Why is Mark Strong so good at playing the villain? The character actor has been able to immerse himself into playing quite a rogue's gallery. We have recently seen him playing the lead villain as Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes and crime boss Frank D'Amico in Kick-Ass. He has also played dark characters in Body of Lies, RocknRolla and Stardust, just to name a few. This weekend he takes on the role of Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood playing a traitor who is trying to help create Civil War so that France can invade England.
Strong is just getting warmed up playing the bad guy. In the next two years he will be on the big screen as Matai Shang in
John Carter of Mars and of course, Sinestro in
Green Lantern. Both movies are the beginnings of planned trilogies that he will be integral to his career:
"I've got these two massive franchises that I'm involved with and I don't know what that means, whether I'm only going to play aliens for the next five years or something else will come along. But not knowing is part of the joy" (
The Geek Files). Should we just crown him Villain of the Decade right here and now?
What draws him to these characters? In a recent interview with
ABC News , the 46 year old actor said:
"I do love these characters and as an actor you've got a hell of a lot to get hold of, and the challenge is not to make them two-dimensional and to find something in there"
"I've played good guys in the past, I've played comedy roles in the past, I'm looking to do that again in the future. But for right now I'm very happy in this kind of rich vein of villains."
Now, this wasn't some master plan to always be the bad guy. He recently revealed to
The Geek Files that the decision process is not always in the actor's hands.
"I can't say, 'OK, now I want to play a lead in a romantic comedy,' you have to wait for it to come to you and all you can do is choose the things you like or things you can make something of and they can take you in a direction."
"The idea that I'm sticking my head above the parapet does worry me because I don't want to become someone who's known for being known. I want to be known as someone who plays interesting characters."
Interestingly, Mark Strong was almost the villain in two other recent movies. He turned down the role that was offered for
A-Team and was beat out by Javier Bardem playing Anton Chigurh in
No Country For Old Men.
It takes the rare actor to pull off multiple villains without being typecast as the same heavy forever after. Some that come to mind are Jack Nicholson
(Batman, The Shining), Anthony Hopkins
(Silence of the Lambs, Fracture) and the sometimes campy but always entertaining John Malkovich
(Con Air, Rounders, In the Line of Fire). With this recent run of movies, Mark Strong has not done any "good" characters but all of these villains have certainly been very diverse. He seems poised to join this small fraternity. He does need to play some parts on the other side of the spectrum relatively soon. I have enjoyed his performance in everything I've seen him to date. I am especially excited to see how he plays Sinestro