He plays the hero in tomorrow’s werewolf thriller “Blood and Chocolate,” but actor Hugh Dancy remembers the moment while filming that his job veered into absurdity.

“It was day three, we were in a field,” Dancy told the Herald in an exclusive interview. “There I was, with a Hungarian man standing above me on a 6-foot platform, prepared to throw a fully grown wolf on my head. I thought, ‘How did I get to this point?’”

That’s easy to answer.

The Oxford grad best known for period pieces such as “Elizabeth I,” “King Arthur” and TNT’s “David Copperfield” got there “by being in the right place at the right time,” he said.

“Fairly shortly after I graduated and started working, I did ‘David Copperfield’ - the Dickens protagonist, as opposed to the guy who walks through big walls,” Dancy joked of the Las Vegas-style illusionist. “That was an opportunity in a visible role, and it was a baptism of fire.”

But timing hasn’t always been a friend to Dancy, 31.

His 2005 film “Beyond the Gate,” a fact-inspired story about Rwandan genocide, has been delayed in this country because of its similarities to the 2004 Oscar-nominated “Hotel Rwanda.”

“It’s been in the UK and Europe,” Dancy said, calling it a remarkable picture that is more honest in its depiction of human nature than the optimistic “Hotel Rwanda.”

“There are two ways to approach a human tragedy on that scale. One is to see the glimmer of light in the darkness, which was ‘Hotel Rwanda,’ and our way was to look at the steps people take before they find themselves capable of committing crimes at that level. Ours isn’t a story of redemption and hope. It’s a tough movie because it doesn’t offer those things.”

Dancy has recently been a staple of the gossip pages. The New York Daily News called him a “saucy devil” and accused him of being the other man in the recent Claire Danes-Billy Crudup breakup. But the column noted, “Some might be surprised he hooked up with her and not him.” It further alleged that while filming “Evening” in November, the actor was seen making out with the screenwriter and a hotel manager.

Dancy, now rehearsing for his Broadway debut in “Journey’s End,” seemed more amused than irritated.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s not something I recognize, but I was impressed by the writing, the fiction.”

Source: Boston Herald

Posted on January 25, 2007 by Anna
Filed In Blood and Chocolate • Movies • News