I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.
I love the idea of playing something stupid or romantic. I'm not the smartest man in the room. I listen, and I learn, and I observe, but I'm always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That's great fun, even though it's as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.
I'm always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That's great fun, even though it's as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.
[ Stephen Strange] is less strange than other characters I've played. He's lost the power to love, which doesn't make him a nasty person. I just think he's closed-off.
Even the cerebral characters I play seem to have physical quirks. They're all "physically inhabited," for lack off a better expression. For instance, Sherlock Holmes has very particular physical gestures which are drawn out in such detail.
I've never been front and centre as an iconic American character [like in Doctor Strange]. Day to day, you know you're painting on a very big canvas.
Even though Doctor Strange is an established character, when you're doing an origin story there's a lot of room for manoeuvre.
If I'm playing someone who's smart, suddenly every character I've played is smart. If I'm playing a bad guy, every character is a bad guy. I suppose it's that thing where people want to see a through-line to understand you. I mean, you know, I have played pretty ordinary people too.
Scott Derrickson breathes humour into a character with a very strong identity in the '60s and '70s, that psychedelia era of Eastern mysticism meeting the West.
Doctor Strange is an origin story so there's a certain room for me improving as well as the character improving.
I'm quite surprised by how many people grew up with this character [Doctor Strange ].
I'm sad in a way that the character [Doctor Strange ] leaves [neurosurgery] behind. It's an amazing discipline.
It's an interesting arc. You start with a character [Doctor Strange] who's likeable and charming but very arrogant and distant. He's funny but you can see there are massive holes in his life. It's a very painful transition and all that he becomes is tested so quickly and violently.
I don't wear a mask, I don't have a suit. It's not some CG double or a stunt double. The suffering the character [Doctor Strange ] goes through is immense!
Those are more universal things than some of the characters I play, who are slightly sociopathic. I keep reminding people I can do ordinary.
One of the first roles I had on stage was with a brilliant director in a brilliant play with a brilliant cast, but I just couldn't find my way into the heart of the character. I found myself straining a lot. When it started. I felt lost. That was the Eugène Ionesco play Rhinoceros. I don't think I was prepared for that. I don't think I had the full tool kit to do it justice. It's a very difficult play, it's an extraordinarily difficult part, and I never felt I really got it right. Far from it. To a degree, Hamlet was the same.
Why this character [Doctor Strange] is being introduced, to open up the next chapter. A
I had to imagine myself into certain aspects of [Julian Assange] character for our version of events. That involved extrapolating based on clues in his biography, his public persona, photographs, and other accounts of him by people who encountered him during that extraordinary period from 2007 to 2010 that we charted in the film [The Fifth Estate]. So, it involved a lot of research but, sadly, no contact with the man himself.
I'd love to do a noir. I think Steve McQueen is so cool. But a classic film is a classic film, and perhaps the fantasy of being those characters should be left alone. You're treading on very thin ice.
[Doctor Strange] is a really rich character. It's an easy thing to have a good old meal every day. It's great. Yeah, I'm excited.
[Role of Dr.Strange] gives me an excuse as an actor to be learning with my character, which is something you can do authentically - I'm not a martial arts expert, I'm certainly no sorcerer, so all these things, the movement of the body, the physicality, the changes he goes through mentally and physically, obviously we're not shooting in sequence, but it's a great part.
I think the characters are supposed to be an open book, blank canvas.
I've gone up two suit sizes. The character I'm playing, he's strong, I can say that much. I've changed my physique a bit, so that requires eating like a foie gras goose, well beyond your appetite. Providing I don't feel too ill, I then work out two hours a day with a phenomenal trainer. It's the L.A. way.
I always get self-conscious about what I look like in a film, but less so if I'm a character very far removed from who I am. Then I just worry about the performance, and that's equally an odd experience.
