Signing on to Play Pan and The Pale Man in Spanish: Jones doesn’t speak Spanish so the news that the characters he'd be playing in Pan's Labyrinth spoke that language came as a bit of a jolt. “When I first got the script and the request from Guillermo Del Toro to please be in this film, consider this film, read this script, which by the way was a huge compliment. I'd already worked with him twice before, once on Mimic and once on Hellboy, so we had a relationship established. And when he sends me an e-mail saying, 'You must be in this film. No one else can play this part but you,' you tend to perk up your ears and listen. ‘Okay, what's the script?’ So I read it within hours of getting it and I couldn't put it down. I turned the last page closed, wiped a tear and said, 'I do have to be in this movie.'
I read an English translation of it, so I wasn't in the Spanish mode yet. I was like, 'Oh, what a great story. What great characters. Ah.' Then I went back to the e-mail where he was like, 'Da da da da… It's going to be in Spanish.'’ ‘It’s going to be in Spanish?! Oh no!’ I'm telling him, 'What do you mean no one else can play this but me? There's a ton of Spanish actors who know Spanish.' I was terrified and he assured me that everyone would be fine. ‘We'll get a voice over actor if you just want to count to 10. Just do it in the right pausing, in the right mode and move, give me the right feeling.’ I can't count to 10. I can't do that to him.
He also talked about learning Spanish phonetically. I'm like, ‘What does that mean, phonetically?’ He said, 'For instance, if you want to say blah blah blah blah blah in Spanish, you might say the cheese cup fart.' It sounds like a game, the phonetic thing, a string of English words together that are nonsensical but you at least know the English words and can remember them, and then it forms a sentence in Spanish that makes sense. Well, to me, that form of memorization was even harder than just going to the page and learning the Spanish, which is what I did. It's an ancient form of Spanish. Is that more difficult than the contemporary? I don't know, I don't know either one. It doesn’t matter.”
The Differences Between the Two Creatures: At first Jones thought Guillermo del Toro was just trying to get by with not paying another actor to play the role of The Pale Man, but after seeing the film he understands exactly why the filmmaker needed him to play both roles. “I'm looking at it and I can see like, 'Okay, if Pan is creating these tests for Ofelia [played by Ivana Baquero] to pass to claim her birthright or whatever, how could The Pale Man not be a creation of Pan?' Anything's possible in this world that he's from,” explained Jones. “ I looked at it that way and then it made sense on film. Guillermo doesn't make any decisions that aren't really calculated, so to have me play both parts was something that he had in mind.”
Jones and del Toro came up with how the creatures would carry themselves. “With Guillermo, what he does is he directs me ahead of time. We get together and we meet, and he will give me physical quirks and characteristics he'd like to see, along with character development ideas and whatnot. I get to go home and put my own spin on that and practice that and rehearse that. Go in front of mirrors at the gym and get posturing and movement. Then also when doing the dialogue as well, putting my own spin on that as well.
Pan was interesting too because he aged backwards. I don't know if…you caught that when you saw the film. The first time you see him, he's a bit grayer, his hair. One of his ram horns is kind of eaten away at the end and his whole coloration. I was carrying myself a little bit more hunched, my steps weren't as smooth. By the end, he's got auburn hair, his horns are completed and shiny, and he's more erect and fluid. So that was a subtlety that again, I didn't even ask questions. I just said, 'He's aging backwards. For some reason, I'm going to go with this.' But to me, he might have gotten younger and stronger and more fluid and more powerful as the movie goes on because if this is a part of Ofelia's imagination - we don't even know for sure is it real or is it imaginary - if it is, she's depending more on this fantasy life throughout every step of the way in the movie because her reality is getting worse and worse.”
Jones continued, “The Pale Man evolved as well. At first, Guillermo even thought that he should maybe have a gallop to him of some sort, that is fast and terrifying in a, ‘You can't get away from me,’ sort of way. But what he evolved into is what you saw on film where he's creepy, crawly. He has a stiff, ‘I've been asleep for a long time,’ sort of walk to him. But he's still scary, and he's moving slower. Ivana was running down the hallway much faster than I was coming after, but it was terrifying somehow because it's like as I interpret it, he's in his own chamber and when children get in there, they don't go out. So he had all day. I'll find her eventually, right? She'll tire. That's how I looked at it. But of course, she finds a way to outfox him. If you look at those two characters, you may not know that it was one person playing both of them - but I don't know.”
