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‘Dracula Untold’ stakes the teen genre

Luke Evans, in a scene from Dracula Untold has played a series of interesting roles in his career. Photo: Supplied

Luke Evans, in a scene from Dracula Untold has played a series of interesting roles in his career. Photo: Supplied

Talking to Luke Evans about his latest project, it rapidly becomes clear that the key word for him in the title is the unexpected one: Untold.

On the day The New Daily speaks to the proudly Welsh actor, one Indian paper has reported that he is in line to become James Bond, but the same three paragraph story also describes him as Irish. “No,” Evans laughs at the report. “That’s called a Chinese whisper or an Indian whisper.”

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It’s hardly surprising, the actor who is happy to be called “internationally cosmopolitan” in his roles – the Eurotrash villain in Fast and Furious 6, the very English Andy in Tamara Drewe, the Middle Earth Bard in the Hobbit films, a Musketeer and various ancient Greek gods litter his CV – but burrs at any suggestion of repetition.

“I certainly I didn’t want to be another Dracula,” he says from London. “There’s been a lot of Draculas – of the Bram Stoker story – already done very successfully. When I read the script, I was very surprised. It wasn’t the story I was expecting. It was the origins story, which has never really been told.”

Of course by “never”, the well-researched actor actually means ‘told many many times before’ just never on screen in this way. Evans spent a great deal of time reading about the historic Romanian leader Vlad the Impaler who inspired the Dracula myth.

Luke Evans, in a scene from Dracula Untold has played a series of interesting roles in his career. Photo: Supplied

Luke Evans, in a scene from Dracula Untold has played a series of interesting roles in his career. Photo: Supplied

“He’s been dead for a long, long time so there’s a lot of the stories written are very exaggerated, some more factual. It was a very interesting research period for me. I really enjoyed it.”

He was also excited by the notion of rescuing vampires from the toothless teen-angst metaphor they have become in pop-culture.

“Vampires in general are still a very interesting subject matter whether for entertainment purposes, spectacle or even folklore. In Eastern Europe vampires are very present in subconscious. It isn’t even a story it’s a reality for some people.

“This was a great opportunity to tell the story that hadn’t been told, and start with the real man. See the human journey of his transition into a vampire and his story, which is a very interesting one.”

In doing so, arguably the screen’s most famous villain and monster became something quite different for the man who was to play him.

“Anti-hero is probably a good description of Vlad the Impaler,” he says. “You meet him in a very peaceful period of his reign. He obviously has a very dark past and had a very special way of torturing people and is very famous for that.”

Basing Dracula in a good man’s humanity, Evans had to find an explanation for all that would come after. For him it is akin to many modern tragedies – Dracula wasn’t evil, he was an addict.

He played Dracula as “someone trying to force himself to go cold turkey. Trying to do the right thing and fight for his people but at the same time this dark force inside him is trying to get hold of him. He’s got this tug of war inside him with this addiction, this thirst for blood. It’s constantly there. Whatever I was doing, that feeling of addiction was always very present in my thoughts.”

Spoiler for folklore: Dracula is immortal and very hard to kill off. Like an addict, having gotten a taste for the part, Evans would find it very easy to slip back into the role.

“Very much so. If people want to see the story progress I’d be very happy to be the person that takes the role. I am Dracula right now so it makes sense doesn’t it.”

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