The Walt Disney Pictures movie PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON...

The Walt Disney Pictures movie PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES will be released in theaters May 20, 2011. Here, Blackbeard (Ian McShane) points his sword. Credit: Peter Mountain / Disney Enterprises, Inc. /

Because "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" is a Disney movie, actor Ian McShane's Blackbeard curses a lot less than his famously foulmouthed Al Swearengen on HBO's "Deadwood." But he gets his sentiments across just the same. When the fiery-eyed Blackbeard calmly explains to Johnny Depp's character, "If I don't kill a man every now and then, they forget who I am," he's very clearly communicating, " ---- Jack Sparrow!"

That would be in keeping with the real-life Blackbeard's modus operandi, McShane says. The famed and oft-fictionalized 18th century English pirate "is such an iconic character, the most famous pirate of all, but he never actually killed anybody" in the course of his piracy, as far as historians can tell. "He just intimidated people."

McShane does a not-bad job of that himself on-screen, both here and in his best-known American works: "Deadwood," for which he won a 2005 Golden Globe Award as a brutal bar owner in the titular Old West town, and "Kings," NBC's 2009 Old Testament allegory, in which he served as absolute ruler of a fictional kingdom resembling the modern-day U.S.

Yet over the phone from London, where he was preparing to attend the "Pirates" premiere earlier this week with his wife of nearly 31 years, actress Gwen Humble, along with his son, his daughter and his daughter's three children, the 68-year-old is less swashbuckler than homebody. "I'll be going with the whole group tonight -- grandkids, children, it'll be lovely."

BACK IN THE DAY It's also quite a change from the hell-raiser he used to be -- getting drunk with Richard Burton, being the lover of legendary soft-porn star Sylvia Kristel of "Emmanuelle."

"That was the '60s and the '70s," McShane remembers fondly. "We all partied heartily for a long time, and then it came time to put away childish things. Richard would start off with vodka at breakfast, we'd have a drink, then we'd all be in the pub at lunchtime and carry on from there. Different times," he adds, without a hint of regret.

As for Kristel, the queen of Euro erotica after her 1974 signature film, there was a five-year romance, she wrote in her autobiography, having met McShane on the set of "The Fifth Musketeer" (1979) and living with him in Los Angeles, where she developed a cocaine habit. McShane, who married Humble in August 1980, remembers it as only "a year and a half -- that was it. That was one of those mad trips around the world and then, 'Thank you, darling, this has been great, I'll see you later, thank you.' "

 

A MAD TRIP McShane's 49-year career has been something of a mad trip around the world as well, from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to "Roots," from his lighthearted British TV show, "Lovejoy," to a 2007 Harold Pinter revival on Broadway. Like fellow "Stranger Tides" star Geoffrey Rush, he's a venerable English actor. Small wonder that Depp didn't target him with a whoopee cushion.

"Oh, he drove [director] Rob [Marshall] crazy with that!" McShane says of the star's on-set shenanigans. "He did that [practical joke] on one particular set, in the scene where he and I are downstairs in my cabin, and it has a remote, this one, it's wireless, so the sound comes from everywhere you could imagine!"

No doubt, Blackbeard wouldn't have stood for a whoopee cushion. No such fate awaits McShane, whose Blackbeard will appear in a filmed introduction to Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme-park ride, telling visitors, "Tales there be aplenty in this place."

McShane could say the same thing of his own house.

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