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The Bruce
Payne D&D Interview
Monday, 19th February 2001 The Following Interview has come direct from the AOL website. Veteran stage and screen actor, Bruce Payne stepped into the Hollywood limelight playing a charming terrorist opposite Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57. That charismatic performance led to a series of villainous roles, and now he has swapped a gun for a sword in the big screen version of the most famous roleplaying game of them all, Dungeons & Dragons. Next he'll be seen clashing swords with Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul in Highlander: Endgame. We caught up with Bruce to talk to him about D&D, shooting in the Czech Republic, and playing an unusual villain. What attracted you initially to the film? It's incredibly seductive when you are personally tracked down by a director. In both Dungeon & Dragons and Highlander: Endgame, the directors actually wanted to speak to me first. Which is mindblowing - the industry, and the media, give this impression that when you've done a few films you are all of a sudden a multi-millionaire. It's not true at all; the fact of the matter is about 0.1 percent of actors really achieve that kind of success. When I read Dungeons & Dragons, I just thought 'Wow!' What a great opportunity to be involved in a really timeless genre. You don't really need to be a gamer to enjoy this story. It's a classic, medieval, wonderful journey of good vs evil. And how did you find the Eastern European locations? I think we were very fortunate on the shoot. A lot of the planning went very well, we were blessed with great weather in the Czech Republic. A lot of the physical locations were there, like the castles, which get you in the spirit of it. One of my favourite scenes is in a place called the Bone Chapel. It is a real bone chapel, that has existed ever since the plague. Someone came along at a later date and said "Wouldn't it be great to make this into a living work of art?" And they did. So the chandeliers that are in the shot are real skeletons. Piled in the background are these huge pyramids of skeletons - I'm talking 40,000 skeletons. And this was real. So it was an 'interesting' shoot then? Oh, fantastic. [Practical FX Supervisor] George Gibbs, in collaboration with the production designer, had to make a lot of these scenes physically work. There's a big swinging axe chamber, which Justin jumps between, and these were real! Would they slice you in half? No they wouldn't, but you'd have your ribs broken anyway - it would probably penetrate all the way through to the back of the spine, if you slipped! Then George made all these flames come out of nowhere at the right time, so they didn't end up with Justin or myself on the menu - wrapped between a baguette, a 'Baguette D'Amodar'... I was very thankful for that! Damodar is the latest in a line of villains for you. Would you rather play heroes? Not at all. I absolutely love it all. The only enemy of bad guys is a script that doesn't allow for three dimensions. It's like "Okay, he's here, we know he's dressed in black, and the music suddenly went 'dun-dun-duuuh'..." That's not very challenging. That is very much the undercurrent of the film community's bravery, as to how far they dare go with it. The more intrigue you have, of why and wherefore a supposed villainous character is motivated, the more you engage the intelligence of the audience. I think the intelligence of an audience is often not respected as much as it should be. If I had a wishlist, I'd love to play two heroes a year, two villains, and then maybe one comedy relief - but this business is a strange business, and sometimes if it's not broken don't fix it. Touch wood - it's been very good to me so far, and I'm very grateful for that. Damodar has a unique, almost physiological motivation in the film - and you have one scene in particular, with Zoe McLellan, which demonstrates that he's much more than a two-dimensional villain. Absolutely. It's unusual to show a supposedly very powerful mage, and very skilled warrior, to have a flaw and also to be persecuted by the very person he's actually serving - in this case I'm serving Profion. Or am I? Or am I actually doing it because I know in the end I actually have a chance of usurping this? Profion gives Damodar this horrible bug that grows and grows in his head... and that brings out this incredible pathetic side in the scene with Zoe. Or is it a vulnerable side? Or is it just all a big trick, pulling the wool over someone's eyes? That's the interesting thing that I felt about it, that it could just go on and on. We've heard a rumour that you might be up for the part of Albert Wesker, the bad guy in the Resident Evil movie. Is that true? It's an ongoing Internet rumour. I have been contacted, but there are so many different ways to skin a cat in this industry... if I ultimately end up playing Albert Wesker then fantastic - but I don't know what it tastes like yet. I haven't seen a script, but I've definitely been contacted. Have you got much experience of the Internet? Yes, it's fascinating. It allows me to try and get a picture of what people actually react to in a very big market. I think one of the old fashioned beliefs is that actors stay with actors, and cinematographers hang out with cinematographers, and they don't cross lines... life's too short. The Internet has really shown me that when an audience say certain things, it does mean something to the big bosses. |