HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY -- DOUG JONES

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The Continuum today kicks off its interviews from the Hellboy II: The Golden Army press junket with Doug Jones, who returns as Abe Sapien and adds a pair of other roles for the sequel.

Following is an edited transcription from the roundtable interview.

Question: You played Abe Sapien, the Chamberlain and the Angel of Death. Did you do the voices for all three?

Jones: I did the voices for Abe Sapien and the Angel of Death. The Chamberlain actually is a voiceover, but he's got like three lines. Guillermo (del Toro, director) wanted a very specific British accent with a certain prissiness to it, that I did do on set, but he was doing the most of the ADR looping in England, he was doing the post-production in London, so he could find the authetic thing there.

With three lines of dialogue, that wasn't like a big heartache for me to watch that go. It was a sound that I could have affected, but it was just easier to have it done there.

The Angel of Death is a layering job. It's yummy. For the Angel of Death, on set my voice was hampered by those teeth. They were ginormous. I sounded like Fire Marshall Bill. I couldn't close my lips over those humungous teeth.

That voice was going into looping with a voice. Then we over that, my dialogue again, with a low whisper. So they tinkered with that again, and together, it sounds lovely, I think.

Question: Some of those characters are in the same scenes. Did you have to work with a double?

Jones: The closest run-in that we had was whent he B.P.R.D team -- Hellboy, Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman and Johann Krauss -- are with the Goblin, guiding us all the to the Angel of Death. So we're now meeting the Angel of Death with a keyhole sort of doorway that is open and you can see from one to the other. "Abe and Johann, you wait out here." Thankfully that was written in, so just Hellboy and Liz could go in to the chamber room with the Angel of Death. In the far background, you can see Abe Sapien, and that would have been my photo double, a tall, skinny Hungarian fellow that they found.

Question: Do you prefer the voice work or the makeup work?

Jones: I like acting. I like taking on a character, period. If that involves visual, audio, one or the other, and sometimes the character doesn't have any dialogue at all and sometimes I've done voiceovers for cartoons that are just voice, I really like it all. I don't know if there is a preference.

Mostly, I like connecting with a character as though it were my best friend. Most of the characters I've played, even if they're evil -- the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrnith, for instance -- I still got to know him. What I found is the better I know a character, the more I like a character, the more honestly I can play him. Evil an evil character doesn't know he's evil. The Pale Man was just hungry, really.

I like crawling into a skin of a character, into his heart. into his soul, into his mind. That's a fun ride for me. And however that plays out, whether verbally, audibly, visually, a combination of all the above, it's all good.

Question: David Hyde Pierce provide the voice of Abe in the first film. Did you have to go back and listen to that and try to mimic it?

Jones: No. I was free.

Let me start from the very beginning. When I cast as Abe Sapien in the first film I was told up front the potential that they were thinking already and had talk about having a celebrity, bigger-name voiceover person for this role. Larger because when you're looking at big, A-list names with that much makeup on and never will their face ever show -- not even in an alter ego kind of situation, or whatever...and in the Hellboy universe, we are superheroes that we're stuck with our look. We don't have a Bruce Wayne by day. We don't have a Clark Kent by day. We are those freaks.

Getting an A-list actor to do that is difficult, difficult to find someone who is willing not to be recognized. The studio's thinking was, let's get someone to do the visuals and then we'll get an A-list actor name to voice it. Of course, me as actor, when you play a part, you play a part -- and that includes all of it. So, when I heard this up front, I said, "I would rather you not do that. I would love to play the character like anyone else would play the character."

So then my name was thrown into the hat. I made the possibility there that I could be a voice choice, which was as good as it was going to get for this particular job. Once the film was completed and I had been on set every day delivering all of Abe's dialogue as well as Abe's visually, no one had any complaints with me. Everyone that I heard from was like that I affected the right voice. And I was directed to sound a little bit like Niles Crane from Fraser, a little bit like H.A.L. the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey. And that's the sound I did my best to affect, which makes me not vary far from David Hyde Pierce in the end.

