You may know British actor Dominic Monaghan as Merry Brandybuck from the insanely popular "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, or as Charlie Pace in the insanely popular time-traveling drama "Lost." Or as Bolt in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." Or as a wicked quantum physicist in "Flash Forward."
Et cetera, et cetera. Look, diminutive as Monaghan may be, he's a really big star.
Monaghan's currently promoting his upcoming film "The Millionaire Tour," a web-only production made by Michael Eisner's company Vuguru, featuring Monaghan as a violent criminal who targets the wrong mark. We asked for his take on the future of movies online -- but we also got the story on his ex-girlfriend Evangeline Lilly's part in "The Hobbit," and why he's getting so grim in his movie roles.
Your characters seem to be taking a downward spiral in darkness -- Merry was bright as the sun, Charlie was kind of morally gray... now this. Is something going on, are you okay?
[Laughs] It's an interesting question. I enjoy darkness, it's not something that I'm scared of and it's something that throughout my life I've explored. My real heroes in life are dark. I enjoy and admire John Lennon, and what he did was he took his pain and he turned it into art.
I'm light-hearted, I like joking, I like having fun and stuff like that, but I like depth to my characters. I've never been fully drawn into ... the musical theater world. For me, that feels a little more surface-y than the grittier or the tougher characters.
I feel like my responsibility, when I take on a role, is to flesh that character out as much as possible and if you're giving a character more and more layers, what I look for is "what is this person's darkest moment" and "what is this person's lightest moment" and usually the darkest moment is the driving force.
Was the darkness a draw for you with "The Millionaire Tour?"
This one just had a very dynamic arguably lead character -- there are no
real leads in this movie, because everyone has their moment in the sun,
but he drives the film, my character. He's the guy with the gun that
says do this, do that, stop doing this, stop doing that.
And I was available, and I love being on set, I love working. So that was fun.
This movie was produced for online distribution -- shot in a very short time -- is this the future of film?
I think we can't avoid the fact that in the Western world most people go
online, so if people are going online and they're chatting to people
and they're doing their social networking, then their ability to watch
TV and watch films is just going to be a way that they're going to
interact with their computer.
I would always like to see high quality stuff [online]. Things like reality TV ... have really damaged the quality of the medium of television and film to a certain extent. Once it gets to an online medium, where lots of people can be filmmakers, you're running the risk of it being diluted. My only responsibility is to try and associate myself with things that I consider to be quality.
I like filming fast. I like only doing a couple of takes or three takes if we've got it. I kind of immerse myself in the characters that I play. So if it is a dark character, I try to get in and out as quickly as possible. I don't like to stay too dark.
Evangeline Lilly was recently cast in "The Hobbit." Was that a coincidence, or did you introduce her to Peter Jackson?
Yeah, yeah, we were hanging out at some party that Peter [Jackson] and
Fran [Walsh] and Phil [Boyens] were at and I think I must have
introduced them, because we were all at the same party. Definitely not a
coincidence.
In an epic battle between die-hard fans of "Lost" and "Lord of the Rings," who would win?
I'm going to say a die-hard "Lord of the Rings" fan, simply because
their world is at war. Whereas the "Lost" world isn't always at war,
there's moments of solace. But, Middle-earth, to a large degree, is in
battle. So, I would think they're more equipped to battle. They've had a
longer history, more time to prepare as well. And they've got some
magic stuff. Swords, and axes and wands...
I've seen fans that can do spells.
