Rhys Ifans sees Shakespeare in Spider-Man

Not many actors from a summer superhero movie would cite Shakespeare to justify their film’s existence. Then again, not many actors are The Amazing Spider-Man’s Rhys Ifans, a very unlikely person to grace a big-budget action extravaganza.

A classically trained theatre performer who dropped off the Hollywood map for more than a decade, the Welsh actor, 43, presents an odd blend of thoughtful eloquence, rock ’n’ roll swagger and career ambivalence — not to mention an, er, high-mindedness about the work he’s doing.

“There are these enduring, socially mirroring qualities that Spider-Man has that begs us to revisit him,” Ifans said when asked over breakfast why he thought the time was right for a new Spider-Man movie. “He’s in a sense a spokesman for every generation. And like all great albums, or movies, or pieces of literature, we revisit them. Hamlet is prepared dozens of times, and nobody ever says ‘Why the ... are we doing that again?’”

Ifans is a key part of doing that again — that is, Etch-a-Sketching one of Hollywood’s most popular franchises just five years after it last appeared on the big screen. Improbably directed by the indie filmmaker Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer) and anchored by a cerebral Brit (Andrew Garfield), the movie is both a financial and tonal gamble. The Amazing Spider-Man, tackles a familiar tale about the transformation of the ordinary teen Peter Parker — told by Sam Raimi to great creative and box-office effect beginning in 2002 — more intimately than the original.

Sony Pictures executives are crossing their fingers that they made the right decision with their $230 million (Dh844.56 million) bet.

Ifans has plenty riding on the movie too. As Curt Connors, the lizard-morphing scientist who is Spidey’s chief rival, the actor has taken on the most prominent role of his enigmatic career.

After enchanting US audiences as Hugh Grant’s unkempt roommate in 1999’s Notting Hill, Ifans largely disappeared from the American screen. He took minor roles in forgettable studio comedies (Little Nicky, anyone?) and larger parts in well-regarded but little-seen indies. Instead he concentrated on theatre and music in his native UK. (Ifans was briefly the lead singer of the cult Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals.)

But in the last 18 months Ifans has been unexpectedly thrust back into the Hollywood spotlight. He’s played the editor of a wizard magazine in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1; the Earl of Oxford in Roland Emmerich’s Shakespeare-flavoured period drama Anonymous; and an unctuous professor competing for Emily Blunt’s affections in The Five-Year Engagement. He’ll next appear as a pining lover in the star-laden romance Serena.

In all these guises, Ifans’ Super Furry Animals past has never been too far behind. The actor carries himself with a Mick Jagger air — living much of the year on the Spanish island of Majorca doesn’t hurt, nor does an arrest at Comic-Con — that makes an impression even on costars accustomed to groupiedom.

“Rhys is just way cooler than you are,” said The Hunger Games’ Jennifer Lawrence, who stars opposite Ifans in Serena. “It’s an effortless cool that makes you feel like a nerd; even his clothes make you feel like you should have worn something cooler.”

Sporting fashionable scruff and a necklace with a sword pendant dangling from it, Ifans’ breakfast appearance confirmed Lawrence’s description. His thin blond hair was stylishly bed-headed, and a pack of cigarettes was tucked into the pocket of his fashionably skinny slacks. Though he was relaxed and engaging, he could also sound a boastful note, suggesting at one point that he differs from the character of Don Juan, whom he once played on the London stage, because he reads Gabriel Garcia Marquez and, really, would Don Juan do that?

As he invoked Shakespeare to describe Spider-Man, Ifans was just getting going. “Not that I’m comparing Hamlet and Spider-Man in literary terms. But in archetypal terms they’re both very real and relevant figures. Hamlet is a youth grappling with the loss of his father, same as Spider-Man. It’s easy to say, ‘Why is Sony doing this again, but [not] ‘Come on, Shakespeare, write another one.’”

Precisely which celluloid characters merit new tales — and what liberties should be taken in their retelling — is the big question hovering over The Amazing Spider-Man. Webb’s movie makes calculated departures from Raimi’s 2002 original, focusing heavily on the hero’s high-school life as a skateboard-riding outsider.

