For many 1987’s The Princess Bride is considered one of the greatest films of all time. Featuring a multitude of quotable lines, sword fights, a princess, an evil prince, a handsome pirate who promises to do "as you wish" and yes, some kissing - 25 years later it stands the test of time. It will be a film that our grand kids will share with their grand kids.

For Chris Sarandon, who portrayed the vile Prince Humperdink in the film, it is one of the highlights of a long and storied career.

"I feel so blessed and fortunate to have been a part of it. I had a history with the book that the screenplay was adapted from. I was crazy about the book, I read it some 15 years or so earlier and had been an enormous fan of it. It was owned by a number of people over the years including Robert Redford who tried to get it done and was unsuccessful. When I heard they were doing it I was ecstatic, to actually be in it... those chances don’t come along very often in life where something that you are a huge fan of you get to be part of. For it to have this kind of afterlife is a blessing."

Sarandon chatted with GayCalgary Magazine recently looking back on his stellar career in advance of appearing at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, running April 26th to 28th. Sarandon is one of those actors who has probably been in something you love, from horror films to TV series, so it is exciting to have him in Calgary.

"I always have a wonderful time meeting fans. It is always a revelatory experience for me in a lot of ways. I have worked a lot in the theatre so I get a chance to interact in a less direct way but you have a sense of there being an exchange with an audience. When you are working in movies and television you don’t have that sense of feedback or get to meet one on one. So these events are just wonderful in that respect, you get to experience the thrill that people get from watching your work. Also the idea that very often what one does as an entertainer means something to people on a level that is just a little bit beyond making them laugh. Somehow they associate you with moments in their lives, the things they were doing when they saw you, experiences they shared with their friends or family or lovers. It is an extraordinary experience in a lot of ways. I am very much looking forward to it."

Often it is as much a reunion for the media guests as it is a chance for fans to meet those they have followed for years. Sarandon will be joined by Cary Elwes, who played Westley in The Princess Bride.

"I have seen him a couple of times over the past year. A few months ago the New York Film Festival did a screening tribute to Princess Bride. We were all there – Carol Kane, Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Cary. Last spring E Magazine did a reunion issue and got all of us together for an extraordinary photograph. The only people missing were those that have passed away, Andre and Peter Falk. It is great to see Cary, he is such an entertaining guy. He is one of the funniest human beings alive, he has a great ear for voices, is an amazing mimic and impressionist extraordinaire. It is always a great time."

Sarandon has fond memories of working with Andre The Giant, who played Fezzik.

"Andre was one of the dearest, sweetest human beings to walk the face of the earth. That is not an exaggeration. He was just the loveliest gentlest man imaginable. He was a man of prodigious appetite to say the least. He could put away a tremendous amount of food and he wasn’t an alcoholic by any stretch of the imagination but he had an enormous size and it took a lot to put a dent into Andre’s capacity to drink. Sadly he was in a lot of pain a lot of the time from wrestling injuries and as a result of his condition...he never complained about it.  He was one of the most unique characters I’ve ever been around in my life. It wasn’t really intimidating. I didn’t have any history of being a wrestling fan but I knew who he was just from the world of celebrity, everyone knew who Andre the Giant was. I knew what he did and his history. What was intimidating at the beginning was just the massive size of him, there was no way to comprehend it until you met him. Two of my hands made up one of his, when you put your hand in his you got a sense of his enormous size and power. His power was somewhat compromised by him being injured so often. In the end of the picture when Buttercup is thrown to the ground to the horses and they all ride off together, she had to be wired because Andre couldn’t bear her full weight. The scenes where he was carrying people and picking things up, he was in enormous pain much of the time."

When I was a child we had a sleepover at a friend’s house, and watched movies all night. One of the films was 1985’s Fright Night. I was 8, my brother was 6 and it sparked a long love of horror films. Watching Sarandon as vampire Jerry Dandridge probably wasn’t the best choice for a 5 year old, and my brother now threatens to show the film to our friends’ kids. It is these connections with what actors do that Sarandon loves. Although different in tone, Sarandon explained there were actually many similarities between Fright Night and The Princess Bride.

