[IMG:L]For all of the big name actors who’ve appeared comic book superhero movies of the last few years, only a brave few cop to being full-on old school geeks for the characters they play. Hold on, Nicolas Cage – we’re talking about Topher Grace, who tells Hollywood.com about his longtime love of Spider-Man 3’s fang-faced villain Venom, and he has the autographed Todd McFarlane comic book to prove it.
HW: There was obviously the attraction of becoming part of this hugely successful film franchise, but you had a more personal reason to want to get involved as well?
TG: I told Sam [Raimi] when we got the other that there were only two franchises where the sequel has been better than the first one and that’s Aliens and Godfather and the New Testament. So I was a huge fan of his films and I thought that he was a great director beforehand. The comic books I was an even bigger fan of in the late ’80s, which ironically is when the character that I play, Venom, was being born by the great Todd McFarlane, who kind of revolutionized comics at that time. So I felt that when they offered me the role I had this sort of inside track and I had to kind of sit on my hands and not say yes too quickly because I hadn’t negotiated my deal yet. I wanted to say, “I’ll pay you to do it.”
HW: You manage to really embody the comic book villain, even though he’s huge and hulking in the original stories.
TG: Something that I was nervous about was, because I was such a huge fan of the comic book, is that Eddie Brock is much older than me and kind of really muscle-bound, and even though I worked out for like six months I could never get to where he was in the comic…But Sam kind of put my mind at ease by saying, “Don’t worry. We’ve got a really cool idea for the origin.” I think that there is a retelling of the Spider-Man story in a comic book called Ultimate Spider-Man, and it’s kind of taken from that comic book, too, which is more kind of a case study in that someone had received very sort of similar powers to Spider-Man, but he didn’t have a great father figure like Uncle Ben telling him with great power comes great responsibility. He probably would use it for evil, and even Peter kind of used it for personal gain when he first got the power. Then I thought, “Oh, this is neat.” I know I’m like Tobey [Maguire]. I’ve lost roles to him before [Laughs] and we work at the same place in the film and we’re after the same girl. And then something else that I loved about it was that they gave Eddie the edge at the beginning which is weird. Kind of everything is rolling his way. He’s a better photographer and he dresses better and he’s kind of more of a flirt, but then which is so often the case, if someone has it all going on, on the exterior, he’s probably hiding a very shallow interior. Although Peter might not have as polished an exterior as Eddie, he has a very solid core. So it was great. It showed two people who were very similar and who ultimately are totally opposite.
[IMG:R]HW: The thing about you losing roles had come up before in an earlier interview. Did you use that real-life competition at all for your character in this film?
TG: No. I’ve been fortunate enough to like a lot of the people in my – whatever it’s called, the group that I compete in in Hollywood. While Tobey, is only two years older than me, he’s been working a lot longer and he really served as a wonderful kind of role model when I was starting off on That ’70s Show. He was just kind of doing The Ice Storm then, and then he did Cider House Rules and Wonder Boys and these are all great films…I really always admired that about Tobey before I knew him, that he was able to kind of follow his heart and not his wallet in terms of acting. So it was great to be able to work with him, because I wanted to learn more about where that strength of character came from…He couldn’t have been more warm and open. The thing that a lot of people don’t know about Tobey is that he’s really, really funny. Both he and Sam are really quiet and reserved, but they are wickedly funny. So it’s weird because even though it’s such a dark film a lot of my memories are of us – me and Sam and Tobey, because I worked with them the most – are of us just cracking up all the time and making each other laugh.
HW: After leaving That ’70s Show you’ve made a seamless transition into movies. Do you think leaving when you did was the right idea, and do you think it was luck or hard work?
TG: First of all, sitcoms are the best thing that can happen to a young actor in the world – and not that when you’re a young actor you have a choice as to how you’re going to start out in the business. But I feel bad for young actors that become huge stars too quickly, because you haven’t had a chance to kind of practice your craft a lot. And the great thing about a sitcom is that you’re in front of a live audience, so you get really in touch with what the audiences reaction is, but there are a lot of techniques that you’re dealing and there is kind of a great boot camp or a graduate school type mentality to it because you’re going to suck [Laughs] and especially when you’re young. I mean, I was 18 years old and I never acted before. So it was great to do something that could be sent out to millions of people and they judged it, and so that made it for real. But then the next week you get to come back and get back up on the horse and try again. It’s kind of a batting average thing and you work it out. And what’s even better about it is you get four months off in the summer so that you can go try something, then you get to come back home. So I look at that as easily the greatest thing, where you get to be creative and artistic and a good thing. Plus, it’s like epic storytelling. You’re telling one story for seven years, and so there is something kind of neat about it. But at a certain point though you have to realize when you’re not being as challenged by it anymore.
HW: It seems as if you’ve been able to stay so grounded even though you really got famous from that show.
TG: That’s funny, my food taster was just giving me the same compliment. Thank you for saying that [Laughs]. No. I don’t know. I have a lot of friends who were my friends before this whole experience, and then you have to work with good people, like the people in this film who were all very grounded people. I find that the people who are really successful don’t have a problem with that. It’s kind of the people in the middle.
HW: Did you keep your Venom fangs?
TG: No. I don’t want to see those again because it was actually really painful. It was an hour to put on the suit, but that’s actually not very painful. The only thing about the suit is that there is no way to go to the bathroom in the suit. Tobey never told me that. You really have to be kind of careful of that, just not drinking a lot of liquids in the morning. The makeup is four hours, the prosthetic makeup. That really wasn’t painful, but it just took a lot of patience. You sit there and there is nothing to do. You can’t even read a newspaper. You have to keep your head straight and they would glue all of the vines onto my face and they would pull me up in wires which was a little bit of a wedgie situation, but it’s not that awful. The fangs were the thing that for some reason were actually kind of bruising my gums. It’s good though. I guess it’s a sort of method way of being me [Laughs].
HW: You worked out pretty seriously for the role. Is that something that you normally do?
TG: You know it. Big time, yeah. [Laughs] No. It might surprise you to learn that I had never actually worked out before, and look, the minute the film wrapped I quit doing that, too. But they told me in that first meeting that it was going to be really intense, that the suit was going to be intense and the fangs and they were going to put me up on wires, but then six months before that I hit the gym with this guy named Duffy who trains Brad Pitt and also helped train Tobey on the first film. What really surprised me – it was two hours a day, six days a week, which is crazy – is that wasn’t so hard. He was a nice guy and it was kind of fun, but the eating is really hard. First of all, I thought, “Gain weight – Krispy Kreme.’” But you have to gain a specific kind of weight and so it’s really kind of boring protein filled meals and shakes and it’s eating past the point of being full. That part to me was really hard and just something that I had to get used to. I’m actually glad that I started well before the film so I could just concentrate on that, and then it was kind of second nature while I was doing the film.
HW: Are you prepared for some changes in your life that could be in store after this film comes out?
TG: Maybe I’m being naïve, but I don’t feel like a lot is going to change. It’s funny because Tobey and Kirsten [Dunst], while we were doing the movie, would kind of look at me, like “Get ready.” I said “For what?” So I don’t know.
HW: As an old school Venom fan, do you own any of Todd McFarlane‘s original Spider-Man art?
TG: Okay, he illustrated The Amazing Spider-Man which is like the main Spider-Man comic book, but then he had his own title, too. This will just let you know that I’m legit [Laughs]. He had his own title that was just Spider-Man and he did the first 17 issues or so of it, and I bought the first issue and he signed it for me when I was younger at some mall signing or something. I don’t know if he knows that, but write about that because he’ll probably look and go “What?”
