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Richard Roxburgh is Dracula
by John Millar
RICHARD Roxburgh likes a role he can get his teeth into. He got that in Van Helsing but much, much more beside, as this homage to the classic Universal monsters became the most memorable movie of his career.
This film from Stephen Sommers, the man behind box office sensations The Mummy and The Mummy Returns certainly made its mark with the Australian-born actor, but not just because he landed the juicy part of Dracula.
The more personal reason why Van Helsing will always have a special place in Richard's heart is that it was while shooting the movie in Prague and Los Angeles that he the girl of his dreams.
Almost as though it might have been dreamed up by a Hollywood scriptwriter, he fell head over heels for Silvia Colloca the glamorous Italian actress who plays one of the Bride's of Dracula!
"We are marrying in September in Italy. So Stephen Sommers, the writer and director of Van Helsing, cast very well indeed," says a smiling Richard.
"So no matter what, this project will always be a treasured one for me because of this most fantastic thing that happened. It was heaven sent."
So now as he prepares for the launch of Van Helsing which stars Hugh Jackman as the legendary vampire hunter Richard is also working on the plans for his wedding day.
“I have a huge family in Australia so I'm trying to bring as many as possible of them over to Italy for the wedding. We are trying to do an outdoors, late summer wedding.”
According to Richard, who first grabbed the limelight as the villainous duke in pursuit of Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge although it was one of those instant attractions between him and Silvia, it scarcely developed as a straightforward relationship.
"We didn't really work together till we were working on the film in America, which was four or five months after we'd started filming in Prague."
Richard, who teams up with Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale and newcomer Will Kemp in the big budget romp, says that one of the prime attractions of doing Van Helsing was the fact that he is a fan of the classic Universal Dracula and Wolfman movies that stars legendary stars like Bela Lugosi.
"I love monster films and particularly the old Universal ones. I also 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," he says.
The fair haired, slender star says that it was a pretty significant physical transformation to become the Dracula that we see in Van Helsing.
"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." says Richard.
Luckily, since actors dread the lengthy and painstaking process of prosthetics, that transformation did 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," says a grimacing Richard.
"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.
"Kevin J. O'Connor, who plays Igor, had a complete prosthetic face and Shuler Hensley 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."
Before filming began, Richard immersed himself in the vampire myth by poring over every book on the subject that he could lay hands on.
"I started with Bram Stoker and then general studies of the Dracula legend 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."
He also watched a couple of earlier film versions at Dracula. "I didn't want to get bogged down in them, but there are some great ones, some beautiful Dracula's. Gary Oldman for instance was terrific I really loved his version."
For the inevitable Dracula fangs Richard went to a specialist dentist who took a moulding of his 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.
"But when I had the fangs in they were pretty difficult to work with. It's virtually impossible to speak with them in because 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."
The actor took special care with the sort of costume he would have for the movie. "I didn't want the wardrobe to be too visible," explains Richard.
"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. But I did not want the wardrobe to dominate and I think we got a good balance."
Another balancing act for Richard was the business of easing himself into a movie which makes good use of special effects.
"It's something that you have to write into your daily work method. Special effects are everywhere now. So 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 the 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 supposed to be 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."
Inevitably an action movie means that there is a risk of bumps and bruises. Richard shrugs that off as just being part of the job.
"You always get some bruises doing a movie like this," he says adding that his biggest grouse was with the harness that he had to wear for the flying scenes.
"Those things really hurt," he winces. "It's difficult to walk the next day because there is definitely a chafing element. They have to look at that."
Mischievously, a grinning Richard goes on to say that the straps were the second most difficult physical challenge for him in Van Helsing.
"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 physiotherapy. They tried all kind of things. But because my neck was out I could only turn left and for a dancing sequence that was a bit tricky."
But just, as he does with all the other tricky moments that are part of bringing a movie to life, Richard Roxburgh coped brilliantly.
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