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INTERVIEW: Richard Roxburgh from "Van Helsing"
By Thomas Chau in New York City In “Van Helsing,” writer/director Stephen Sommers resurrects some of the golden classic monsters from our generation, including werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster, and of course, let us not forget the vampires. But what monster movie would be complete without the grandest vampire of all? We all know and fear his name: Dracula. In this film where good is pitted against evil, Sommers chooses to have Count Dracula of Transylvania as the main villain in the fight versus Van Helsing. Dracula is one of Hollywood’s most famous monster villains, with a countless number of actors representing him in various movies in the past. In “Van Helsing,” Dracula is played by Richard Roxburgh, a veteran actor of the big screen in which he has co-starred in many blockbusters from the past several years, including “Mission: Impossible 2” and “Moulin Rouge.” At a press day promoting the movie, Roxburgh revealed that was always intrigued by Sommers’ script. “This script has its own sort of qualities of reinventing all of the various monster legends,” he said. “I think it was a matter of trying to find things that I could tap into that made sense to me, like the nature of frustration at finding yourself in a position of living forever and being sick of it. So there were some human qualities that I wanted to find and that helped.” Roxburgh also revealed that he had a little help in developing Dracula’s character. He said that he watched several of the old Dracula films by Universal, adding “I absolutely love Bela Lugosi’s Count [Dracula]. One thing to bear in mind in the sort of great history of Dracula is that almost without exception, their release has always been surrounded by controversy. Certainly, Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula was regarded as a B-movie piece of junk, whereas now, it has real luster and appeal to people. So I did look at Bela’s Count again because Steve was interested in pursuing a sense of the old Universal films. I thought it was kind of good to do that.” With his recent performances in “Moulin Rouge,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and now “Van Helsing,” Roxburgh has hung on a string of several villainous roles, explaining that in order to not be typecast, “there might be some sort of deep-seated psychological problem to do with not really wanting to be recognized outside of the work.” |
