10 Things We Gleaned About Guillermo del Toro And Doug Jones’ Working Relationship

The Horror Master And The Man Of A Thousand Faces

♦ Director Guillermo del Toro and actor Doug Jones have had a working relationship that goes back twenty years and in the latest issue of Empire, they just chatted about their relationship in the six films they have worked together on ( Mimic, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Crimson Peak and The Shape Of Water). Here’s 10 things we found out…

1. The pair first bonded over lunch early on in filming for Mimic (1997): “I ate his tortillas. I said: ‘Are you gonna finish that?’ ‘A Mexican and his tortillas are never far apart’, Jones fake-grumbles.”

2. Jones was impressed by the way del Toro worked: “He was unlike any director I’d met before. I thought: ‘There’s an eight-year-old boy behind those eyes.'”

3. Jones recalls that he has always been hindered by the costumes he has worn on del Toro’s films but he has never resented this: “I’ve never been able to see or hear well on anything I’ve played for him. But on a Guilermo del Toro film it’s well worth it.”

4. The actor has used the same process to get ready for roles for many years: “I’l go to a dance studio, stand in front of a mirror and say, ‘What posture is going to work for this?’ I work out some physicality, then the make-up tests start.”

5. Abe Sapien in Hellboy was performed by Jones but his voice was done by David Hyde Pierce. Del Toro recalls telling Jones the news slightly embarrassed: “Directing means one thing: you have to be brutal sometimes. The only thing you can do is deliver the brutal news yourself. But I would say that was the floor of our relationship.”

6. Jones was petrified when he was called on by del Toro to play the two roles he did in one of Tripwire’s favourite films of this century so far, Pan’s Labyrinth, especially as he was the only American on the film, but it was alright in the end: “I had no confidence in myself. But Guillermo sees something you don’t in yourself.”

7. Guillermo del Toro backed this up: “Doug was American and we were flying him over and putting him in [the film]. It was a huge victory in a Spanish movie. I said, “This is the only guy on Earth who can play this.”

8. For Hellboy II. Jones got to voice Abe Sapien himself as del Toro explained: “I had such faith in Doug. Hellboy II opens with Abe Sapien. He had as important a storyline as Hellboy.”

9. On Crimson Peak, it was a memory from the director’s mother which acted as inspiration for the first ghost: “That came from a memory my mother had…When her grandmother died, my mother was in her bed and heard the fabric of the dress of her grandmother, smelled her perfume, felt her sit on the bed, and felt her grandmother embrace her. She turned around and there was nobody there.”

10. For their latest collaboration, The Shape of Water, Jones was the only choice to play the amphibian water god for the director: “He is an extraordinary actor. He can embody things that nobody else can. When you say, ‘You are going to play opposite Sally Hawkins,’ that’s not a casual decision. Then you think, ‘That’s an actor.'”

To read the whole interview, pick up the February 2018 issue of Empire.

Empire Online

To read our review of The Shape of Water, visit here