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Richard Roxburgh Interview - Q & A
by John Millar
Q: Are you a fan of monster movies?
A: Yeah I love in particular the old Universal ones. I love things that are in the same territory, like Klaus Kinski's Nosferatu. I like the dark, sad, kind of naïve, Germanic type of monster movie.
Q: Did Stephen Sommers say why he thought of you for Dracula?
A: He didn't really. I must ask him. The character physically is a long distance from me.
Q: So what's your transformation like?
A: It's a pretty significant physical transformation. There is obviously darker hair and I wanted a sense of a Romany king or leader, a faded aristocrat. I liked that gypsy element. So the character looks nothing like me.
Q: How long did all that take?
A: Not very long, it was a simple matter of hair and costume, thankfully there were no prosthetics. I can't bear that, it does my head in. You get prosthetic depression. If you have to spend six hours getting layers of latex pasted on you from 3.30 am and then the whole day inside that latex and then three hours at night taking it off, over three months that does your head in. Kevin J. O'Connor, who plays Igor, had a complete prosthetic face and Shuler who was Frankenstein's monster had to spend seven hours in make-up in the morning. He could only film three hours because they had to spend the rest of the day getting it taken off. I just sort of waltzed in and got my costume on. But I felt I had earned my stripes because I've done that prosthetic stuff.
Q: What was your preparation?
A: I read a lot. I started with Bram Stoker and then general studies of the Dracula and the vampire myth because it has its roots long before Bram Stoker. It goes back to Vlad The Impaler. There is something about the myth that arouses different fears in different people. So there was a lot of that sort of reading which I found interesting as I tried to locate how I would arrive at finding my own version of it. I tried very hard to sexualise his relationship with his Brides. They are stunning and one of them is my bride to be in real life. I'm marrying Silvia Colloca. We are marrying in September in Italy. So Stephen cast very well indeed.
Q: Was it one of those instant attractions?
A: Yeah it was really. No matter what this project will always be a treasured one for me because of this most fantastic thing. It was heaven sent. I have a huge family so I'm trying to spend as much of this year filming to get all the frequent flier points top bring as many as possible of them over to Italy for the wedding. We are trying to do an outdoors late summer wedding.
Q: So was it romantic with you two being together in Prague?
A: We didn't really work together till America, which was four or five months later. So we met and then she disappeared off to Italy and we finally got to work in America.
Q: Did you do anything else after Van Helsing?
A: We finished Van Helsing last August and Silvia and I were determined to have some time together to get to know one another better. We took a lovely slow drive up the American West Coast to Canada. It was beautiful, like old America. Then we went to Italy to meet Silvia's family and had a brilliant time there. My Italian is pretty good now. I've always spoken a little bit of Italian. But we speak in Italian every day mainly because she can't speak any English for the first two hours of the morning. So my breakfast Italian is excellent. I'm almost completely fluent in toast and coffee. It's a beautiful language I love hearing Silvia on the phone to her mum.
Q: Did you watch other Dracula movies?
A: I watched a couple. I didn't want to get bogged down in them. There are some great ones, some beautiful Dracula's. Gary Oldman was terrific I really loved it.
Q: Gary Oldman suffered terribly from the lenses he wore as Dracula, did you have that problem?
A: I only wore them for a couple of shots.
Q: What about the fangs?
A: I went to a dentist who took a moulding of my teeth shape and then the fangs were constructed. But I hardly ever had to wear them. I wore them probably twice. Most of the time the fangs are special effects.
Q: What were the fangs like to wear?
A: They were pretty difficult to work with. It's virtually impossible to speak with them in. You have a lisp. And a lisping Dracula is not particularly scary. We discovered in a very short space of time that with the teeth in you could not actually speak. Otherwise people would laugh.
Q: What about your wardrobe?
A: I didn't want the wardrobe to be too visible. We had these amazing Italian women who did a terrific job of creating the look of a faded aristocrat. The look is not flowingly romantic though a couple of people did mention the name, Adam Ant at times. I did not want the wardrobe to dominate and I think we got a good balance.
Q: How tricky is working in a special effects movie?
A: It's something that you have to write into your daily work method. It's everywhere now. You are standing in a blue jump suit in a big blue box, pretending you are on a mountain top. It's an act of the imagination. For me the biggest leap of the imagination was probably to do with flying sequences and jumping off balconies. There was a tricky scene when I was standing on a balcony with a couple of my Brides and these bats were flying all around and I had to hold out my hand to them that was difficult. You feel like a prat because there is nothing there. But luckily the technology is so advanced and they can show you the bat arriving and where your hand has to be.
Q: Any bumps or bruises?
A: You always get some doing a movie like this. Those things you have to wear for the flying scenes really hurt. It's difficult to walk the next day. There is definitely a chafing element they have to look at. That was the second most difficult physical challenge. Dancing with Kate Beckinsale was the greatest stumbling block literally. Because Kate, who is very funny with a wicked wit, can't dance. It was cold, minus 20 degrees, and I put my neck out during the dance. It happened when I threw Kate into a dip and my neck went completely out. I needed physic. They tried all kind of things. Because my neck was out I could only turn left and for a dancing sequence that was a bit tricky. I can still feel it. It has been a bit wonky since then. It made driving round Rome particularly difficult.
Q: Dracula is a legendary character and of course you've played another legend, Sherlock Holmes?
A: They are trying to bring him back but I'm a bit reluctant. Being identified with one character is something I've not wanted to do. With Van Helsing though I have committed to a second film.
Q: After Moulin Rouge would you like to do more musicals?
A: Not really, I can't really sing. I hadn't really thought about musicals. I would like to do some more comedy because I used to do a lot of it.
Q: What's next?
A: I am doing a film called Stealth with Sam Shepard. I'm looking forward to meeting him, I love his plays. It's just a few weeks work but a very good cameo and it's helping out with our Italian wedding costs. I need to fit in two small jobs before the wedding because after that I want to be in pre-production for a film that I'm going to direct in Australia. It is a film called Romulus My Father, based on a biography about a Romanian/German immigrant family in Australia after the Second World War. It's about the internal disintegration of a family. I love directing, I've done it in the theatre. I feel it engages all those bits of my head that lie dormant most of the time. There are huge gaps in my knowledge of film making. So I have always watched what directors do, and shamelessly eavesdropped, because I have always known that I wanted to make this jump.
Q: Where is home going to be?
A: We don't know. We wanted to make our base in London. I love the cold and the grey weather. I have a place here so it's between Rome, London and Sydney. But you say that and then you end up in Uruguay for eight months.
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Interviews
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