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Craig Parker Interview from RingCon 2005
My friend cologne_chick and I got the chance at the Ring*Con 2005 to interview Craig Parker for the German teen magazine Teenstar. There's some time passed since then but finally we made it to post the interview.



!!! PLEASE DON'T USE THE PICTURE ON ANY OTHER WEBSITE WITHOUT cologne_chick'S OR MY PERMISSION !!!

Before Christmas cologne_chick and I already posted it in German in our own LJs. Here's the English version finally.



!!! PLEASE DON'T POST THE INTERVIEW ANYWHERE ELSE WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION. !!!




TEENSTAR: Hello Craig.

Craig: Hello.

TEENSTAR: You are kind of an essential part of this convention, because you (and also Mark) have attended every Ring*Con since the beginning. The fans already say the Ring*Con wouldn't be the same without you. How do you feel about it?

Craig: It's not true (laughs). Um, it's, this, you know this is, you do have to say that the one you're doing is fabulous, but this is truly the best one for us. …It's like our first, our first introduction with a very strange world, so um, it is a fantastic thing to do, it is such fun here and at the moment it's the only time we see each other. He's in New Zealand and I'm in England and um, so it's a great excuse to get together and have a huge amount of fun and the people who organize it we see each year so it's kind of like a reunion.


TEENSTAR: Last time you said it was your last RingCon:

Craig: (laughs) I know! I keep saying it's my last one and then I turn up again. Eventually they'll say "You can't come". I'm not sure, I definitely am not doing it for a wee while. I'm just too busy … we shall see, but they are, you know, they are great fun. So I think the spirit of Ring*Con just considers it's just about having a fantastic time it's so well organized that when we come here we can just enjoy it. You know, we're told where to go and and you get on stage and just have fun. With some others you tend to be doing a lot more running around …

TEENSTAR: What do you think the fans like most about you?

Craig: Um, I don't know (laughs). I don't know, I think ,you know, there's a lot of New Zealanders and Australians tend to be part of acting I think we tend to, you know, not take it too seriously, there are actors who take themselves, being an actor, quite seriously. And I don't think particularly Mark and I fall into that category, it's good fun. And that's kind of our motto is just to come here and have fun, and hopefully everyone will have fun. Sounds very shallow isn't it? Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.

TEENSTAR: What do you think about the new location?

Craig: I've only seen this hotel today, I only just got in quite late last night and I uh, it's great, it's a new one. But hotels are hotels, you know, it's the people who get together that make it …
It's always going to be like that if you do something new. People are always going to be "oh I wish we had it back in the old places" because that's, I think when you think of RingCon you think of The Maritim in Bonn because it's been there all the time, but people have new experiences here and next year. I think, you know, it's a great space and it's huge.

TEENSTAR: Did you get any souvenirs from the LOTR set?

Craig: I got um, the only sort of bits and pieces, I don't really keep stuff, I've never really, you know I don't collect photographs, I don't keep photographs, I'm not really a collector of small things.

TEENSTAR: What about your sword?

Craig: My sword at the moment is traveling, it's part of the exhibition that's in New Zealand. So eventually when that comes to rest I will have that at least. Other than that I have a pair of very moldy, I don't know where they are, gelatin ear tips in a box somewhere … somewhere in the world, I'm not sure. And, ah, which would now be very moldy and disgusting. And so that's about it. And so that's pretty much the only thing …

TEENSTAR: If you could have played a different character in LOTR which one would you have chosen and why?

Craig: Um, I don't know, actually the great thing about it is, doing something like Gollum would just be so much fun, and you know Andy did such a beautiful job, and you think "Oh that would be fun" but it also involves him, you know, wearing a cat suit and rolling around in water in the freezing cold, spending hours and hours, Um, I'm not really sure, I think Viggo was the coolest of all the characters, I think Aragorn was just so cool. I think baddies are always more fun, especially, you know, they get the better outfits, get to do you know cool things.

TEENSTAR: Do you like playing bad roles because it's a difference to your actual character?

Craig: Maybe I am bad (laughing in background). I don't know, I think, I don't think there is any such thing as a goody or a baddy really, but um, yeah look it's just, you know, I think it's just fun I think. The baddies, in fiction anyway, tend to be able to do more things because they're not constrained by morality.

TEENSTAR: Are there any new projects you're working on at the moment? We heard you play in theater again in a story called "Serial Killers". Which role do you play? Please, tell us about the storyline.

