CRISPIN Glover talks about working with performance capture in the Robert Zemeckis blockbuster Beowulf and how he finds time to juggle acting with composing and painting…

How was working in performance capture format?
Crispin Glover: One of the things I really like about the performance capture is that opposed to a single lens capture you have 240 lenses surrounding you. Often there is another actor off-camera and you’re on-camera or vice-versa and there can be an energy differentiation. In this particular technology every actor – both in wideshot and in extreme close-up – are aware of it, so 100% of the time you’re going with 100% energy. It’s very good for honing in on what the actual intention is.

How did you go about finding the character of Grendel’s pain?
Crispin Glover: It was very clear in the screenplay what the intentions were. The word monster keeps being said but I definitely wasn’t thinking that because it was quite clear what was needed from the character. What’s evident from the film [once you’ve seen it] is that the problem stems from the ear and the pain it was causing, so I had to go down and get rid of these creatures that were causing me this trouble.

Robert Zemeckis did tell me that he felt every single movement I was going to make would cause me pain. It was a very good thing to get to play because every action I had ended up having a reaction. So, in the film I then meet up with my father, who I think it’s clear that I have a fair amount of conflict with, and then I meet up with my mother, who I think provides a fair amount of solace. But all of these elements were clear in the screenplay and it was just a matter of playing them.

How do you connect to these characters when you’re not in uniform or anything?
Crispin Glover: I think about what it is that my character is after – it’s basically a very simple thing that you’re taught in acting class. You need to concentrate on those things and then you end up interacting with the people you’re working with and everything else disappears.

How did you find the voice of Grendel?
Crispin Glover: Well, there were two elements. One was speaking in old English. Coincidentally, a year before I heard about this project I listened to a college course on the history of the English language. It was pretty helpful in telling me what the really early, old English sounded like because it was written phonetically. So I happened to have that sound in my head. And when I came in Robert Zemeckis wanted to hear what it sounded like if I improvised in old English, so I did an improvisation of the sound and we decided that it should happen and we got a professor in to help us find words that somehow matched modern sounding English. It’s a fairly distinct and different language than modern English but I definitely enjoyed all of that part of it.

As far as the more aggressive sounds that were made a lot of that had to do with the pain element that Robert Zemeckis had suggested. At first, it was just meant to be an opening into the character but it seemed to make sense to continue on with it – there was a certain amount of expressiveness that could come through that. So, definitely by the end of the day I had a lot of hot teas while we were doing it and I was very glad to go home and rest and know that the screaming did not stay with me!

b>Read our review of Beowulf

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