Brad Davis

The Sweat of Istanbul

Brad Davis walked into Alan Parker's office with the look of someone with nothing to lose. It was 1977, and the director was looking for an unknown to star in Midnight Express. Davis not only landed the role but poured everything he had into that shoot in Malta.

That success was a trap.

The film cost $2.4 million and grossed fifty times that amount worldwide. But the intensity Davis projected on screen alarmed Los Angeles producers. They believed the actor was genuinely crazy or that his drug use made him impossible to control on a movie set.

In 1978, he won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year. Yet the major studios did not come knocking with million-dollar contracts. They preferred more docile, less raw profiles than that kid from Florida who seemed capable of biting the camera.

The Shadow of Fassbinder

Davis chose to break from the norm and sought refuge in projects other actors would have turned down for fear of damaging their image. In 1982, he agreed to work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder on Querelle. It was a suffocating shoot loaded with sexual symbolism that sealed his fate in commercial American film.

Nobody knew what to do with him.

The film was an absolute box office flop on release, and critics tore it apart without mercy. Davis played a sailor in a dreamlike, violent setting that defied every convention of the era. That creative decision permanently removed him from casting lists for big-budget action blockbusters.

And the gamble paid off artistically. Over the following decades, the film became a case study in film schools across Europe. But in the immediate reality of the 1980s, the actor had to settle for supporting TV roles and low-budget stage plays.

The Eighties Secret

In 1985, Davis's life changed away from the spotlight when he received an HIV-positive diagnosis. He kept the secret for six years out of fear he would never step on a movie set again. At that time, Hollywood studios dropped anyone linked to the illness from their payrolls.

He kept working quietly.

He appeared in productions such as Rosalie Goes Shopping in 1989 and took TV movie roles to pay his medical bills. His physical appearance began to deteriorate, but he blamed it on stress or on preparing for his characters. Only his closest circle knew the battle he fought every morning before the cameras started rolling.

Davis died on September 8, 1991 at his Los Angeles home from an assisted overdose. His last credited work was the TV movie The Habitation of Dragons, released in 1992. He left a note denouncing that in the film industry, if you were sick, you simply stopped existing as far as contracts were concerned.