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‘There is no cure for grief’: Tim Roth on losing his son after making a film about bereavement

The star had just finished shooting Poison, about parents torn apart by grief, when his own son died. He remembers their last days together – and what truths he learned from the darkly moving film

Photograph: Sébastien Nogier/EPAPoison, a directorial debut by Désirée Nosbusch, casts Roth and Trine Dyrholm as an estranged couple who reunite a decade after the death of their son, who must be exhumed because toxins are leaking into the cemetery. His first break was the 1982 television play Made in Britain, which cast Roth as a racist skinhead and brought leading roles in Tom Stoppard’s 1990 Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Robert Altman’s 1990 biopic Vincent & Theo and as Mr Orange in Quentin Tarantino ’s Reservoir Dogs. Photograph: Cinetext Bildarchiv/Rank Film/AllstarThe next time I speak to Roth is over Zoom from New York, where he is making a “comedyish” film set on Staten Island in the run-up to the January 6 Capitol attack.

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