He’d always been more inspired by goofy sidekicks like Danny Kaye and Barney Fife than the handsome heroes, and he figured he’d be able to make a living being that guy in a sitcom - “come in, do an armpit fart, and then leave.” But the business had other plans. Like Sebastian in La La Land, Jones had a very specific Hollywood dream. That’s what I wanted to be, not a getting-in-your-face mime.”Įventually, Los Angeles beckoned. “They’re the ones who follow you around, mimic you, play with your hat.” That made the park’s patrons, and him, uncomfortable, so Jones developed a less confrontational routine. “Street mimes are the ones that give mime a bad rap,” he said. “I’m six-three-and-a-half and I weigh 140 pounds, so that lends itself very well to miming.” He was mesmerized by the practice, and after graduation, he took his talents to Cincinnati’s Kings Island theme park, working as a street mime. “They saw how I was kind of a goofy soul,” he said. His entry into show business came when he was recruited into the mime troupe Mime Over Matter at Ball State University. In a way, I developed my sense of humor out of fear.” If they were gonna laugh at me, I was going to control when and why it happened. I had to develop a sense of humor as a defense mechanism. “As a youngster, growing up in the Midwest and looking different than the normal kids is kind of a curse,” he told Vulture. Jones grew up in Indiana, the youngest boy in a family of midwestern Catholics. “God created me just as I am for a very specific purpose, and I think that’s true for all of us.” “It took me until my 40s before I could fully embrace this tall, skinny, gangly person that I am,” he told Vulture. Jones had a surprising answer: His monster, he said, was himself. “Is there any monster you feared, but then you came to realize was okay?” Rachlis asked. When Jones was walking the Shape of Water red carpet in Toronto, reporter Josh Rachlis handed him a Sharpie sketch of the actor alongside his fish-man character. He might tilt his head and go, ‘Huh?’ Or he’ll put his ears down like, ‘Enough of that, feed me.’” Your dog doesn’t know how to nod like a human. “When Sally’s speaking sign language, I fought the urge to nod, like ‘I get you.’ Those are human gestures,” he said. An actor’s first instinct is to listen, but that was the one thing he couldn’t do. It would’ve ruined the suit to have a trap door built in.”īesides the technical aspects of the role, Jones was also faced with a particular creative challenge: He had to be both inhuman and feral, but also sexy. As he told the crowd during a recent appearance with del Toro at Vulture Festival Los Angeles, each shooting day was a feat of endurance, in more ways than one: “I couldn’t poop. In certain shots, Jones had to act while completely blind, thanks to the fish-man’s painted eyes. The creature suit was so tight it required three people to help shimmy him into it. Though the role only required around two hours a day sitting for makeup - some scenes in Hellboy took seven - the physical rigors were immense. He plays a fish-man being kept in a secret government lab in early ’60s Baltimore, who meets and falls in love with a mute cleaning woman played by Sally Hawkins. In Water, Jones (who is neither an Alabama politician nor a Twin Peaks character) gets his highest-profile film role yet. “Guillermo said, ‘I don’t want a flourishy Dougie Jones performance,’” he recalled. But when it came time to film The Shape of Water, his sixth film with del Toro, Jones’s usual actorly tricks were forbidden. When you interview him, the actor is quick with a warm touch on the arm or shoulder, which is reassuring once you’ve gotten all thoughts of the Pale Man out of your head. The hands are just as striking in person. He is perhaps the only person in America who could beat Giannis Antetokounmpo in a thumb-wrestling contest. But you remember those long, expressive fingers - gesturing archly as Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies, twisting with menace as the Faun in Pan’s Labyrinth, or searching for a child-shaped meal as the Pale Man in the same film. Unless you’re a hardcore fan of director Guillermo del Toro, you might have trouble placing the 57-year-old actor’s face, which is usually hidden behind all kinds of rubber and silicone.
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