Interview With The Vampire --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Jeff Bond I don't know whether it was intentional on Warner Bros.' part or not, but it set up things for The Queen of the Damned junket in this strangely creepy Westwood, California, hotel with claustrophobic little rooms that had no interior lighting we poor reporters could locate. This became more and more of an issue as the late afternoon roundtables stretched on into sunset and we found ourselves speaking to actors and producers we could barely see. And now I've got this strange irritation on my neck... In The Queen of the Damned, actor Stuart Townsend plays the vampire Lestat, a role originated by Tom Cruise in Neil Jordan's adaptation of Interview With the Vampire. Townsend had a tough job: Not only was he stepping into Cruise's fangs, but Anne Rice fans were infuriated that he doesn't sport Lestat's legendary blond hair. But there are compensations. Right now, Townsend is dating Charlize Theron. So, when he makes that remark about his vampire fangs and his girlfriend at the end of this interview, think of her. 13th Street: How do you avoid the cliches of playing a vampire? Stuart Townsend: For me, it was an opportunity to fulfill all those teenage fantasies of being a rock star. There's a lot of resources to look at, [including] all the old vampire films, and it's such a part of our culture. But I guess for me, at the end of the day, it's the script. A lot of people asked me if it was intimidating, because Tom Cruise was the start, but for me this was such a different story, it was rock 'n' roll and vampires. 13th St.: Did you worry Anne Rice might not like you in the role? Townsend: I can't please everyone, you know. All I can do is the best I can, and some people will like it and some won't. But already I went on the Internet, and people were complaining because I didn't have blond hair -- this was before we started filming! So I went on the Internet once, and that was enough. You just kind of do your own thing. 13th St.: Did you feel like you were going to be compared to Tom Cruise? Townsend: No, it's a very different film. I think both movies are struggling to find the Anne Rice themes, and the Anne Rice themes are the same: the question of eternity and existence, and the idea of, if you actually live forever, the reality of that. We all toy with the idea of immortality, especially in this culture, and that's what I love about Anne Rice. She explored that existential question. I'm like Lestat: I'd hate to live forever. 13th St.: Why? Townsend: It would be a drag. Reality is pretty mundane. That's why we watch movies. Reality is mundane, but we have great imaginations. There are plenty of beautiful things in this world, but I don't think I'd like to be around forever. 13th St.: What made you want to take the role? Townsend: I thought there was sensitivity to the character. He loved music, and he was created -- he wasn't given a choice. He was created, and then he was left alone, and he spends a couple of hundred years hiding in the shadows, wanting to enjoy all these powers of being able to play music and things, and wanting to connect and being cursed to be this kind of solitary bird and despising that. And he's monstrous at times; what he does is monstrous, and he has to deal with that in addition to the questions of existence. 13th St.: Had you read all the books before? © 2002 Warner Bros. Townsend: Not before, no. I'd read Interview With the Vampire, and after being cast I read the rest. 13th St.: How was working in Melbourne? Townsend: It was great. Seriously, it was the best crew I've ever worked with. They were just my kind of people. 13th St.: Did you drink them under the table, or did they drink you under the table? Townsend: They were pussies! [laughs] No, they were pretty good, actually. They've got a little bit of Irish in them, so they could handle it well. But they worked really hard, nights and weekends. Normally a crew not on location just goes home at night and on weekends, but these guys were with us all the time, which was great because we were all away from our families and friends. © 2002 Warner Bros. 13th St.: How was it to film the scene in the rock quarry where you were up on the wire rig? Townsend: I got onstage, and I was tanked up on a bottle of tequila because I had a few of my mates with me in my trailer and got wasted because it was the only thing to do. So I was ready to go, and there was a stuntman up there with these two little wires on him, and they asked me if I was scared of heights. I said no, which was a lie. It didn't look that high from my perspective looking up there, but then they pulled me up there, and it was nine stories high! If there wasn't 3,000 people watching me I would have said, "Take me down!" But my pride came into play, and I thought I could do it. It was pretty terrifying, really. We had 300 extras on that set for a week, but we had to do the wire scene in one night because we had 3,000 extras come in who weren't paid, and they were just told to dress in black, fed hot dogs, and had DJs and stuff. It was an amazing night; no one talked, they just had to work. 13th St.: Was there any discussion of you doing the songs yourself? Townsend: There was talk of it, but I said there's no way I can do [Korn lead singer] Jonathan Davis, that's not my voice. I did sing the songs, but it was more sort of miming them. There was such a huge sound rate that I was sort of singing myself, just to get into it. I had no voice after two days, so there was no way I was going to do his vocals. 