Doug Jones: Perfectly suited for "Pan's Labyrinth"
As one who's made a name playing effects-heavy roles in films like "Hellboy," "Pan's Labyrinth" and the upcoming "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," you might say Doug Jones' acting abilities were ahead of the times. But luckily for audiences technology caught up, and after 21 years in the business, Jones, 46, is rapidly becoming the go-to guy when a role calls for a little patience and a lot of glue. He recently chatted with USA WEEKEND's Jon Tollestrup about the Oscar-winning "Pan's Labyrinth," his many roles in next year's "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" and the quirky artistic outlet he enjoys in his spare time.

You're about to begin work on a fourth collaboration with Guillermo del Toro, and in every project you've played some kind of creature. Do you let out an exasperated sigh now whenever his phone number shows up on your caller ID?
Right. I see his number, and I'm like [in an exasperated voice], "Oh, what does he want me to do this time?" No, actually I was just talking about him the other day, and I found myself glowing about him like I always do. "Pan's Labyrinth" is storytelling and moviemaking at its finest. And that is what Guillermo del Toro is: He's a moviemaker and a storyteller. He's not concerned with marketing and moneymaking; he wants to make a piece of art first, and I really appreciate that. He's also a fanboy and loves the genre of horror, fantasy, comic book and sci-fi. When he's making the film, he's making something that he as a geekboy wants to watch. So he knows exactly what elements and ingredients to put into the big soup pot for that.

When Guillermo approached you for "Pan's Labyrinth," was he up front with the full enchilada of details about what he was going to put you through? Or does he conveniently fill you in once you've already signed on?
[Laughs] The way it happened for this one was I got an e-mail from him, so I don't know how much information you can convey in an e-mail. But he was in Spain doing preproduction work for "Pan's Labyrinth," and all of a sudden this e-mail shows up saying [in an eerily pitch-perfect imitation of del Toro's voice], "Doug, I'm in Spain working on "Pan's Labyrinth," and the title character of Pan nobody else can play but you." I'm like, "Wow! That's just a heavy opener. Nobody can play him but me?" So all of a sudden the pressure was on. And as a moody, emotionally driven actor, my first thought is, "Oh, there's got to be anybody else that can play him better than me. [In a defeated voice] I'm so terrible!" But then I read the script, and it was a page turner. It was like chocolate candy to me. He also mentioned he wanted me to play this Pale Man character. I know enough now that when I see a scene that involves a guy with no eyes in his head, but he's got eyeballs in his hands and he's scrawny, skinny and saggy-skinned, that it's going to involve hours of some kind of latex film rubber or maybe some silicon dangling off my arms. I also know that when I hear there's a faun character that's half goat, half man, with some tree thrown in, that yeah, you're going to be in some kind of a suit that's hard to walk in, and you're going to be clumping around.

Were you cast as both the faun and the Pale Man at the same time, or did you sign on to play the faun and later get conned into the Pale Man to save on the budget?
When he mentioned that he wanted me to play the Pale Man, he did not explain at all why. He did explain in that first e-mail that, "We're on a foreign-film budget. We're not on a big studio American budget this time." So he was kind of putting up the plea to friends and family, and friends who have become family, to join him in this artistic endeavor. And he is one of those directors who can do that. He can get favors from friends because we know we're making a piece of gold. When you end up at the Oscars, for the first time ever in your life, representing a film that's up for six nominations, you're like, "OK, OK. I see what the ride was all about now." But you knew going in that it was going to be something delicious.

Which makeup process was worse, "Pan's" or the Pale Man's?
These makeups were five hours each, so yes, it was a lot of time and a lot of dedication, and you're saying yes to a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of heat and to some cranky back. [But] the two characters were so different from each other. Pan was a glued-on facial bit with part mechanics on the top part of my face, because the eyes were so widely set that they had to be puppeteered off camera. The eyelids, the eyebrows, the ears flapping were all mechanics on the top of my head. So my vision was quite limited, and I was looking through the tear duct area of those eyes. [So] I was sort of stomping around kind of blind. So that was glued-on makeup from the cheekbones on down the neck to the collarbone. Then a suit came up to meet that, which they wriggle on me one piece at time with Velcro, buckles, zippers and snaps. The leg contraption was interesting to put together because that zigzag pattern of Pan's legs used a little bit of special effects to pull off. But it wasn't completely CGI, like a lot of people think.

