5 Q's with 'Watchmen's Billy Crudup
By Emily Christianson, Hollywood.com Staff
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Wednesday, March 04, 2009
The Watchmen's Billy Crudup (Jon Osterman aka Dr. Manhattan) on his blue-man suit, voiceovers and soon-to-be famous sex scene. 
On putting on his blue-man suit.
“[They were] kind of elaborate pajamas. There were two things they were trying to accomplish. One was motion capture and the other was to try to light the other characters with the blue light that Dr. Manhattan is supposed to emanate. So I had a suit that had a bunch of blue lights on it and a battery pack. It was pretty hot, and dots on my face. They were attempting to capture all of the nuance of a performance too, not that there was really anything to capture, but they were going to try to capture it if it was there, mistakenly. The way that they did that was with a bunch of dots on my face and then they shot it with high definition cameras and then sent it to leprechauns somewhere [laughs].”
On making faces.
“There were about 140 dots on my face and each of those dots corresponded to the exact replica of me that was made in the computer that was Dr. Manhattan. The way that they made that replica was with high definition photographs and a laser scan of my face. So it's a computer version of my face that's built into that Dr. Manhattan. So basically, I was just moving the puppet version of me with those dots. It's, for better or worse, my performance.”
On lending his voice to the role.
“Some of it was trial and error but in terms of the sort of philosophy behind the voice, Zack [Snyder] had some really great ideas about how someone with that kind of ability would try to calm the people around him with not too intimidating a voice. We tried to find a placement that was not too Greek god-like. Part of it was that and part of it was just the nature of somebody who is distracted. He was not too interested in the conversations that were happening around him. He was interested in watching particles interact.”
On his soon-to-be famous sex scene.
“[You liked] all three of me? ...That was the job. That was the page that I went, ‘Yeah, I'll do this. I'll do this movie.’ Yeah, I did each of those guys…You know, I'm not saying I'm a fetishist but it was interesting [doing a sex scene in a motion capture suit].”
On his “priceless” Mastercard gig.
“One of the reasons I was doing voiceovers was because I thought I would fly under the radar. When you start off as an actor, it's wise to take the sort of shotgun approach because it's a very difficult way to make a living. You end up talking to the half a percent of actors who have and are making a living at it. There are 99 percent of them out there who are looking for work and doing other things to eek by but what I tried to do was audition for any voiceover, any commercial, anything I could get that would allow me a little bit of income while I was trying to pursue other roles in theater and stuff…[The Mastercard campaign] has become a real blessing for me in my career.”
KEEP READING: More 'Watchmen' Interviews