You once played Basil Fawlty in an amateur student production of Fawlty Towers at Queen\u2019s College in Melbourne. How amateur was your Basil Fawlty moustache?<\/p>\n
It was terrible. It was real but it was definitely coloured in \u2013 I still have holes in my beard. I\u2019d also shaved my head, so if you look at the early promo posters, you can clearly see I\u2019m wearing a wig. Our theatre was closed so we had to perform in a circus tent in the middle of winter, on an oval in the university grounds, which was all very Fawlty Towers.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always loved comedy. I didn\u2019t really do anything serious until drama school. I always thought there might be a good spin-off with Sauron and Celebrimbor as an odd-couple situation.<\/p>\n
You play Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power<\/a>. Tolkien wrote that Sauron \u201crepresents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible\u201d. What do you consider wholly evil?<\/p>\n A complete disregard for the feelings and wellbeing of other people, to put it simply. It\u2019s the intention, I think. I have horrible flashbacks to playing Aussie rules when I was about 17. I thought people were being quite evil to me at the time. I felt like I was being bullied because I wasn\u2019t being aggressive or manly enough, and people were just trying to make me feel bad and dent my confidence for no reason.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the only thing that pops into my head, which I think is probably a good sign!<\/p>\n Vickers as Sauron in season three of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Photograph: Ben Rothstein\/Prime<\/p>\n What was the most Sam Neill<\/a> thing Sam Neill did when you were making Palm Beach?<\/p>\n The most Sam Neill thing was just being unbelievably kind to everyone<\/a>. He did re-enact a Jurassic Park dinosaur sequence with one of our castmates, because she wanted to send some photographs to her friends. From memory, he was the dinosaur and she was playing him.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the strangest thing you\u2019ve done for love?<\/p>\n When I proposed to my wife, we were in the woods in Hampshire, near where she grew up. She used to go there when she was little and her parents would leave letters from fairies for her. Now the woods are full of little fairy figurines. It was also really muddy so when I proposed I thought, \u201cOh shit, this is the bit where you\u2019ve got to get down on one knee.\u201d But I was in jeans, so I thought, \u201cLove of my life and all that, but I\u2019m not going to kneel in the mud.\u201d I ended up doing quite a deep lunge, trying to simulate kneeling. If someone was watching it probably would have looked quite strange.<\/p>\n What\u2019s been your most cringeworthy encounter with another celebrity?<\/p>\n I once waved at Mo Farah from across the room, thinking he was looking at me. He wasn\u2019t, so he didn\u2019t respond at all. I was with one of my friends who saw everything.<\/p>\n Who would win in a freediving competition between you and Tom Cruise<\/a>?<\/p>\n