Lee Pace is no stranger to hiding his face for a project. And the upcoming Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall adaptation of The Running Man put him as the hunter behind the mask.
At New York Comic Con, I was lucky enough to speak with Pace on the press line for The Running Man where I got to ask him about my favorite thing about his career: The way he uses his body for a role. Lee Pace is famously 6’5″. I say that because it is a well known fact about the actor. But it means that he uses his body in fascinating ways for roles.
In a movie like The Fall, the Black Bandit stands a little taller than everyone else and holds himself differently than say Ned the Piemaker does on Pushing Daisies, who tries to make himself smaller. That same philosophy can extend to Pace’s work on a show like The Foundation and beyond and from what we’ve seen of The Running Man, he uses his height to his advantage. Especially when he doesn’t have his face to convey his emotions.
“You have to really think about it. I mean that’s definitely a part of what McCone is trying to do,” Pace said of his masked hunter. “He’s serious. He’s really hunting these people down and killing them. It’s not a guarantee. I mean he’s, I think, the real deal. But he’s also performing because he’s got to kill them in these spectacular ways to draw the audience. So the way he presents is, I think about it as a performative masculinity in a way. He shows his gun. Killers don’t show their guns. You know what I mean? He makes an entrance because he knows the cameras are on him. That’s what he’s doing, he’s like the star of the show. The runners are expendable. Like they’re the meat. He’s the one they’re tuning in to see. And I think there’s something really fun about playing the surreal reality of that.”
You can see our full conversation here:
The Running Man is in theaters on November 14.
(featured image: Paramount Pictures)
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