Perlman: Are you going to ask me anything, or shall I just wing it?

Fan: You were going to tell us a story?

Perlman: Oh yes… I was telling you this story that usually one likes to prepare when one is asked to audition for a role, and the bigger the job -the potentially more money to be made - the greater the pressure to perform well, so usually the greater the preparation.

The two biggest jobs I've ever had in my life - the first was Beauty and the Beast, and I read the script, and I had the good sense to decide that if I started to work on the character all I could do was fuck it up.

So I actually went to the network audition, which was the biggest audition of my life -representing the greatest quantum leap in my career - having read the script just one time, and rather than memorising the lines, I just read the lines just as I felt them - unfettered - and I ultimately got the part.

And the only other time that's ever happened, where I will not work on this character at all, is Hellboy. Because on an instinctive level there's this connection, that if I began to think about him or work on him, or manufacture him in any way, it could only be a compromise.

And so on any given day when I have to play a scene, I'll just spend enough time learning the lines so I can play the scene. No other thought will go into it. This one will be purely from the heart.

Transcript & Photos of Q&A.