13th St.: How was it working with Aaliyah? Townsend: It was amazing. I wouldn't say you'd never hear a bad word about her, because she was really a special person and she was amazing on set. We'd walk around, and she'd created this fantastic character, but there was always a sense of fun. She was very serious about work, but always off set or in between takes she was very funny. © 2002 Warner Bros. 13th St.: How did people react to her death? Townsend: Well the first thing I thought was, "What about the family?" Because I've had death in my own family, and you're the ones who are left behind. So my first question was, how are they, because they all came to Melbourne, and they were all so close. That was my first question, and then I wondered what they were going to do with the movie, whether they were going to release it. And I thought about press, too -- sitting here and talking about it. I wondered if I would be able to do that. But [Aaliyah's brother] Rashad, her brother is [doing interviews] about it, and the family wants the public to see her performance because it's wild and it's good. 13th St.: Where in Ireland are you from, and why did you want to become an actor? Townsend: I'm from Dublin. I'd just seen a lot of film and I was bored; it was a very small village where I was from, and we were fed American culture. Australia is interesting because it's kind of in between British and American culture, and Ireland was like that too. Everybody understood the cultural references. I felt more connected to Aussies, really, than any other culture I've been to. 13th St.: Did you work on developing an accent for this picture? Townsend: Yeah, because I came up with an idea that Lestat de Lioncourt -- you know, he's French, so I wanted to make my own accent. I worked with a coach to throw in a little bit of French but not too much, a bit of my own voice, a bit of English, and I worked for about a month trying to find this voice that's not from any one place. It's weird, because a lot of what happens on set affects things. I researched all these rock stars and watched all their videos, like David Bowie and Marilyn Manson, and then I watched Nosferatu and Bela Lugosi and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. And then suddenly the makeup goes on, and you're on this set that people are creating, and that's where most of it happens. I don't know what I brought to it, but I did try to bring sensitivity to it. I didn't want him to be monstrous; I wanted to show the human side of him. 13th St.: Were you affected by doing this role? Did it depress you? Townsend: Not really. I did that once with a role in a movie called Resurrection, where I played a psychopath, and it was a true character in Belfast, a head of a Loyalist gang who went around killing people. We filmed it in Manchester in winter, in a very dark time, and I was in a very dark space for about six months afterward. [Lestat] is fun, really. This is a dark character, but not really; I had a lot of fun with this guy because it's tongue-in-cheek, and it's vampy -- much more enjoyable than playing a serious role. This was jumping around and playing a rock star, so it was fun. © 2002 Warner Bros. 13th St.: What do you think it could do for your career? Townsend: I'm just hoping that better scripts come in my door. It's shocking what you get offered. There's nothing more frustrating than getting a script and thinking you could really do something with it and seeing it go to someone who might not have much talent but is big at the box office. I hate that. 13th St.: Did you go back and look at Tom Cruise's performance? Townsend: Yeah, I went back and watched [Interview With the Vampire], and for me it was not about Tom Cruise. It was never about Tom Cruise; it was about Anne Rice. I saw the film years ago, and I remember just going "Yeah, whatever," and then when I saw it again before we started shooting, I was really amazed. I loved it. I think Tom did a great performance but it was never going to be the same. 13th St.: Have you spoken to Anne Rice about this? Townsend: Yeah. I met Anne Rice in New Orleans, and it was very strange. We chatted for about six hours, and she was amazing and such a cool woman, but after about 10 minutes she gave me this book, The Witching Hour, and she said "You're on page 486." I turned to 486, and there was the life of Stuart Townsend. I was like "Man, I'm so choked -- you wrote me as a character in your new novel." And I asked if this was her new novel, and she said, "No, I wrote that 11 years ago." I felt like I was in my own detective movie. 13th St.: Did you get so much into character that you... Townsend: Killed people? [laughs] I killed a few. I still have the teeth, and if my girlfriend ever