There have been quite a lot of those nasty ones. Your performance often explores complex, morally ambiguous characters, from Christian in The Square to Dracula. What draws you to these roles, and how do you approach finding humanity in such layered, sometimes dark, figures? You can get out all your Legos and have fun. Then the next bit of the question comes into play: where do I find the humanity? I always look for something I can relate to — the inferiority complexes, the insecurity — and that becomes the humanity.
How did you find using the crossbow for William Tell? It took a lot of practice. That, and the whole blood-sucking business for Dracula.
Especially when you are really having a lot of it. My all-time favourite performance of the Count! Would you play him again please?
But Mark [Gatiss] and Steven [Moffat] had done some really cool things with the character. They wrote it as if it came to an end. If we were to do a second series, how do we bring him back? We established that he could actually stand in the sun. I think the idea would be to open the second series with him on a beach in Mexico, with one of those tinfoil screens around his neck, working on his tan. Do you act differently in Danish and English?
Bleistiftspitzer3 I think I do. I think I have more of a — this is assuming I have a sense of humour — more of a sense of humour in English than I do in Danish.
