So the team effort thing and being part of an ensemble cast was much more of a true feeling in Hellboy and Hellboy II – especially in Hellboy II because in this sequel Abe is much more a part of the team and we all go on the adventure together, whereas in the first movie I was this one-note intellect, sort of clairvoyant character that was useful, but once I got hurt, you lost me for the last third of the movie. We lost him in the first movie, played by John Hurt, who did a beautiful job. And he’s also risen up to be the brains of the operation in the absence of Professor Broom in Part Two. He’s a brother-in-law like annoyance to Liz Sherman. So that was a completely different psyche to crawl into than Abe Sapien’s, who is very much a team player. ![]() He’s got all this angst and, you know, he made this sacrifice that put him into a life of lonely service. Yeah, the Silver Surfer is very much a loner. I have now decided that if Guillermo asked me to take a dump on film, I will take that dump with the full confidence that he will turn it into some amazing piece of art that we will be discussing this time next year. My involvement was simply brought to me by Guillermo, telling me that no one else could play the Faun, ‘Pan’, and that he needed me to also play the Pale Man, as he said, “In my sick mind, one is a creation or an extension of the other, so I need you to do both.” This film has become the most career-defining and most meaningful to me personally, as it was such gifted and unique storytelling that I was so honored to be a part of it. ![]() That’s why he loves to do smaller indie films between his big ones, and that’s why he was at the Oscars with six nominations for Pan’s Labyrinth. When you let a genius create a masterpiece without over-processing it, this is what can happen. When doing an indie film, Guillermo has so much more creative freedom and control over his own product. The difference between these two films is that Hellboy was a big American studio film, and Pan’s Labyrinth was a smaller budgeted foreign film done independently. I know Doug Jones!” And he pulled my card out of his wallet. Earlier that day, Mike Elizalde, Steve Wang, and sculptor Jose Fernandez stepped back from the maquette, looked at Guillermo, and one of them said, “That looks like Doug Jones.” Guillermo replied with, “Doug Jones… Doug Jones…. They had just been talking about me while looking at the approved design for Abe Sapien for the first Hellboy movie. Well, five years later, I received another call from the wonderful Spectral Motion creature-effects shop. ![]() He asked me for my card and stuck it in his wallet. At lunch time that second day, he sat across the table from me and asked me all kinds of questions about my history acting in creature suits and make-ups, wondering which make-up artists’ work I had worn. As I listed off most of the big make-up names in Hollywood, Guillermo turned into a geek fanboy in my very presence, telling me how much he loved all their work, while also filling me in on his own history, getting started as a creature-effects make-up artist in Mexico. This was his first big American studio film. So, there I was, donning this outfit and working for a total of three days on Mimic. It wasn’t until the second day that I met our director, a jolly Mexican man with bright, inquisitive eyes named Guillermo del Toro. One afternoon in 1997 I was called by a creature-effects make-up shop, asking if I could come downtown that same night for a night shoot on a movie called Mimic. Apparently, the film had been shot in Toronto, but they were now doing re-shoots here in Los Angeles, and the tall, skinny fellow they had in the insect-man mutant costume was still in Canada.
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