I heard that to save time on the makeup process you would secretly wear some of the makeup back to your hotel so they wouldn't have to apply it all again the next day. Did Guillermo ever bust your little operation?
We were all afraid, and we didn't tell him. Part of him is very protective, and he is the head of this delightful family that comes together for his movies. He feels responsible for us. So if he knew I was wearing an entire glued-on torso and arms back to my hotel and being wrapped in Saran wrap so I didn't stick to the sheets, he would have felt guilty and horrible and would have wanted me to get better rest. We were in Europe not using any kind of union standards that American films use. Here in the States, the Screen Actors Guild would tell a production that I have to have a rest period of 12 hours between workdays. It's the rule here. In Spain no such rule exists. So during the Pale Man sequence it was a five-day shoot, and we were cramping it near the end. So for two nights in a row I said, "If you free my hands, my neck and my face, then I'll wear the rest home. I'll feel like a human if you can get my hands and my head off." So they did, and I kind of wore my big floppy sweats over everything and went home stealthily with no one knowing.

So, did you ever go out in public and order a plate of paella or something just to mess with the locals?
Right, or go into a vitamin store and say, "What do you have for this?" [Laughs] No, I didn't, because the reason I was doing this was to save time. I was being released at maybe 2 in the morning and then heading back at 6 in the morning or something like that. And by the time they clean me up, it's time for them to start reapplying again, so why even bother? I would rather sleep through it. So no, there was no time to swing by a White Castle and go, "Hey, guess what!" [Pauses] Nor do they have White Castles in Spain. [Laughs]

On top of the crazy experience with makeup, you also had to handle an archaic form of Spanish. Did that give you a bit of jolt?
Oh gosh, yes! Let's go back to that first e-mail. I'm reading the script going, "Oh gosh, I'm so honored to be asked to be a part of this and ... wait, it's in Spanish?!"

So someplace, somewhere, is there an old high school Spanish teacher who is villainously laughing at the irony of you having to do an entire film speaking Spanish?
Uh-huh, there is at Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis. There's someone rubbing her hands together saying, "Ha, ha, ha! He should have listened!" But the voiceover notion was something that made us all more comfortable because I was so terrified that I was going to mess it up or mispronounce things so drastically. So knowing that there was going to be a voiceover in the end was comforting.

Let's switch gears for a second and talk about the Fantastic Four sequel. You play the Silver Surfer. Can you tell me anything about bringing this character to life?
I have to be extremely careful coming into this subject matter, because Twentieth Century Fox has sort of put the kibosh on the cast talking about the movie too much. This is after doing three months of interviews for "Pan's Labyrinth," going, "Blah, blah, blah, blah," and now I have to rein that back a little bit, which is difficult for me. So I can't specifically address the details on that. No. 1, I'm not qualified to tell you what happened in postproduction. I know what I did on the film, but they're asking me not to talk about it. [But] it was a different process than I've ever worked under before.

Did you and Michael Chiklis, who plays the prosthetically heavy character The Thing, have a sort of arm-wrestle debate about who had to undergo the worst makeup procedures?
[Laughs] I love Michael Chiklis. Upon meeting me he knew he was meeting an actor who had been in a lot of costumes over the past 20 years, and it was kind of comforting to him to have me around, just to know that he had somebody who understood what he was going through. And it does help. When you think you're the only guy who's on a movie set who is heavy-laden with rubber bits and weight and heat, it's like [in a pathetic voice], "Nobody understands me!" And you can feel that way. He knew I definitely did understand, so he called me his "brother under rubber."

