Why Bob Hoskins Was Never The Same After Who Framed Roger Rabbit

The complicated method by which Who Framed Roger Rabbit presented the animated and the real-world together on screen required almost two years of work, stretched the boundaries of physical film technology, and demanded much of its actors. Being the lead and the one who performed the most interaction with the animated characters, Bob Hoskins bore the greatest of these demands. 

The live-action footage of Who Framed Roger Rabbit was shot first, since director Robert Zemeckis insisted it be captured like any other live-action production — with dynamic camera movement and lighting rather than the static framing and one-dimensional lighting often seen in animated films for the sake of simplicity and cost reduction. This meant that Hoskins had to perform all his scenes opposite nothing — rubber mock-up puppets were used for rehearsing and blocking scenes, but cameras started rolling, he was almost completely on his own. (Charles Fleischer was standing off-set feeding him Roger Rabbit's dialogue while wearing a full-size Roger Rabbit costume he insisted be made for him to help get into character. It was a weird and wild production, guys.)

During a time before CGI, green screens, and wire-strung tennis balls were ubiquitous when mixing live-action with animation, this demand was extremely unique. To properly prepare for the undertaking, Hoskins spent a lot of time playing with his daughter. She was very young in the late '80s (Who Framed Roger Rabbit began filming in November 1986) and had an invisible friend named Jeffrey. As Hoskins played with her and observed how she crafted this imaginary pal, he learnt how to "hallucinate."

Hoskins went into filming with this honed skill and used it at will. The behind-the-scenes documentary The Making of Who Framed Roger Rabbit features several crew members remarking on Hoskins' incredible ability to follow sightlines correctly, focus his sight on empty points in space, and nail exactly how the planned orchestration of picking up and touching the animated characters in take after take without fail. And if we're to believe Hoskins outright, he really did see them there, and was, in his own mind, truly interacting with them. 

Once filming on Who Framed Roger Rabbit concluded, trouble came. Hoskins has said he was able to maintain control of the skill he'd given himself for some time, but after eight months of filming, that control began to degrade. He eventually began seeing cartoon rabbits and weasels everywhere for many months after Who Framed Roger Rabbit wrapped shooting. Hoskins revealed to The Express back in 2009, "I think I went a bit mad doing that. Lost my mind ... The trouble was, I learnt how to hallucinate. You do that for eight months it becomes hard to get rid of. I went to this one do where I got talking to a very country lady with a big hat and there was this weasel in her hat." 

Funny as that sounds, it has to be quite terrifying to live through. Doctors told him to take just a few months off, but Hoskins decided not to work again for an entire year after Who Framed Roger Rabbit; those releases after his return to working were Heart Condition and Mermaids in 1990. As the years went by, Hoskins noted that he didn't want to step back into Eddie Valiant's shoes, which is just one of the many reasons why Who Framed Roger Rabbit never got a sequel.