to get the assassination carried out. Now he's the chief sadistic rapist-murderer in the remake of Wes Craven's gutbucket classic The Last House on the Left. Under the citcumstances, it seems reasonable that interviewer Choire Sicha would want some reassurances that he isn't the kind of guy who takes his work home with him. "You know," Dillahunt says, "I don't think I am! There wouldn't be much craft in it if you actually become those people. I like feeling like I have some skill."
Then again..."I'm real proud of it," Dillahunt says of Last House, "which is an odd thing to be proud of. I'm proud of this rape-and-pillage movie. There are reasons that I consciously did the thing -- but there's something about that basic story that is speaking to people, and I think did to me when I read the script. And I think it's because the job situation is getting weird, people feel so powerless right now. People feel like they've been raped by -- fill in the blank, the economy, 9/11. Wes Craven last night called 9/11 the ultimate home invasion. Not meaning to be glib -- but that feeling of violation we all had. People are really responding to the film in a visceral way -- and I think it gives them some release. I kind of feel like it will defend itself. Wow, I got so deep there."
As for his TV work, Dillahunt says that he "get[s] recognized more" since he started doing Terminator, because the killer robot is -- "one of the first characters I played that looks like me," adding that "there's a lot of Terminator fans out there, which belies the ratings!" He credits David Milch and Deadwood for "changing the way I view material. . . . What made Deadwood special killed it, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. For anything! And I owe a lot to that experience. Spiritually. Praise the Lord! I do that too. I get embarrassed about waxing on and I cut myself off at the knees. That's a nice little trait there, FYI." Getting cut off at the knees would be the nicest thing he does to his Last House co-star Sari Paxton, but "I've worked with her before. I was happy about that at first. Then I thought maybe it's a bad thing -- you don't do this to friends! But she was so game and tired of playing mermaids..."