On the ongoing fascination with the character of Batman…
I think it’s modern day mythology. That’s really what it is. These are gods, these are modern day gods. It’s what we wish we could be.
It’s kind of our ideals of what we could be and particularly with Batman, you know, he’s fascinating because we really could be him.
All right, you’d have to inherit a lot of money, but if you manage that, then, you know, the idea is that it is possible to actually be this particular superhero.
On getting into fighting shape for ‘Batman Begins’ (HBO, March 9)…
Once they cast me, that’s when the real effort started just because that’s was when I actually had to start getting strong because he’s got no super powers. You have to look like you can be a brawler. He has no super powers and so he has to look like he really can do what you see him doing.
On handling the pressure of playing Batman…
You know, I really didn’t view it as being pressure because we were coming at it from a completely different angle. It wasn’t reinvention and it was recognition that the last ones just really had been not satisfactory at all.
So I just had a genuine belief that this was what like true Batman fans would be enjoying and wanting to see. And more importantly than that to me, this is what I had seen in the graphic novels.
On his favorite gadget from the film…
The car. It has to be because they’ve done such a radically different thing with it. What I love about it is that aesthetically it’s great. It looks nothing like any Batmobile that has come before it.
