HE IS one of the rare gentlemen who can extinguish a candle flame with the flick of a bullwhip. But growing up in London in Ontario, Canada, Anthony De Longis always favored school plays over sports.
"I felt very awkward," recalls De Longis, who now divides his time between Canyon Country and Vancouver. "I was never particularly physically adept, and I realized as an actor, my physical instrument is a huge part of my storytelling vocabulary. So I set out to do something about it, and I found that I liked fencing very much. I was a fencing champion my senior year [in high school] in saber, which is the theatrical one, of course. It's very flamboyant!"
De Longis studied theater at Cal State Northridge, and after graduation, he began acting professionally -- alongside Richard Chamberlain in "Cyrano de Bergerac" and Charlton Heston in "Macbeth." But it wasn't until he saw 1981's "Zorro, the Gay Blade" that he first laid eyes on a bullwhip. "I went, 'Wow, that's the most theatrical thing I've ever seen. I've got to learn how to do this!' "
Since he couldn't afford lessons, he set about training himself and developed a signature style that he's since lent to Michelle Pfeiffer for "Batman Returns," Madeleine Stowe for "Bad Girls" and Harrison Ford for the very highly anticipated "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which hit theaters Thursday.
Thunder from Down Under: Whips date to 3000 BC in the Chinese and Egyptian cultures. Australian cowboys still use them to herd cattle.
"I get pretty much all of my whips from Australia, because it is a tool that they go out and work with, and their demands for an exceptional product are very high," says De Longis. "There are two arts to a whip. One is the cutting of the hide and the other is the braid. The best whips are made from kangaroo hide. You're able to cut it the smallest, and the smaller you cut it, the tighter you can braid it.
"A good whip has an inner braided core and then an outer smoothing leather bolster that wraps that inner braid and then an outer braiding. A good functioning whip is 12 plait. You'll get anywhere from a 4-foot whip to a 20-foot whip. Indiana Jones favors a 10-foot, short-handled American bullwhip style, which has become known as the Indiana Jones whip. I ordered those whips, and then I dyed them, and then I broke them in so they'd be ready for Harrison."
