There's a strong cast for this movie...
I credit [director] Brett Ratner with pulling this cast together. I would say that it was the forcefulness of Ted Tally's script and Brett Ratner's enthusiasm and persuasiveness that got all of us on board - even Anthony Hopkins, who, I think, like most of us, initially wondered about doing a third instalment of the Hannibal Lecter series. Once it got going, it was Tony, then me, and then it started to snowball. It started to seem rather more substantive to other people as well, and they started to come on board. Still, I think it was a tremendous feat for Brett to put all of us into something which, at first glance, most of us would have said we were disinclined to do.
What was it like to be a part of it?
Tony Hopkins is a consummate professional. It's thrilling to work with someone like him. He's not demonstrative. He's just got impeccable taste. It's so fluid with him. It's just kind of like breathing with him. He's really, really low-key, very understated, very confident in his understatement. He's intensely prepared and just very easy to work with. And Ralph Fiennes is such a tremendous actor and he remains, I think, an enigma for a lot of people... you know, he hasn't calcified as a performer, with a definite persona to people. I think he's still very capable of filling up the blank slate of himself with anything, and it was exciting. So it was kind of like working with the best of both worlds, in a way.
What drew you to the story, and in particular to your character?
The story is very much about how this guy who has left this kind of work, gets pulled step by step into exactly the kind of full-on level of exposure to danger that he's told himself he doesn't want to get involved in anymore.
What's intriguing to me is how Hannibal Lecter is simultaneously insane, filled with rage and desire to do harm to my character [Will Graham] and yet is also the one who's offering him counsel on how to get over the wounds that he, Lecter, gave him. It's very complicated. When Lecter is saying to Graham that he can help him have a better understanding of what happened to him and how he can get past this, even though he's the one who did it to him, it's very strange.