The role of the Silver Surfer is obviously important to so many fanboys out there. Does it make you nervous about facing this demographic, who are probably going to pick apart every detail?
Mostly the fan talkback that I've heard so far about this movie is just sheer excitement about being able to see him on film for the first time. I haven't heard a whole lot of technical quotes about this or that, but I'm sure that will come out once the movie does, and then they can compare it to the source material. My biggest wish is that people fill the seats on June 15 and get their popcorn and soda of choice and just go on the ride and see where it takes us, before analyzing it too much ahead of time.

I know you're about to get underway with "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army." Are you allowed to talk much about that?
I can talk more freely about that, believe it or not [laughs]. I don't want to give away plot points, but I'm very excited about "Hellboy 2." It's a script by Guillermo del Toro again, and he will be directing it. As in most sequels in a franchise like this, you can start out of the gates strong because you've already set up the characters, what their back story is and how they came together. So you can get to the story right away. [In a mystical voice] So we do. I'm very happy about Abe Sapien getting a lot more screen time this time, so you get to know him better. You'll see Abe interacting with "Hellboy" more, with some more onscreen buddy time. I think that's what drives this franchise forward more than just cool action. It's more about these personalities that are quirky and weird and they look like freaks. We don't have alter egos. We don't get to be Clark Kent by day and then some fantastic superhero by night. [But] I love these characters, and I also love my cast mates, Ron Perlman and Selma Blair especially. The three of us did form a team, and you can see little bits of our personalities in our characters anyway. So off screen we kind of relate to each other in the same way.

Is Abe Sapien's makeup your only worry for this film, or did Guillermo pull another Pan/pale man trick this time around?
[Laughs] Yeah, this is going to be multiple-critter Dougie again. I'm going to be playing Abe Sapien in a much bigger role, so that will be a few more months of work than the first "Hellboy." Then let's throw in the Angel of Death in a great scene that I don't want to tell you about. This is my choice because when I read that part of the script I got goose bumps and I said, "I love this character, I love this moment, and the fans are going to wet themselves when they see this!" The other character is the Chamberlain. The Chamberlain is sort of a door-keeper for the bad guys. He is somebody you have to pass through to get to the chamber of the evil nemesis of the film. So he's kind of a goofy character that is going to be fun. Then there's a possible fourth one, sort of a befuddled wizard. I think he's going to be more of a fly-by. There are scenes in this where it needs lots of creatures to fill the screen. So it looks like I'm going to be a fourth one, perhaps. I will be very busy, and when I have a day off it may not be a day off [laughs].

So, I read somewhere that Abe Sapien is involved in a love storyline?
Wink, wink -- yeah. The Abe Sapien character has never really had a love interest before, so this will be a first for him.

After making a name for yourself playing all these creature characters, do you ever get recognized on the street as Doug Jones?
I've been an actor now for more than 21 years, and for about 20 years of that time I've been kind of under the celebrity radar. I would get to come home, get out of my makeup and go to the McDonald's drive-through, and nobody would have a clue who I am. It was wonderful. But then back when I did the first "Hellboy," it was a big enough movie with a big enough role for me that people were like, "Now, who was that fish guy?" And now with the Internet you can look anybody up, so you do a little Doug Jones search to answer some questions. So I get a lot of search-engine fans. And that all started back in 2004, when the first "Hellboy" came. I've done other movies in the meantime, things like "Doom," where I played four imp creatures shot up by The Rock and his team. But nothing where people are to going to go, "Oh, you are so famous!"

Your professional time seems to be spent doing interesting things. What do you like to do in your spare time? I read that you like to cut hair.
Man, you have read up on me. OK, well, I'm going to admit this to you now. Some people go to a garage to their studio, where they paint, or others like to work in their yard, and they have a garden they're proud of. My artistic outlet, with my hands anyway, is cutting hair. I do friends, family and the Mrs., and I cut every person's hair for free. I've dabbled in trying to do colors, but when you're dealing with chemicals and converting people's hair colors ... just don't do that. But to get a head of hair and to change its look is like giving me a lump of clay and asking me to sculpt. I love it.

-- Jon Tollestrup