So when he was brought in to voiceover, what happened was everybody was happy with what I did and Guillermo del Toro called me ahead of time to tell me that your role has been voiced over by David Hyde-Pierce. I asked him point-blank, "Was it a performance issue on my part? Is there something I can learn from this? Was there a shortcoming of mine? What can I take out of this experience?" He said, "Nope, everything you did was perfect." He said the studio said it was great, "But don't you owe us a session with David Hyde-Pierce like we talked about?"

They're thinking marketing. They're thinking putting a name with the role, they're thinking about putting butts in seats. That's a part of the movie-making business that I'm not a part of or know anything about. So they made that decision for their own reasons.

What happened then was David Hyde Pierce comes in, he hears my original performance in his earpiece, he sees my performance on the film footage he's got to voice over and steps back and says, "Why am I here?" He did his job as hired to do and did it beautifully. When it came time to promote the film, the mileage they were hoping to get out of the David Hyde Pierce thing backfired a little bit, because he did not take a credit in the film. He refused to take a credit in the film He didn't show up for any of the press, he didn't show up at the premiere. When asked why later, he said, "Out of respect to Doug Jones." He did not want to take any of the limelight away from me.

That makes David Hyde Pierce unlike anyone else I've ever met in all of Hollywood. It's a very ego-driven city we're in and for someone to do an act like that, it was exceptional. Not expected. I would have never sat back going, "I hope he does that." I fully expected he would have take a credit in the film because he earned it. The fact that he didn't made him an ilk difference that anyone else.

Then what came around was the Hellboy animated features, Hellboy: Sword of Storms and Hellboy: Blood and Iron. Voice jobs, really. So they went to the voice person that you heard, which was David Hyde Pierce. He politely declined. And when he did, they came to me and said, "Voice of Abe Sapien, would you like it?" And I'm like, "Would I like it? Yes! Finally!" That also helped the transition.

When I was told by Guillermo del Toro that I was voiced over in the first film, a part of that conversation was, "Doug if we get to do a Hellboy part 2, if we're fortunate enough, I would like to have your voice in that. I would like to bring it all back to you again." So that was already out there, that was all circling out there. The animated features now being my voice was a nice way to transition it and cement that decision. The die-hard fans, who was the animateds, the response was very positive, very favorable, which I was grateful for. I actually teared up reading the reviews.

Then with Hellboy II, my performanced stay every bit the same it was in Hellboy 1. So I didn't have to mimic David Hyde Pierce. Basically, we worked off of each other kind in the first one, anyway, and now in the second one I just give the exact kind of performance vocally and that's what you hear in Hellboy II now.

I'm very grateful that it's come full circle because it was a monkey on my back for a few years.

Question: Have you talked with Guillermo about doing something for The Hobbit?

Jones: He and I have not had official discussions about it. However, he's answered questions in front of me. We were at the Saturn Awards the other night and on the red carpet someone said, "So Guillermo, what do you have for Doug in The Hobbit?" There he was in front of me on camera and I'm interested to hear this, too. And Guillermo said, "I'm sure I'll put him through some kind of pain and suffering." So, he was kind of giving a thumb's up that I'll show up somewhere. Wouldn't commit to what that was, so I don't know what this.

Question: There was another character that was re-voiced, the Silver Surfer.

Jones: For the Silver Surfer, I used my lower register. A line like, "All that you know is at end." I love the Silver Surfer character.

Recently had the joy of having lunch with the writer of the Rise of the Silver Surfer script, who's also head writer of The Simpsons, Don Payne. Don Payne, before his butt hit the seat, he was already going, "Hi, Doug, so good to meet you finally. I'm a big fan of yours." I'm like, "Don, I'm a big fan of your work. Are you kidding me?" And he said, "I just wanted to tell you right now. As dailies were coming back from Vancouver, we were looking at the rough footage, your voice that you affected for the Silver Surfer is exactly how I heard the Surfer's voice when I was type." Did that warm my soul, it really did.

Again, I asked the producers, I asked everybody on that job, was it a performance issue? And again, a resounding no. Even my castmates -- Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis -- everyone of them was reported in the press saying that they loved my voice for the Silver Surfer. I never had any doubts that I missed it somehow.

Again, getting Laurence Fishburne, Morpheus, was a marketing choice. Again, he's a brilliant actor and did a great job. But as an actor, none of us want to see any part of our performance taken away or replaced. I'm not bitter. It was just be nice to see your performance intact, that's all.