Craig: Yes. Serial Killers. Um, a character called Matt and he's one of the writers in a group of story liners to come up every week with new story lines for a soap opera. Is it called soap opera here? Yeah, yeah. So like each week, you know, five episodes have to go out and um, there are all these characters and things happen to them and then just roles and roles and roles of. And um, Matt's one of these guys, and um, but quite ambitious and he's angling for promotion. Yes, no it's just live so we're just rehearsing at the moment. In about three weeks time, four weeks time we run up in this place Derby for a month. It's great, it's a comedy but it's a very dark comedy. We had our first run the other night, no Friday actually, yesterday, and um, we had to put the whole thing together. And it was incredibly, um, we will trial it in this place called Derby, which, you know, is magnificent, ah, and then um, bring it down to London next year. It was fun. Still got to learn some lines though.

TEENSTAR: We've heard that you have been in Nepal some time ago. What was the reason for this journey?

Craig: Yes, a while ago now, three years, four years? It was, um, a program called "Intrepid Journeys" which was, ah, taking a New Zealand show . They were taking various kind of well-known New Zealanders to places they'd never been and you know, reasonably excluded places like Cambodia and India and you know, where you go basically trekking. And so, who was it, myself, um a camera operator Peter, and the two producer named Jay and Melanie so it's just the four of us going on this mission and we spent a month traveling around Nepal. I think probably the best job I've ever had, you know, I think, I love traveling so much. This was just an excuse really. And every now and again we'd go "Oh should we film something today? Oh I suppose so", "Right, go over there, stand there and say something". And it is a mind-blowing place and it's just an exquisite part of the world, an amazing place and it puts, it puts life into perspective really and people have literally nothing and yet so incredibly generous, you know, people always say that about, um, particularly Asia I think. The less people have the they less covet it and tend to give what they have away. I keep meaning to go back to there and to India but I haven't yet.


TEENSTAR: Are there any questions you've been asked from time to time that you don't like to answer?

Craig: Um, yeah oh there's a few and I just don't answer them. (laughs) But um, the ones I find very hard are when people say "Describe yourself in three words" or those kind of things, you just go "I don't know" so um. But I think, but I haven't heard probably any question in the world that can't be answered, just choose whether you want to answer them or not. When I was younger I wish I knew, that in England it's bizarre because there are so many things people reveal. We have these cravings for details for celebrities, you are seeing tabloid interviews of people talking about their lives, just basically selling the tragedies of their lives in newspapers, you think "why are you doing this?", you know, what, you have something … it's always your own,your own, people talking about the terrible things that happened to themselves and they're just giving it out to the world.

TEENSTAR: You've already worked in theaters, on TV and in different movies. What are the differences between these media in your opinion and which one do you prefer and why?

Craig: Um I love the theatres. I spent the last two weeks working. There is nothing better I think than having a good cast, good script and good director. And it's the most exciting thing in the world because you're there every day from 10 to 7:30 and you're working like this and some days are utterly exhausting and you die, apart from this it's just so exciting, your brain is working, your heart is beating, I love that. And I love the performance as well with the actually I think I prefer the rehearsal more but then you get to the thing once you start the performance … the days … every night … you can't have a glass of wine at lunch, things like that, important things, so um, so I really hate theater as well … as much as I love doing it I hate it, and things like telly. Television, you know, pays and pays and theater doesn't, so, you have to do telly sometimes to get the cash to afford to do theatre, but, um, they're all, they're all different.

TEENSTAR: Young boys dream about being a policeman or fire-fighter. What would you have liked to do if you haven't become an actor?

Craig: Um, my father's a pilot and so for a long time that's what I thought I was going to do. But then I thought astronaut but that was probably too hard. Um, I don't know, what kind of things. I was quite keen on the sciences when I was at school. For a while I was thinking of marine biology. You get to travel, swim, hang out with cool animals under the sea - but there's also a lot of boring work that you have to do so, um. I don't know I've never had a real job, so it's (laughs) sort of don't know what I'd do. I'm very fortunate I've never had, I've really never had to do it so I have no idea what it is … I'm going to have to find out (laughs). I'm not sure.

TEENSTAR: Thank you so much for your time and the interview.

Craig: My pleasure, thank you. Thank you so much ladies, have a lovely day.

by A.K. and K.R. by order of Teenstar.de