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"FacebookPinterest\n\n If you need a dapper, stone-cold gangster, you can\u2019t do better than Mark Strong. Arguably everyone has seen the British actor at least once: As Harry Stark on the British television series The Long Firm, or playing Frank D\u2019Amico in Kick-Ass, Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, Clive Cornell in The Guard, Archy in Rocknrolla; in the past year alone he has been in Green Lantern, John Carter,and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The man works. And yet, chances are also good you don\u2019t know his name. Despite leading man looks\u2014or perhaps because of them\u2014Strong has carved out a unique niche for himself, marrying sophistication with brute violence. The forty-eight-year-old actor\u2019s villains are world-weary, bespoke bastards who will split your skull just as casually as they will pour another scotch. Strong maps out his typography of terror.\n\n\n\n\n\nGQ: Was there a particular villain who scared you as a child?\n\n Mark Strong: The child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He wore a top hat, dressed all in black, and he used to capture children by trapping them in nets. Maybe I was too young when I saw it, but he terrified me.\n\n GQ: Do you have a favorite fictional villain?**\n\n Mark Strong: Shakespeare\u2019s Richard III would be my alpha-villain. I\u2019ve been in that play more than once, and I\u2019ve heard every line of it many times. What I enjoy most is how much fun Richard has with the audience, how he plays with it. For example, when he\u2019s wooing Lady Anne over the body of her dead father, who he\u2019s killed in a previous scene, he turns to the audience and says, &amp;quot;Watch this. Watch. Watch. Watch what I\u2019m going to do.&amp;quot; He\u2019s soon wooed Anne and she\u2019s agreed to meet him. He says, &amp;quot;Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won?&amp;quot; I think that\u2019s a pretty extraordinary piece of villainy, to woo a woman over the body of the father he killed\u2014and to have so much fun doing it! **\n\nGQ: Is there an actor\u2019s performance that embodies evil for you?\n\n Mark Strong: Ralph Fiennes in Schindler\u2019s List. There was something about the character\u2019s banal, low-key villainy that made him really scary. I would say the same of Tony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs.\n\nGQ: What scares you most now?\n\n Mark Strong: I\u2019m probably scared, without getting too pretentious about it, by concepts: People who don\u2019t behave properly towards other people, dictators who murder their citizens, things like that. I think politics is very scary.\n\nGQ: Do you ever tap into your own fears when playing a part?\n\n Mark Strong: To some extent you have to remember things that terrified you in the past to play fear effectively. I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve been around a lot of real-life villains, but I try to remember how it feels when you\u2019re terrified yourself.\n\nGQ: Has there ever been a villain you admired?\n\n Mark Strong: I would have to say Richard III again, just because, in a dramatic context that isn\u2019t real, he manages to conduct his villainy with such good humor and take the audience along with him on the ride. In fiction, that\u2019s admirable. Not in real life.\n\nGQ: When did you first know that you could personify evil?\n\n Mark Strong: I\u2019ve always known that I could play a villain. I feel like I could play lots of different things. That\u2019s the job of an actor. But playing Harry Starks in The Long Firm probably spawned a lot of the dark characters that I\u2019ve played since then because it was so successful.\n\nGQ: Was there a costume that helped you shape a character?\n\n Mark Strong: When I played Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, we invented a very severe Prussian haircut that didn\u2019t exist yet. It was shaved around the sides with a severe widow\u2019s peak. We coupled that with a huge astrakhan, or black Persian lamb-fur collar, attached to a Victorian front coat made of leather. With that whole S&amp;amp;M look, it wasn\u2019t hard to play an imposing guy meant to be in league with Satan.\n\nGQ: Do you prepare differently to play a villain?\n\n Mark Strong: The preparation is the same whether you\u2019re playing the bad guy or the good guy. You have to find what makes that character tick and make them believable. With villains, it usually helps to find something that\u2019s happened in their past that would explain why they are the way they are. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve enjoyed\u2014if you can use that word\u2014about playing evil characters: figuring out what makes them do bad things. I don\u2019t believe the world is black-and-white, everybody\u2019s both good and evil.\n\nGQ: Do you think villains see themselves as bad guys?\n\n Mark Strong: Villains never see themselves as bad, in my opinion. Perhaps the more melodramatic villains revel in the notion that they are perceived as bad and that gives them their power.\n\nGQ: What do villains have in common with heroes?\n\n Mark Strong: A singleness of purpose. It\u2019s being driven to do the thing that they think is right.\n\nGQ: What\u2019s the most villainous line you\u2019ve ever uttered?\n\n Mark Strong: It\u2019s probably unrepeatable, to be honest. In Kick-Ass, Frank D\u2019Amico had some very choice lines.\n\nGQ: Is it ever been hard for you to shake off a villainous character?\n\n Mark Strong: No, because they\u2019re so out there. Funnily enough, when I auditioned for my Harry Starks, they worried I was too nice to go that dark.\n\nGQ: How evil are you, percentage-wise, in real life?\n\n Mark Strong: Zero. I\u2019ve got a few points on my license for speeding. That\u2019s only ever happened once.\n\nGQ: How has onscreen villainy changed?\n\n Mark Strong: In the old days you couldn\u2019t get away with it, thanks to William Hayes, the head of censorship in America in the thirties. One of the tenets that he introduced in filmmaking was that the baddy was never allowed to get away with it. That\u2019s very different today. People say things are bad when they mean good. They describe things as sick when they mean good. There are video games which are unbelievably violent and all about people doing things you wouldn\u2019t dream of doing in real life\u2014and they\u2019re celebrated. I think it\u2019s because we all understand it\u2019s a different world. It\u2019s another place. Villainy has now been accepted as a necessary part of the drama. If you have a hero, you need a villain. The subtle shift is that now, we\u2019re allowed to enjoy the villain.\n\nFacebookPinterestundefined"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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