How comfortable was it for you to jump right back into playing Wolverine?
It gets more and more comfortable as I do it, I suppose. And yet I always find new things with the character, really so much so that you may have heard that Fox and my company are developing a movie for Wolverine. I just think there's still, even after three movies, more to find out about him. I think we still don't know exactly who this guy is. And that's part of the reason I love playing him.
Wolverine gets knocked around pretty good in this film.
We're taking no prisoners. The stakes have never been higher. Things for the X-Men and Wolverine have never been more serious, and he kinda... he goes a little nutty.
You're in two animated films this year, the penguin tale Happy Feet and Flushed Away, from the creators of Wallace & Gromit. Tell me a little bit about how freeing voice work is for you as an actor.
It's terrific in that you get so much work done. I mean by the time you get to a film set, it might be a good few hours before you do anything and at the end of a full day, you might get two minutes of the film done. In animation, you can do the entire script in four hours. Not that we did, but you can just do a lot of work and it was great. I loved creating the characters particularly in Flushed Away. I've been a huge fan of Aardman Studio's work. They're so brilliant. And Happy Feet, how could I resist? It was a beautiful script and I play Nicole Kidman's husband. So life is good.
In the upcoming film The Fountain, you play a man in a thousand-year struggle to save the love of his life.
It's the most challenging role I've ever had to play. Technically, I suppose, I played two or three roles, so it's a pretty amazing film. I have to say I think that (director) Darren Aronofsky is like the new Stanley Kubrick. I think he's that good. I see that film and just think, "I'm just really proud to be in it."
You won a Tony Award last year for
your performance in The Boy From Oz. Is there more Broadway
in your future?
I'm looking into it. You really have to take time to get the right
thing and I'm looking into two or three different opportunities.