You brought enormous gravitas to the film...
That's because I play the Latin character!
You've duelled almost every other actor in history. Here you had a 3ft high opponent. How did that work?
Well, you've got to have a pretty vivid imagination, for a start, because he isn't there. I don't have a huge problem with that. George says to me, ""He's going to be up there and down there, and he's going to do this, this and that," and you perform accordingly. Obviously, it's not like having the two of you in the same scene, where you're literally matching blows.
What are your feelings about working on the movie? [MINOR SPOILER ALERT]
For me, there are two things that are immensely important about this film. One is that I'm now part of cinema history, which is enormously important. And the second one is that [my character] survived it! It's a fairly rare experience for me.
Can technology get in the way of the acting?
I think that very much depends on how the story is told - something very often the actors don't have very much control over. There is a danger, I think, because there are two extremes in making films these days: one is makeup, the other is special effects. Basically, a film is about a moving image, and it's about faces, it's about people. If you have an excess of makeup - which is now getting out of control - and you have an excess of special effects which aren't right for the film, you can find the poor actor in the middle with an avalanche on his left and typhoon on his right, trying to keep his head above water and give a performance. Obviously it's a question of overdoing it. In a film like "Star Wars", that doesn't arise, it's a help to the performers. But I have been in films where I've literally been swamped.