Webb fires up the wayback machine for Spidey’s love interest, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), who was Parker’s first girlfriend in the comic books but wasn’t a major character in Raimi’s films. Ifans’ scientist, a Marvel staple, wasn’t a big player in the Raimi movies either.

In this film, Connors is a mysterious amputee who knows what’s happened to Peter Parker’s father, his former partner. Uptight and smug, Connors conducts high-level genetic research about limb regeneration — until a risky self-experiment unleashes the beast within and turns him into a rampaging reptile. The actor viewed the lizard transformation as conferring on his character “a great euphoria, a sense of hubris, in the same way as a crystal-meth user”.

Still, the script hits a number of familiar beats — the spider bite that gives Parker his powers, the death of Parker’s uncle and the hero’s evolution from awkward teen into web-slinging hero — prompting consternation in bloggerdom.

Ifans said he understands fans’ concerns. “Spider-Man is not a millionaire who lives in a dark tower on a hill and keeps his car in a cave and hangs out with a scantily clad boy called Robin,” the actor said. “He’s not some deity like Superman who lives on another planet. He’s the kid next door; he’s you and me. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been bullied to some extent. He’s overcoming something we’re all familiar with. So people feel they own him even more.”

Ifans said any worries he had were dispelled when he heard Webb would be behind the camera. “Marc has a forensic attention to human relationships, and I thought that would elevate Spider-Man to something very present... realer than the way we’d seen it before,” he said.

Webb has his own take: he says he viewed it like a James Bond movie, which also sometimes changed actors and tones.

But tackling icons evoked anxiety in the two actors. To cope, Ifans would do something unusual: an off-colour impression of an old woman involving a spoon. He’d perform it on set for Garfield when no one was looking to help take the edge off.

“We’d both get a little freaked out thinking that we were in this big movie,” Garfield said by phone. “The impression would just relax us.”

Born in a small town to teacher parents, Ifans’ entree to acting came when he joined a youth theatre group in his hometown. He had no ambition of becoming anything more than a theatre creature when he decamped at 17 for London acting school.

Those first years in the big city were difficult — “like taming a giant horse”, he said — and there were nights he cried himself to sleep. But he stuck it out and soon began landing theatre roles, eventually ending up in Shakespeare and other productions at the likes of the Royal National Theatre.

All that changed in 1997 when Ifans and his actor brother Llyr starred in a scrappy black comedy movie called Twin Town. Made on a tiny budget with an offbeat Welsh sensibility, the movie became a huge hit in the UK. Two years later, Notting Hill put him on a US radar.

Soon the studio comedy offers streamed in. But Ifans chose to go dark instead. “Notting Hill was a great gig and a great part. But after that movie the amount of scantily clad goofballs that came my way was unbelievable,” he said, referring to his half-naked antics from Notting Hill. “This industry is built on pigeonholing. And that’s what I wanted to avoid.”

Anonymous was a turning point. Some of the cast and crew were taken aback by the choice of a little-known actor as the lead, director Roland Emmerich recalled. But he believed the actor possessed a subtlety. “There’s a vulnerability to Rhys that gives any performance an element of the tragic, and that’s what I wanted,” Emmerich said.

When the studio and producers were seeking their Connors/Lizard — a tragic figure in his own right — they called Emmerich, who recommended Ifans.

Ifans said while he’s grateful for the new work, he doesn’t always relish the media attention that comes with it. At last summer’s Comic-Con, Ifans was arrested on suspicion of battery after scuffling with a security guard. No charges were filed, but many in the blogosphere had a field day anyway. “That’s one of the things about being in the public eye — something like that happens and suddenly you’re an ax-wielding madman,” he said.

Despite the recent bounty, Ifans can radiate an ambivalence about a Hollywood career. Nicholas Stoller, who directed Ifans in Engagement, noted that, though devoted to the part, the actor was “pretty private, just a touch removed”.

Ifans doesn’t disagree. “There is a part of me that thinks I just want to rear pigs in Wales. It’s weird. I don’t know if it’s a protection mechanism or what, but there is a part of me as a child that wanted to be a farmer, and I really think it would be OK if it went that way.”

He added, “There aren’t a lot of similarities between my work now and that, except maybe the unsociable hours, the free food and the bulls**t.” He paused. “But the bulls**t on the farm you can shovel away.”