Kevin Bacon on X-Men: First Class

Kevin, what are you allowed to tell me about Sebastian Shaw, your character in X-Men: First Class?
Well, he's a billionaire, he is a mutant, and he has a plan to take the tensions between the Russians and the US during the Cuban missile crisis then use that as a tool, to create a kind of Armageddon and eliminate the humans, to leave a world that is free for mutants.

What mutant powers does he have?
He can absorb energy. So if somebody throws a certain kind of energy at him, whether it's a grenade or a shotgun or a punch, he can take it in and focus it and turn it back on whoever is trying to attack him.

You work with January Jones in this, in killer 60s outfits: it's like you're Don Draper!
I worked some with January. [Director] Matthew Vaughn has a fantastic aesthetic. He really knows style, it's one of his strong suits. And I think he put an awesome cast together. I have a great scene with Michael Fassbender. He's a fantastic actor. It's great when you can do something as intense as Hunger and go to something like Inglourious Basterds - real character kind of roles - and then immediately fall into being a superhero and having the presence of a super hero - that's pretty amazing.

How do you approach your character? Do you walk on set and say "I am a supervillain"?
You know, I don't think of it in those terms. I kind of say, "who am I?" in the same way I would approach any other character: where'd I grow up? What do I want? What was my relationship with my family like? I don't see any reason, if you're playing a mutant, to not approach it in the same way you would if you played a cop or a plumber. It's the same process.

I like the X-Men films because of the mutants as a metaphor for oppressed groups.
Yeah, me too.

So putting them in the 60s, with the civil rights movement, seems an interesting idea.
Yeah, and my motivation is that very same motivation: that they're oppressed, and that they need to build a society free of humans in order to survive. I want a society free of humans, and that I run! [laughs]. I'm taking it to a horrible extreme, which is something that you see historically, right? You can have a group of people who are oppressed and then they get freedom and then the person that delivers the freedom becomes a tyrant.

Like Colonel Gaddafi.
Yes, exactly. If Gaddafi was a mutant!

X-Men: First Class opens 2 Jun

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