WOW! What a great interview! I love that part, where he says, that he is "always looking for flawed characters who have a pathos and a kind of tragedy to them." Thanks for posting it, Lula!

I have my copy of this edition of Total Film mag now..there are in fact 2 interviews, one on Ghost Rider:Spirit Of Vengeance called "GREAT BALLS OF FIRE" !! The second one is exclusively Nic and even more awesome: "I HAVE A REBELLIOUS SPIRIT I NEVER DO WHAT PEOPLE TELL ME" In this interview, as well as Spirit Of vengeance, Nic talks about many of the directors he has worked with, being offered the role of Scarecrow, being an action hero and action films, with some interesting insights into films past and future!

I will post some excerpts tomorrow!!!

WOW! That`s great, Lula! I am looking forward to read them!

The article posted already covers Nic's contribution to the  "GREAT BALLS OF FIRE" interview, so the following excerpts are from "I HAVE A REBELLIOUS SPIRT, I NEVER DO WHAT PEOPLE TELL ME"

On monsters and complexity:

"I was really a fan of horror films as a child - the Hammer films with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee - so when i got into comics I automatically gravitated towards the monsters."

"I couldn't get my mind around how I was supposed to perceive something like that to be a hero, so i was automatically attracted to that complexity. It's easy to love Superman. It' easy to love Captain America, but it's a challenge to love Ghost Rider. As I got older, that carried on into my dramatic work -  I'm always looking for flawed characters who have a pathos and a kind of tragedy to them."

On out of the box performances:

"other people may call it over the top, but for me it's a style"

On playing Scarecrow in Batman:

"He [Joel schumacher] visited me on the set of Face/Off to ask me if I'd be interested in playing  Scarecrow and obviously I would have done"

On The Wicker Man:

"It's a movie that has a mysterious, phenomenal aura to it on the internet..People think it was an unintentionally funny movie but they don't know what went into it, so the fact that movie has gone on to have a life of it's own dealing with a modern age of the internet and whatnot is pretty exciting."

On Action Movies:

"It'sa  language that translates internationally...you could be in the smallest village in Africa in a thatched hut made out of clay and they will be watching an action hero - and i know that because I've done it. I made a movie years ago called The Shortcut which was an Italian film shot in Africa.My father came out to visit me and I took him to visit some of the little villages and noticed that the only movies they were playing were early Charles Bronson movies. I think action had=s that automatic appeal to all cultures and all languages."

On Jerry Bruckheimer, action acting, The Rock and the Oscar:

His real genius is that he is open to casting independently spirited actors to be  in material that is more mainstream."

"Jerry knows how to tell a story and how to entertain people, and he would say to me, "look, I don't care what you do to develop the character, as long as it doesn't slow the story down." So I learned a short-hand style of action acting, because i was trying to find ways of making Stanley Goodspeed in The Rock a stand-out character. I made him a Beatlemaniac and someone who would only listen to vinyl, not CDs, just to give him some sort of character that wasn't in the script. The action genre was something I had already planned on participating in, even before anything had happened with  Leaving Las Vegas. but because I have a rebellious spirit and never do what people tell me to do, I went in the other direction after I won the Oscar - I did exactly what the 'Intelligentsia' would not think I would do."

On director John Woo and playing Sean Archer as Castor Troy in Face/Off:

"To say that John Woo is talented is an understatement..John doesn't need to more than one or two takes -  he knows exactly what he's going to do with each shot. It's almost like a prodigy doing an algebra equation. He's like the Stephen Hawking of action movies!"

"It was like trying to figure out a Rubik's Cube...I was playing Travolta's character on the inside and my character on the outside - it was kind of a mind twist and that one moment in the prison when I'm screaming, 'I'm Castor Troy,' if you look carefully at the scene there's a moment in my eyes where I really look like I've lost it. I completely forgot where I was in the moment. I wasn't acting anymore because everybody was around me - the other inmates - chanting"Castor Troy" and it just got a little too real. you can see I'm really scared in that shot, so I would say that was a psychologically dangerous moment for me."

On physically dangerous action moments:

"Most of the dangerous action sequences I've done usuallly involve vehicles and having to drive at very high speeds and trying to outmanoevre oncoming traffic."

"Usually what I do is go into another mental state, where everything slows down, my breathing slows down and they call "Action!" and I'm not thinking about anything anymore except staying in this world - and also not damaging any of the equipment!"

On upcoming film Stolen:

"It's really a story of me trying to reconnect with her [his daughter] and in fact save her life"

On director Simon West:

"Simon is another master of action filmmaking..We had a  great relationship - he allowed me to build a character, to create a more laconic '70's-style action hero in Con Air. And he really knows how to keep an audience on the edge of their seats."

On Ghost Rider becoming a trilogy:

"I feel like I've said alot with that character. It depends upon the script and if it gave him another place to explore. I like the idea of Ghost Rider literally going into hell - if it was something more like Dante's Inferno then yes, absolutely."

On the action characters and heroes:

"It gives people strength in a kind of Jungian way, where they find a character that they can be, whether it's Bond or  The Man With No Name, these characters that give people a little bit of a bump during the day when they need it, it's stimulating, it's archetypal adventure, the idea of heroes and villains, it's primitive in all of us."

you are welcome eva, yes some very cool insights into past roles Nic has played..the Face/Off experience was a really amazing thing to share!

And....a Ghost Rider Trilogy? The Ghost Rider going into Hell? maybe a Drive Angry GR crossover!

That is such an awesome interview! It`s really fascinating and stunning, how Nic answers all the questions about some of his roles, Jerry Bruckheimer, John Woo, Simon West and GR! It would def be so great, if he would complete that role with a trilogy! Three is a magical and lucky number and that would be a real treat for us fans! It`s still a month till it`s release! And, a Drive Angry-GR-Crossover would be genius, Lula! Thanks for posting that magNICficent and NICxellent interview!

Thanks for posting that vid, Lula! Indeed! It will never be the same, watching that scene with, what we know now about that moment, he was talking about in the interview!

Lula Argante wrote:

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"I couldn't get my mind around how I was supposed to perceive something like that to be a hero, so i was automatically attracted to that complexity. It's easy to love Superman. It' easy to love Captain America, but it's a challenge to love Ghost Rider. As I got older, that carried on into my dramatic work -  I'm always looking for flawed characters who have a pathos and a kind of tragedy to them."

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I've read the above statement on numerous occassions, and I've often wondered... Say... what IF Nic landed the role of Superman because history tells us, he really wanted that role... I wondered, how would the above statement then read today, and how would Nic's vision or thoughts be on main stream super heros moving forward?  

But then I thought after watching "Fantastic Four" over the weekend, Chris Evans, not only played Johnny Storm, but he also later played Captain America in "Captain America: The First Avenger"... So, it is possible to play more than one huge super hero.