LOS ANGELES -- In Hollywood, there are no small parts, just evil actors.
"We had to tone Dakota (Fanning) down," deadpans Michael Sheen about his co-star in The Twilight Saga: New Moon. "Her natural personality is too evil and we had to tone down the volume on the evil."
Nonetheless, he adds, "It's quite thrilling to have Dakota Fanning call you 'master.'"
In the same Beverly Hills hotel suite, a clearly entertained Fanning laughs -- and offers her own insight into her glorified cameo as Jane, an angelic cadaver so lethal she can inflict pain with a thought.
"I think red (contact lenses) make everyone look automatically kind of evil ... But it was fun playing a feared character, which is something different from what I've done before."
As members of the secretive coven known as the Volturi, Sheen and Fanning are some of the fresh blood in New Moon, the sequel that's expected to surpass the $383 million that the original grossed worldwide last year (in its first three days the film has already grossed $259 million worldwide).
Those commercial prospects would be reason enough to attract most actors, but for Fanning, signing on to the franchise was a personal thrill. After all, she's 15. How could she not be a fan of Stephenie Meyer's novels about a teenage girl and the vampire she loves.
"I think the highlight of playing Jane was getting to wear that costume and to have the red contact lenses. I was really excited about that, and getting to play an evil character," she says.
For Sheen -- best-recognized from such tony political dramas as The Queen and Frost/Nixon -- the part of Volturi leader Aro was not unfamiliar terrain. Last year he played a werewolf in the third Underworld outing.
"The tailoring is so much better as a vampire."
Maybe so, but it wasn't just the clothes that inspired him -- or other such predecessors as Dracula or Lestat. Instead, he recalled that in the novel Aro is described as "having a voice like feathers. Then, as I was starting to play around with it, I reminded myself a little bit of the Blue Meanie.
"You remember the Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine? Then I was also thinking about characters from when I was a kid watching stuff that really freaked me out -- the Blue Meanie really freaked me out, and the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I liked the idea of a character who on the surface appears to be very friendly and thinks of himself as just being a sentimental old fool -- a romantic at heart -- and then he wants to eat your eyes."
Both Fanning and Sheen will return for the sequels -- Eclipse, which will be out in June, and Breaking Dawn, which will probably shoot in 2010.
By then Sheen will probably have had plenty of encounters with the fans known as "Twihards." So far, though, he's been mostly spared.
"I haven't really experienced much of the Twilight fan stuff yet, but I did go into a store in L.A. to buy a pair of jeans and I went into the little cubicle to try my jeans on. It's always quite a nerve-racking time when I come out of the cubicle to look in the mirror anyway and I like that to be a private moment. As I came out, there was a woman shaking, going 'You're Aro, aren't you?' and I just hid in my cubicle again. That's been really my only experience with that."
Most impressed? His 10-year-old daughter (with ex-wife Kate Beckinsale).
"In my daughter's bedroom she's just got pictures from Twilight and New Moon everywhere, and seeing my own little picture, which I think she did out of pity to have Dad up there as well."
kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca
