From 'Shape of Water' to Silver Surfer How Doug Jones Created His Creatures

From 'Shape of Water' to Silver Surfer How Doug Jones Created His Creatures.
Doug Jones can clearly recall his first day filming The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro's hand-crafted aquatic fairy tale in which the 57-year-old actor plays a nameless amphibian man who falls for Sally Hawkins' mute cleaning lady in 1960s Baltimore. "We started with a scene in which … I'm chained to a cement block on my knees and being tortured and prodded by Michael Shannon," Jones says. "My first day on set was going through the makeup and costume process, then ending up on my knees on concrete being zapped by a cattle prod by a very intense actor."

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For the average person, spending three hours in a makeup chair before even walking onto a set might sound like torture. But Jones has built a 30-year career by squeezing his impossibly lean frame into various costumes and contraptions to portray an array of creatures and alien beings. Just as Andy Serkis is the king of performance capture – inhabiting apes and Gollums and Star Wars villains through the magic of technology – Jones is the guy you call when you need someone to bring life and/or a recognizable humanity to a creature that's something other than human. "You kind of have to forget the physical challenge in the moment," he says. "You have to try to make this thing you're wearing become a part of you."Del Toro and Jones met when the actor was hired to play "a big bug guy" for three days on pick-up shots for the writer-director's English-language debut Mimic (1997). Over a meal, they discovered a shared love for movie monsters and the makeup artists who created them. He gave del Toro his card. Five years went by. Then, as production was ramping up for Hellboy, the special effects artists at FX shop Spectral Motion suggested to the director that Jones might be the right person to portray Abe Sapien, a very different sort of fish man and a loyal pal to Ron Perlman's grumpy half-demon. "That's when Guillermo said, 'Doug Jones! I know Doug Jones!'" recalls Jones, imitating an enthusiastic del Toro. "And he pulled my card out of his wallet."Since that time, the actor has played featured roles in nearly all of the filmmaker's productions, including his recently concluded vampire TV series for FX, The Strain, which cast Jones as an ancient blood-drinker with a bald head and taloned hands. (He currently stars on television as the Kelpien Starfleet Science Officer Lt. Saru in Star Trek: Discovery.) But it's their most recent cinematic collaboration that has brought Jones his greatest acclaim to date, with the performer emoting through foam rubber and silicone and creating a fully realized hero who, through great hardship, discovers a powerful connection.With the film set to open in limited release Friday, Jones offered his first-person thoughts on some of his most recognizable roles and some firsthand insight into his creative process.