NEW YORK, May 6 (UPI) -- Richard Roxburgh is no stranger to playing big-screen bad guys, but in the new Hollywood film "Van Helsing" he portrays the ultimate villain -- Dracula.
The Australian actor credited filmmaker Stephen Sommers' screenplay with giving him the chance to make the Gothic icon his own.
"This script has its own sort of qualities of reinventing all of the various monster legends," he said in New York, adding he tried to find what was still human in Dracula when preparing to play the legendary vampire.
"Like the nature of frustration at finding yourself in a position of living forever and having a sense of ... being sick of it," he said.
Asked how he maintained the balance between drama and camp, Roxburgh admitted: "It's a fine line and ... it's fun to kind of experiment with it."
"We tried to keep it away from being too daffy because I suppose if it does teeter over the precipice and fall head-long into camp, then I suppose nobody is really going to care too much."