"It isn’t so drastically different in that it was made in much the same way. I am comparing apples and oranges here but when I first read the script I remember vividly when I got it. I had no inkling what it was about, just that it was a vampire movie and would I be interested? I thought, I am classically trained and doing television specials and films. I was not predisposed to like the script, but I sat down to read it and I couldn’t put it down. After I finished it I said, this is a great fucking script. I got in touch with Tom Holland who was the writer-director and he wanted me to come out to California and meet with them. I sat down with Tom and thought he was a first time director who was directing his own script, does he have the skill to pull this off? Tom literally talked through the entire script and described it to me shot by shot. When he was finished I said, when do we start? He was obviously totally in command of what he wanted to do. He put together a cast that was perfectly suited to the material. It was two terrific scripts, two directors that were masters of the craft and who knew exactly what they wanted to do when they made the movie. You had the sense from the beginning that the tone of the movie was correct in both The Princess Bride and Fright Night. We sat around and discussed the characters, did biographies, discussed relationships, it was a joyful experience. The only thing uncomfortable was some of the makeup was tough and the contact lenses were primitive to say the least. But it was the same with Princess Bride, it was cold at times, but the rewards were many - we had a great time. In fact I am still close friends with almost all the people from Fright Night, we hang out and tell the same jokes and fall into the same patterns of ragging each other. We laugh a lot. That is very much the case with The Princess Bride group as well. We were on location for 6 to 8 weeks and ate together and hung out together."

Fans of the original film got a fun surprise when Sarandon had a cameo in the 2011 remake starring Colin Farrell.

"That was great fun too. Interestingly Colin Farrell was a huge fan of Fright Night when he was younger, he told me he had watched it 50 times. He couldn’t have been more generous or happy to see me on the set and was thrilled I was doing the cameo. They had gotten in touch with me and I thought it would be fun to have the new Jerry consume the old Jerry as it were and pass the torch. I had a great time doing that one as well."

Another cult classic horror film featuring Sarandon was Child’s Play. The popular My Buddy toys suddenly seemed less appealing after watching the 1988 film about a killer brought to life in a child’s toy.

"(The idea of kids seeing my horror movies) boggles my mind. Alex Vincent who was the boy in Child’s Play and was 5 or 6 years old was a horror movie freak. He had watched Fright Night like 10 times. I kept saying to him, who let you sit down and watch this?!  He said, my parents we watched it all the time and had a great time. Child’s Play was a Tom Holland movie as well and it is brilliant in my mind to create a movie about a doll that comes to life which is probably every child’s dream/nightmare. You are lying in your bed or crib at night and you are looking at one of your toys and it comes to life...talk about a fright night."

A discussion of Chris Sarandon’s career would not be complete without talking about 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. The stop motion animated film featured Sarandon as the voice of Jack Skellington. Providing a voice for animation offered new and different challenges compared to acting on screen.

"They had already animated some of the songs so I had the opportunity to see the character in action - albeit singing not speaking - and seen the storyboards. I had seen the sets they were shooting on in this excruciatingly slow process of stop motion animation. So I had the sense that the work I was going to do had to be heightened in a way, because if it wasn’t then you aren’t going to come up to snuff to the characters on screen. The vividness of the visuals has to be matched by the vividness of the voice, there is no way you could play it in a low key naturalistic way. It has to have a certain kind of heightened reality. It was very different. They shot in San Francisco. I would go up once every three or four months and record a scene and they would animate it and it would take three or four months. I would go back every three or four months until the whole movie was filmed and animated. The artfulness of those animators is just one of the great miracles of the world. When you look at that movie the originality, the visual jokes, the vividness of the characters to me it is an extraordinary work of art."