Christopher Eccleston Talks Heroes
Source Heroesite.net
22 January 2007
Christopher Eccleston is certainly no stranger to the Science Fiction Genre. But is also not a stranger to acting in popular drama either. His resume of acting credits includes leading roles in popular UK shows ranging from a role in Cracker as well as a role in the Science Fiction based Movie ‘28 Days Later’ which brought the actor to the attention of a much wider international audience. However many people will be more familiar with Eccleston as the 9th Doctor in the popular BBC TV series Doctor Who.
Now it seems that Eccleston has been showing up more and more in genre TV projects. Since leaving Doctor Who he has been associated with the now aborted TV remake of ‘The Prisoner’ in which he would have played the iconic role, which was originated by Patrick McGoohan. A more recent development is the actor’s acceptance of a role in the popular NBC Sci Fi Show Heroes. Eccleston will be playing the mysterious Claude who will be a recurring character who will pop up regularly in the series.
Over the years Eccleston has shown an ability to pick and choose some pretty ground breaking roles. However when asked what it was which attracted him to Heroes the actor revealed that he wasn’t actually that aware of the show.
“What attracted me to Heroes is that they came in for me, and I appreciated that. We talked about two roles, and it was Claude that I decided on, the second role.”
Eccleston said that the other role he was offered was a villain and he stated that he didn’t want to play the villain hence his choosing to play Claude. However the biggest reason Eccleston chose not to play the bad guy was because he feels it has become somewhat of a cliché for European actors to play the heavy in American TV, and it was a trend he didn’t want to continue.
In regards to Visual effects Eccleston does not really have that much to do as Claude.
“Playing an invisible man, most of it is done in post. What I have done, is I have flown. Me and Milo flew together. I've been tasered, but again, that might be giving away plot points. And I've shut doors without even being present. There's a lot of that kind of gag stuff.”
Eccleston when asked about challenges in regards to portraying an invisible man revealed that playing the super power aspect of it isn’t particularly challenging.
“When you play a character with super powers or whatever you would call it, I think the most important thing is to concentrate on making the man or woman itself naturalistic and truthful. The more you can do that, the more the audience will buy the more extreme behaviour, which comes from having super powers. So it's an acting exercise, as every character is.”
In regards to Heroes the actor is as excited about the role as he is any other role, and is fast to point out that he would rather concentrate more on a characters humanity first and foremost than focus on the less important stuff.
“It's exciting to play any character, and as I've said, you can't think about the extraordinary things he can do, because those, to a certain extent, are out of your hands. They're down to the post guys. So you've got to concentrate on the truth of - you search for the relationships, and obviously a key relationship in this is Claude and Peter.”
You can read much more of what Christopher Eccleston had to share here at the Herosite.net website.
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