Doug Jones on the Comic Con Experience: “I’m no stranger to Comic Cons in general, but I have been a stranger to San Diego Comic Con,” said Jones. “This has been out of control crazy – in a great way though. I’ve never seen this much humanity come together for the sci-fi/fantasy/comic book genre ever. I’ve been like amazed just looking around at the mayhem, but it’s all to celebrate like the genre of films that I tend to work in so let’s do this. It’s great.”
Getting Started in Hollywood and Turning Into the Go-To Actor for Bringing Creatures to Life Onscreen: “When I first came to Hollywood I thought that my niche was going to be a goofy white guy on sitcoms. I was just sure that I was going to be like the goofy next door neighbor that would come in, say a funny line, and leave. …I started doing commercials right away and one of my very first jobs was the ‘Mac Tonight’ commercial campaign for McDonalds, the crescent moon head that sang at a piano and had sunglasses on. That was like me wearing a mechanical head and doing lots of musical gesturing as we go. That was one of my first jobs.”
Jones continued, “Well I did 27 commercials over the next three years as that character and met lots of people in the creature effects industry because of it, so my name starting [getting out there]. The snowball started happening with, ‘You need a tall, skinny guy to wear something? Get Doug Jones.’ So with my acting, I started doing guest starring roles on sitcoms and other commercials and whatnot with my own face. Feature films started happening. My career forked where I have Doug the guy with his own face and Doug the guy who’s covered up with kind of a latexy, rubbery something.”
Jones says he has no regrets over being the guy hidden beneath makeup and costumes. “What doing creature work affords me is I get to work with some of the most creative people in our industry,” explained Jones. “These are the people who doodled angels and demons fighting in their notebooks when they should have been in math class. Those people have grown up now and their job is to create wonderful, beautiful, amazing things for me to wear. I get to be a complete chameleon. I don’t have to play this guy [indicating himself every time. I have makeup and costume enhancements that make me able to play such a wide range of characters, you know? Everything from human to really not human and everything in between. I’ve done a lot of human/animal hybrid mixes like half kangaroo/half man, half fish/half man, half cockroach/half man, so that’s something that you can’t do on your own without the enhancements of makeup artists.”
Those Silver Surfer Rumors: Jones was pretty close-mouthed when it came to questions about Silver Surfer and Fantastic Four 2. “I’m allowed to say no comment, which is always a stand-by,” offered Jones. “Wow…I can tell you this. I have read some Silver Surfer comic books and I absolutely adore that character. I will say this: I would love to play him. I would love to play that character. He stands for purity and hope and faith. His background is tragic with his beginnings. He sacrificed himself to this evil force of the universe called Galactus that he’s now become a slave to and heralds his coming throughout the universe against his will. He’s kind of like a bad guy but reluctantly so, all because he sacrificed himself for his own planet to save his own people from destruction. His beginnings are very angelic, very Christ-like and that means a lot to me to be able to play a character that represents a faith that I believe in. That’s my interpretation of him, of course. So I would love to crawl into that character and be him and embody him.”
Article Continued on Page 2: Doug Jones on Pan's Labyrinth
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Doug Jones Interview Video #1 - His Acting Career and the Silver Surfer Rumors
Doug Jones Interview Video #2 - Pan's Labyrinth and Guillermo del Toro
