A Break From a Career as a Psycho: A ‘Normal’ Role for Brad Dourif

Since his Oscar-nominated turn as mental patient Billy in 1975’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Brad Dourif has made a career playing offbeat characters.

He was a psycho anarchist in “Ragtime,” a psycho bigot in “Mississippi Burning,” and a psycho inhabited by the devil in “The Exorcist III.” He also was the voice of the psycho doll Chucky in “Child’s Play” and “Child’s Play 2.”

Dourif finally gets to play a regular guy in “Hidden Agenda,” the acclaimed political thriller set in Belfast, Northern Ireland. “It was nice to be chosen to do that--play someone normal. For some reason they wanted me.”

Dourif portrays American attorney Paul Sullivan, a member of the International League for Civil Liberties, who is murdered when he meets a man who has damaging evidence against the British.

“We shot for three days in Northern Ireland,” he says. “I was impressed by a lot of things there.”

Especially the graffiti art. “It is the the most impressive I have ever seen,” Dourif says. “Murals cover both sides of buildings. Some had writing on them. It was pretty esoteric.”

“Hidden Agenda” marks the fourth film in which Dourif has appeared this year. “They (movies) come in spurts,” he says. “There was a point I was doing three movies at the same time. It was pretty intense.”

Dourif doesn’t think “Hidden Agenda” will change his image: “Sooner or later, I will do something that somebody will take a chance on me. You have to teach the industry.”

Now 40, Dourif says that he wasn’t ready for the success of “Cuckoo’s Nest”: “It certainly changed my career and my life enormously. But I wasn’t prepared. It scared me a lot. I didn’t have a good time. I didn’t know how to handle it. Some people are really equipped to be successful and some are not. Now, I would be delighted.”