Neat article about the man behind the Silver Surfer:
A spandex-clad Jessica Alba may be what sells tickets to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (out June 15), but it’s the naked dude on the shortboard that will keep audiences on the edge of their seats. Creature-actor Doug Jones, 46, is riding high as the man behind the film’s lustrous, CG-enhanced villain (voiced by Laurence Fishburne) at a time when multimillion-dollar digitally derived characters are sending most prosthetics-wearing mortals to the unemployment line.
You don’t know his face (see photo) or his voice (Jones is usually dubbed), but you know his, ahem, body of work: In the 1980s, the 6′ 4″, 140-pound contortionist was the shades-wearing moon in McDonald’s “Mac Tonight” ads. In 1997, director Guillermo Del Toro cast Jones as a humanoid cockroach in Mimic and, in 2004, as the seaweed-hued Abe Sapien in Hellboy. But it was Jones’ dual performance in Pan’s Labyrinth, as the titular talking faun and the palm-eyed Pale Man, that earned him celebrity cachet żżż and the film three Oscars. “I try and keep my thumb on the soul of the character,” he says. “The physicality comes out of that.” Next challenge? Dialog. Jones will be seen żżż and heard żżż in Hellboy 2, out next year.
