Well, I lived with a pack of wolves for a week up in the ponderosa foothills to perfect my growl (he laughs). No, mostly I just tried not to love my voice. I tried my best.

QUESTION:
Any thoughts on the look of Jonah Hex?

THOMAS JANE:
The animators did a great job in capturing the ugliness of the character. He’s not a pretty boy. He looks like he’s been butchered by a blind barber. He’s mean as hell, and I can’t imagine anybody wanting to make love to the dude. He must be awful lonely. And that just makes him meaner. He’s a true anti-hero, and I really love that kind of character. Hollywood doesn’t do the anti-hero justice very often – it’s a tough character type for the studios to understand. The closest you get these days is like (Michael) Chiklis on The Shield. Taxi Driver may have been the last great anti-hero film. There’s always good ones in video games, especially games like Grand Theft Auto. Actors and directors lover anti-heroes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be the case with the rest of America right now.

QUESTION:
Now that you’re directing, has that perspective effected your performances?

THOMAS JANE:
I’m a lot nicer to the guy directing than I used to be. I’m also a little more pragmatic. I understand the needs of the story on the whole, and I’m less myopic in my view of the role as an actor. I’m serving a machine, the story as a whole, so the mechanics of me trying to strike an emotional truth are counter-balanced by not gurgling into the microphone or throat clicking. There’s a balance between the technical and the emotional that you have to strike.

QUESTION:
Did that director’s perspective lead you to your asking to re-record so many lines after seeing/hearing your original performance?

I’m really interested in a great performance. I’m interested in the texture of a performance and I understand that, especially in the animated projects, the human voice is really all you’ve got to connect with on a visceral, emotional level. You’ve got the writing, the words, and the human voice. And that’s what gives it life. So even more so than live action acting, I pay particular attention to the vocal performances.

QUESTION:
You’ve had the chance to perform the dialogue wild, and also to picture. Was it easier or more difficult to record the lines while seeing the actual animation?

THOMAS JANE:
It’s both. Without the animation, you have more freedom to make up the rhythm of the scene, and you can take more chances in your delivery because hopefully the director will choose an interesting performance, and the animators will animate to that performance. Once you’re locked in and I come back to redo the lines, I’m stuck with the rhythms that have been predetermined by the animators. But that also gives me structure, which affords me some other freedom in the delivery of the dialogue – because then I have a set rhythm and I can play with the intensity of the performance.

QUESTION:
How would you describe your relationship with comic books?

THOMAS JANE:
I discovered comic books when I was about 8 years old and I’ve been in love with them ever since. I thought I’d outgrow it, and I sort of did in my 20s, but then came back full force in the my early 30s. It’s because the medium is so powerful. As a kid, I thought of it as kid stuff, and then I grew up and found more adult material.

I never liked super heroes – I was always drawn more to a great story. I even loved the illustrated classics like Moby Dick – adaptations of a classic novel, or some of the original autobiographical stuff. And then there’s all the independents – Robert Crumb or Charles Burns or Daniel Clowes. The medium is so broad, much more so than film. There’s so much more room in comics for genres, styles, flavors, different auteurs. That’s what makes comics a great and timeless medium – a medium that will always be a compelling way to tell a story.

QUESTION:
Do you have a favorite western?

THOMAS JANE: