For the new issue of Another Man, Hollywood’s favourite oddball Crispin Glover opened the doors to his baroque chateau in the wilds of the Czech Republic for a personal guided tour...
“I’ve never had an addictive personality apart from when it comes to sugar. My mother was a relatively good cook but I was basically raised on a meat and sugar diet, and I became easily addicted to sugar… well, I don’t know if addicted is exactly the right word but I liked it a lot.
When I was 18 years old I would eat 3 Musketeers bars, Aunt Jemima bars and Hostess Ding Dongs followed by a Coca Cola. And, you know, I got a little bit heavy; I could see it in the first films I did. And then I got two films in a row that I needed to lose weight for and so I started eating macrobiotic food, which is a non-sugar diet developed by a Japanese man called Michio Kushi. I soon noticed that a Japanese breakfast is kind of similar to a macrobiotic lunch; a macrobiotic eats a lot of brown rice which the Japanese ate traditionally before it changed over to white rice. I stuck to a macrobiotic diet pretty strictly from 1983 until 2003.
"I’m not one of those people who will never eat meat. I agree that we shouldn’t be cruel to animals but I really like foie gras!"
Now I mainly eat a raw food diet. I’m not a scientist but from my understanding I think that stomach acids are made specifically for digesting cooked food. There is nutrition in cooked food but there’s also dead material that will kill the body if it’s not broken down as quickly as possible. Raw food has enzymes in it which help the stomach to digest: it doesn’t send out the same signal as cooked food to make those acids… again, I haven’t talked to a scientist about this and they might say that what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense but I think there’s something in it.
That said, I don’t like to be a raw food or even vegan advocate. I kind of hate hearing people talk about that stuff and I’m not one of those people who will never eat meat. I agree that we shouldn’t be cruel to animals but I really like foie gras! It’s delicious but I only eat it every once in a while when I’m in a fine dining restaurant. I‘m sure there is something good about the vitamins that we get from the liver…”
For the new issue of Another Man, Hollywood’s favourite oddball Crispin Glover opened the doors to his baroque chateau in the wilds of the Czech Republic for a personal guided tour. Here, in an exclusive online interview, the cult star of Back to the Future, Charlie’s Angels and Alice in Wonderland mulls over his very special dietary requirements.
Crispin Glover’s Big Slide Show will be at the BFI Southbank in March 2013 followed by a full UK tour.
Text by Ben Cobb
