Interview with Rudolf Martin

Rudolf Martin has this chameleon quality about him which means you’ve seen him, probably more times than you realize. This German actor has appeared in Swordfish, Bedazzled and in the TV series “24″ and “Enterprise”. Although his roles have all been supporting he has stolen the scenes he has been in.

Rudolf didn’t think he would be handed roles on a silver platter. He thought he would have to struggle for every job he got. In other words, Hollywood is just what Rudolf expected. But the struggle has been worth it as he continues to add to his list of growing credits that includes White Oleander, Bedazzled, and Swordfish.

Born and raised in West Berlin, Rudolf moved with his family from Berlin to Paris to Italy, arriving in the United States a short time after his high school graduation from the Universite de Paris. His first professional role was in the short film The Dutch Master, which was nominated for an Academy Award® in 1994.

This trained actor studied American and English Literature in Berlin, Theater Arts in Paris, then enrolled in the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York. This world traveler has tread the boards, Off-Broadway, in Nicky Silver’s critically acclaimed hit comedy “The Food Chain.”

A former soap star Rudolf spent three years, 1993-1996, on the ABC soap, “All My Children” in a story line with Sarah Michelle Gellar. He had steady work and a steady paycheck, but the drive to expand his acting abilities led him to the West Coast. So, Rudolf left a promising career in New York to branch out in Los Angeles

“It took me a couple of years to get my foot in the door,” he says of his work in Hollywood.

The year 2000 was the year that things started happening for Rudolf. An unexpected change in his career opened the door to more roles in films and television. “The last few years I’ve been playing more darker characters. And I didn’t seek those roles out, they just came to me,” he says. “That changed my career a little bit because I always played nice guys, good guys.”

One of the darkest roles in the history of film is of course Dracula. The character of Dracula was found to be the scariest, most compelling movie monster of all in a study by the American Psychological Association. Rudolf couldn’t get any darker than that when he took on the title role of USA Network’s Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula in 2001. (Authors note: Another One2watch4 spotlight actor Gerard Butler played Dracula and also had the lead role in USA Network’s Attila. Can we spot ‘em?)

Dark Prince was Rudolf’s first leading role, his next leading role is in the Slovakia film Bloodlines where he plays an American who goes to the former Yugoslavia looking for his birth mother.

Rudolf has had a bevy of supporting roles in high-profile movies and television shows. And he steals the scenes every time. Whether it’s as Ones2watch4 Francis O’Connor’s lover in Bedazzled or an amorous smooth-talking alien in “Enterprise”, Rudolf walks onto the screen and makes you forget who else is up there sharing it with him. He has done series television, stage and feature films, but Rudolf says he prefers feature films.

“In film you have more time. There is a beginning and an end to a film. In TV you have just one role. Television and feature films are very similar, except episodic TV. You come on as a guest player and you don’t know what came before or how the show is going to go on after you leave. It has it’s own strange energy.”

Rudolf’s guest role on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” stirred a lot of interest in this German-born thespian. He played the original bad ass, Dracula himself. The show aired shortly before Dark Prince aired. But both characters were played very differently. Where the Dark Prince’s Dracula was an historical account, the Buffy’s Dracula was camped up. Rudolf says it was good to work with Sarah again. And Sarah must have liked working with Rudolf again. In the past she has said that he is one of her favorite on-screen kissers.

“That’s very sweet of her,” he sounds bashful of the compliment. “Sarah was very young when we kissed, she was maybe 16 or 17,” he tries justifying her comment. Accept it Rudolf, you made her swoon. “It was fun to work with her,” he says of Sarah adding it was a good experience.

Although his career has turned to him playing darker characters, Rudolf is not afraid of being typecast. “There are good roles in that spectrum of characters,” he says. He currently thinks he is not being typecast into the role of shady characters.

His latest role in White Oleander, due in theatres Oct. 11, has him playing a dirty dog of a character that flirts with Alison Lohman’s character – teenaged Astrid. Rudolf plays a Russian alcoholic who is dating one of Astrid’s foster mothers. Rudolf’s character, however, comes on to Astrid. Ewwwww! Even though the character is horrible, Rudolf auditioned for the part anyway.

“I loved the script. It seemed like a quality project to me.”

Getting him to talk about the role was like pulling teeth though. This role doesn’t appear on his listing at IMdB.com and he didn’t volunteer the information that he was even in this film that had its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was only a follow-up e-mail that he answered Ones2watch4′s questions on it. But that’s Rudolf…happy to be working, loving what he does, not worrying about hiring a crack public relations spokesperson to promote his career. (That’s what we’re for.)

Being cast as the bad guy time and time again isn’t the worse that could happen to him. Rudolf says the worst thing that can happen to an actor is doing a film and having it never see the light of day. “I have done things that have never come out. And it has happened a few times. That is a very frustrating experience.”

It isn’t enough though to give up on acting and pursue a different career. Rudolf was inspired to act as a young child. He says he developed his imagination by reading plays that he found in a bookshelf. “Reading developed my imagination. I wasn’t influenced by watching television.”

The lack of television influence hasn’t stopped Rudolf from wanting to do a big-ass action flick, along the lines of Swordfish, in which he played hacker Axel Torvalds who was killed in the first 15 minutes of the film. “I don’t mind dying,” he says. Just don’t ask him to jump out of an airplane. He has no desire to do that. “I don’t want to do that unless there is a good reason too.” Starring in a big-ass action flick would be a good reason though.

Besides the action film Rudolf would like to work more in Europe. His next two films are a German film called Lautlos (Rudolf is fluent in German) and Bloodlines which is being shot in Slovakia.

“Being European I feel I should work there too, not just in North America.”

Whether he is working on European or Hollywood productions, stage or screen, Rudolf is happy with the choice of roles coming his ways these days.

“You just go with the punches.”

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