John Malkovich has played his share of villains and psychopaths. But few have been as larger than life as Governor Turnbull, arch-enemy of Jonah Hex, whom Malkovich portrays when the DC comic book character makes his big-screen debut this summer. Hit the jump now to find out what Malkovich told me, on my visit last year to the film's New Orleans set, about acting opposite Josh Brolin, and making his first foray into the world of heroic funnybooks.

On what it was about Brolin's enthusiasm that made him take the role:

Well, we're friends; but he sent me the script and I read it and we met. I met with him when I was out in California and it seemed... it might have some success. Then he told me he met [director] Jimmy [Hayward] and he really liked him and his take on it. Then I met Jimmy out in California on another trip and said, "Yeah, great."

On how much input he had into the look of his character:

No, not so much. I think it's pretty much based on the comic. I think it's pretty much along those lines. But I didn't really ask for input either.

On whether he saw the comics when he was deciding:

Yeah, I had seen it a few times before. Jimmy had done some mock-ups of them that he showed me in Los Angeles.

On the decisions he had to make as far as how larger than life he wanted it to be:

I'm not sure that's really a decision for me. I think that's really Jimmy's decision and my theory about that is that I'm a professional actor and if he wants it big or cartoony or not, it's really Jimmy's decision. I wouldn't feel even super-comfortable engaging in that conversation really… I think it's maybe less cartoonish in a certain way than perhaps what was written, but it still has some insight to it. I'll put it that way.

On whether all his cues were in the script or it was an intense collaborative process with Hayward:

That really depends on who the director is and what you sense or feel is or is not required from you really. And with Jimmy, Jimmy's not a control freak, which obviously some of them are in a rather concerning way. I think Jimmy's quite collaborative, so on this I certainly feel more than welcome to offer a suggestion or ask a question. And yes, I probably prefer working that way but I don't have to.

On his character:

Turnbull was a Southern plantation owner and very wealthy and very powerful. He feels Jonah has caused his son to be killed, so there's a big sort of revenge factor there. Turnbull also leads a group of kind of marauders, former confederate soldiers. Eventually he hopes to overthrow the government.

On how much time he spends each day in makeup:

I don't, Christian does. He's the makeup artist, I just sit there. It's probably an hour and a half or so, it's a while.

On his love of anamorphic widescreen, in which Hex is shot:

I like anamorphic. I've done a few films like that. It makes for some differences because mostly I know frames by the lens and it kind of cuts that in half, so that's a kind of oddity too. And I never watch video, so I'll only see it when it's done probably. I'm sure it looks good. I've worked with Mitch twice before, so I know him well as a cinematographer. I'm sure it will be good. Jimmy is quite visual… He's pretty open I'd say. I think he responds to things. He seems quite instinctive, so he responds to the way something makes him feel in the frame and that's good. And if he wants more, he asks for more. If he wants less, he asks for less.

On the supernatural aspects of his character:

My character's not so much involved with that. Maybe a tiny bit. At a point in the story, Hex has kind of apparitions and I appear very briefly as one of those and we sort of work that out together. It wasn't really quite what's in the script.

On whether or not he was a fan of the genre:

Well, we've done, in production, we've done two comic novels – Ghost World and Art School [Confidential]. So I'm not really an aficionado. I know a bit about it. I liked comics when I was a kid and read them and everything, but for me work is work. Everything allows for possibilities and failures… I never really did a western western. I was going to do one with Tommy Lee Jones, who'd written a very beautiful script of Cormac McCarthy's book, but then I think somebody else is doing it, which I liked enormously, but I never really did one. Of Mice and Men was sort of the closest. I've always liked to watch them.

On whether he brought his stage skill set to this role:

Yeah, you could say that. I mean, to make a very blanket statement, it's maybe more energized in a certain way than what one might do in some films. But I think probably the skill set that is most important is… comic books have certain archetypal notions and the skill set I would have thought came in so handy was having worked so much on the scripts that you can say, "Well we can't really do that because it doesn't fit into this mold. But we can do it like this or we can do it like that and that would be absolutely fine." So we've worked a lot of the text, especially the text my character has.

On how important his rehearsal process is to his performance:

Well, it depends. I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with things other than preparing a character. I mean, in other words, if you do rehearsals for the most part on stage, then that's actually pairing a character, but normally for films you don't rehearse very much and if you do you don't rehearse for very long. At least in my experience, a lot of time in films what you're really doing is giving the script a final look over. Not so much, you know, "Oh, is my character pigeon-toed?" You don't really have time for that.

On, having worked on Beowulf, working on the bleeding edge of technology:

Well, I don't know if I bring anything, but I loved doing that. It was really fun. It was exactly like doing a play rehearsal. I mean, you don't stop for anything, there are no set-ups, there's no costumes, there's no costumes or continuity. Even camera direction doesn't really matter very much, so all the knowledge or experience that one might have gleaned in a number of years of doing it don't really apply very much. I think it's perfect for theater actors, that process. We all loved it. Tony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson, a lot of the actors in that came from theater. I don't know about Robin. She probably did some, but a lot of the people that played the traveling group as it were; I think the vast majority were theater actors. So, for us, it's perfect. It's really just another rehearsal.

On whether there's a Shakespearean quality to his Jonah Hex character:

I think one of the things we were looking at when we were looking finally at the script was to try and… If the action can be constituted so Josh's character can remain quite laconic and non-verbal and iconic in a way, and archetypical, then obviously that's preferable. Which sometimes means that the other people have to do the "blah, blah, blah" and the exposition, which is also fun. So, with this, we just felt that it could kind of maybe go deeper than what was there originally. Why a bunch of grown men would sort of decide to overthrow the government… We wanted to try and communicate what these men feel.