John's got a Battle on his hands

I first read L. Ron Hubbard's book in 1982 on the heels of Star Wars. The feeling in the air was that science-fiction was the way to go. It's set in the year 3000 when Earth is a wasteland and man is an endangered species.

I bought the rights and for several years I tried to get the right script done, but didn't succeed until after my so-called comeback with Pulp Fiction in 1994. Suddenly everybody who was important to the genre came out of the woodwork.

Then George Lucas called with a director, Roger Christian, his co-director on the Star Wars movies, and he brought with him Patrick Tatopoulos - who had done the special effects on Godzilla - and Stuart Little. We were on a roll.

Initially I thought I'd play Jonnie, the human who saves the Earth - now played by Saving Private Ryan's Barry Pepper - but as the years went on and I got older I knew I had to play the villain, Terl, the definitive evil character. He's a Psychlo who's been groomed since birth to conquer galaxies. On the planet he comes from, evil is admired. He'd be an equivalent to Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini. He's pompous, he's rude, he's mean-spirited and he's not very smart.

But here he's summoned to Earth to be chief of security, which pisses him off because he's used to wiping out entire defence forces, not training the few surviving humans how to be slaves. His sidekick, Ker, played by Forest Whitaker, is a much nicer, cleverer person. I think everyone will get a kick out of Ker. Both of us are pretty ugly-looking people. We have dreadlocks, long beards, extended heads, talons for hands and huge boots for feet. Claustrophobic stuff that took about five hours to get on every day, but it was really worth it.