All In a Vijay Day: Filming with snakes, James Bond & Wimbledon 5-setter

Many tennis players have done cool things like meeting royal families, hanging out with global celebrities and spending time with the best athletes in the world. But it is unlikely another ATP Tour star will join Vijay Amritraj as an actor in a James Bond film.

Amritraj, who on Saturday will be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, played Vijay in the 1983 film Octopussy starring Roger Moore.

“I think I said yes to the audition, because [producer] ‘Cubby’ [Albert Broccoli] and [his daughter] Barbara asked me at Wimbledon. I said I’d do it only because who could say they played at Wimbledon in the afternoon and worked at Pinewood in the morning? I don't think anyone has ever done that and I don't know if anyone will,” Amritraj told ATPTour.com. “So that was kind of an off-the-cuff reason I said yes. And strangely, I did audition with James Brolin from the fantastic series called Hotel way back when, which he was a star in. And so they flew him in from London to do the screen test with me at Pinewood.

“It was awesome, because it's exactly the same scene, the crew created the entire set accordingly.”

The scene was set to include snakes. Director John Glen asked Amritraj, “How long will it take for you to get used to the snake?”

Amritraj replied: “Listen, I do not want to meet the snakes 'til the day of the shoot. So forget about giving me a week's time to get used to the snakes.”

When it came time for Amritraj’s moment of truth with the snakes, the Indian legend asked the snake charmer, “So you've taken out all the poison from this snake?”

The snake charmer replied: “Yeah, most of it”.

Amritraj was stunned. The charmer told him they always left a little bit of the venom in the snake. In disbelief, he asked a simple question. “Why would you do that?”

“He handed it over to someone else. And he said, 'Well, if you take out all the poison the snake dies, so you need to have some poison. You just have to be careful.' I said, 'Seriously?’” Amritraj said. “And the next thing I know I'm carrying this basket around with the snake looking right at me from here. It was one of those classic moments of adrenaline like at 30/40, 5-4.”

Glen, who passed along his congratulations to a man he called his “dear friend”, recalled that moment.

“Vijay was cast in the James Bond film ‘Octopussy’ to play Bond’s aide in Udaipur, India,” Glen told ATPTour.com. “On his initial interview at Pinewood Studios, Vijay admitted to his fear of snakes so I arranged for a snake handler to attend the meeting complete with pythons. We were assured that the pythons had been milked of their venom prior to their being handled. I don’t think Vijay was totally convinced. However, like the terrific professional that he is, he overcame his natural instincts and got on with playing the role of snake charmer.”

In a classic scene in the film, Amritraj drove a tuk-tuk with Bond (Moore) in the back. It was a busy area and the villains were after them. Vijay at one point took some swipes at the bad guys with his tennis racquet.

“It took three days to film that one minute or two-minute scene and [there were] accidents galore,” Amritraj recalled. “There were 2,500 extras all over the place. And I'm driving in a souped-up tuk-tuk, and there was another one by the side of me. And then there was a policeman in the middle. And then there were two of them with cameras going in the front. I don't know how we didn't die, basically.”

Glen said: “Later when we came to film the scene in Udaipur, the snakes decided they didn’t like the heat produced by our arc lights and decided to make a run for it. Vijay’s fear of snakes evaporated and he joined in with us all grabbing the reptiles and placing them back in the basket as fast as they left… A true pro!”

^{Vijay Amritraj competing at Wimbledon in 1982. Photo: Getty Images.}
According to Amritraj, the production team asked him to take on the role in 1981, he filmed it in 1982 and the movie was released in 1983. He said he filmed once in the morning during Wimbledon and played Roscoe Tanner in the afternoon at The Championships. Amritraj lost the match in five sets.

“I think the really amazing part of it was, after I signed on for the picture, which was going to be shot in 1982, I think I was to do 14 weeks on the picture. But 14 weeks, I said, ‘Listen, I'm on Tour here, I'm flying all over the world, so you're going to have to give me time off in between’. But in movies, they cannot do that, because insurance doesn't cover you when you leave the site,” Amritraj said. “They made a special exemption with me. And I would work for two weeks and went off and played three tournaments and came back and did two weeks and then went off for two more tournaments.

“It was one of those things that is very, very hard for them to do, [but] they did. The fun part was when the movie was going to come out in the summer of ’83 and they had the major premiere, held in Leicester Square in London and with the Royal Premiere with Princess Diana and Prince Charles. We were going to be introduced to them obviously, prior to the movie, and every tennis player wanted to get to that film.”

Amritraj recalls that many of his peers attended, including John McEnroe. The premiere was the week before Wimbledon began and there was a “huge, huge response” to the film. There were massive crowds of fans at the premiere, which helped build the excitement.

“When that moment came in the movie when I died, a guy jumped up from the back of the row in the cinema and said, 'I'm in! I'm in!’” Amritraj remembered. “He was a lucky loser in the qualifying and he thought I died so he was going to get into the tournament.”

The player was Bruce Kleege, who had lost in the third round of qualifying. Kleege did not receive a lucky loser spot because Amritraj “died”, but he received a lucky loser spot because of another player’s withdrawal.

“When I died in the movie he just jumped up in the theater. He was besides himself that he was going to get into the tournament. All the tennis players got the joke, except everyone else in the cinema [did not],” Amritraj said. “That movie was special from a variety of fronts, because for the first time Eon Productions, the production house of the big picture, I was playing with a Donnay racquet and they created this incredible Donnay poster with all my scenes with Roger Moore inside the Donnay poster. There were lots of incredible firsts for it.”

As Amritraj discussed the film, he smiled from ear to ear thinking back to his days as an acting star more than 40 years ago. It was a special year — not only did Vijay star in a James Bond film, but his son, Prakash Amritraj, was born later that year.

“I can never forget what I learned from it and how much I enjoyed being part of it,” Amritraj said. “Roger was such a magnificent man. He was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.”