These photos are from STARBURST magazine, issue # 307, and were accompanied by an article on Ron Perlman. I will include some excerpts here, but I thoroughly recommend the purchase of this magazine, which is available in newsagents now, in order to obtain the full feature.

FROM HELL
Excerpts from an article on Ron Perlman as HELLBOY, by Joe Nazzaro.

[It was Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro who had decided from day one that Perlman was the only actor who could bring Mike Mignola's quirky supernatural comic book character to life. "He had the option on the material something like five or six years prior to us filming it," recalls Perlman. "We were having dinner together one night, and then went to one of his favourite comic book stores in Hollywood, and he said, 'In a perfect world, this is you!' I looked at it and said, 'That's pretty cool!' and proceeded to forget about it."]

. ["It was just a superb endeavour on that level," declares Perlman. "If you really look at the comic book, and study Liz Sherman, what you see is Selma Blair, so she was the embodiment of Mike Mignola's flight of fancy. I think that's true across the board. You couldn't get a better Professor Broom than John Hurt, plus he brings so much integrity and dignity to what is ultimately a fantasy/comic book milieu, so that lends it credibility."]

On Doug Jones: ["He was a joy, and when we had a scene together you didn't have to work very hard, because you're seeing it all right there in the character. The easiest part is actually when the cameras started to roll, because Doug is Abe, and what Abe is makes Hellboy possible."]

[Looking back over some of his personal highlights from the film, Perlman says, "My favourite section was the five or six weeks spent shooting the stuff in the BPRD, which is where Hellboy's room is, and there was some real fun stuff in there. The character is first introduced in Hellboy's lair, so that's where we first meet him and the art directors did an amazing job with that room.]

["I also absolutely adored the time in the chair with [make-up team] Jake Garber and Chad Waters and Matt Rose and Bart Mixon. We had so many laughs and played such great music in preparation for the day."]

["So those are the two highlights of the shoot for me. And then just looking at Guillermo's face at the end of a take every once in a while and seeing this cherubic but devilish grin where you're watching the ultimate transformation from his reverence of Mignola's world to his impossible-to-overstate passion to get it onto the screen."]

On the filming: ["It was pure joy and wide-eyed splendour and wonder every day even the hard days."] °