The following interview with Tommy Lee was shown on Swedish TV sometime last summer, as one of the promo interviews for BATMAN FOREVER, in the same surroundings as the MTV Special. The interview was done in English, shown with Swedish subtitles.
(Transcript by Lutz Koch)

Q: Now, you're Two­Face in this film. I just wonder, I talked to a Swedish actor about playing his different characters. He's saying it is more fun to be evil. Is it so? I mean, you've been playing both parts...

A: I don't think it is particularly more fun to be evil. It's hard for me to think of having more fun playing the good guy than the bad guy, or having more fun playing the bad guy. You know, I don't have characters ranked in order of "fun". Well, no, it's not more fun to play an evil character or a bad character. I mean, would it be more fun to play Othello or would it be more fun to play Iago? I don't know. It just depends on what you... No, it's not more fun to be evil. No, it isn't. [Laughs] It just isn't.

Q: Is it hard in a film like this to give him ground and to show the different levels of him, or...

A: Well, there aren't fifty levels to Harvey, really, I mean he's the villain in a DC comic. He's a two­dimensional character, off the page of a comic book. And they all are. To ground them or make them real while maintaining the integrity of the experience of reading a comic book is what we've been hired to do. Is it difficult? Is it easy? I don't know.

Joel Schumacher (interviewed separately): He was of course the District Attorney of Gotham City, Harvey Two­Face, so there has to be..., you have to believe he could be formidable enough to be the District Attorney, which you believe of Tommy Lee Jones, but you also have to believe he could be a psychotic maniac, which you also believe about Tommy Lee Jones!

Q: If you compare your work on stage and in film, it must be a great difference, a big difference between...

A: Yeah, it is.

Q: How is it? Is it the preparation, or I mean... Everybody tells me there's a lot of waiting during the films, and on stage you just have to go on and be concentrated for a couple of hours and...

A: Oh yeah, of course, the pace is naturally different. There's a great deal of waiting in cinema, and a performance in the theater happens in real time. There's a beginning, a middle and an end, and they are all together, all continuous. Another difference, the major difference is one of scale. There's only one lens in the theater ­ it's this one [indicates eye] ­ and it doesn't change size. There are no closeups in the theater. So there's only one sense of scale. The scale that you impose on a performance on the stage is meant for a room of people, and that room is always the same size. And the people who sit on the back row are always the same distance away from you. The people who sit in the third and fourth row are always the same distance away. And you have to do something that will suit or please those in the first five rows and those in the last few rows and those in the balcony, and that's really what determins how big or small your performance is. That's the difference. I can put a lens on you that will show the audience nothing but your nose and your eyes. I can do like this [indicates changing of lenses] and put another lens on there that will make you look this big [puts thumb and index finger close together, about one inch] with your whole body, in the context of the frame, and you have to perform differently for each lens, and you have to make that cohere somehow. So, you're playing not to a house full of people in the cinema, but you're playing to a series of lenses. That's the biggest difference.

Q: Is it very important that you have high moral standards in a film, or...

A: Is it important that you have high moral standards? Well, I think that it's...

Q: ...that you show it in film?

A: Well, I think anyone's creative life generates it's own moral standards. Yeah, I think it's important to be a moral thinker. It's important to have moral standards. It's very important that you not allow anyone to impose them on you. Have your own, and, at least that's my opinion, I think I'm perfectly capable of defining my own moral standards and living by them. And I know very well in this day and age and certainly in this country I don't have to have anybody tell me what the right moral standards are. It's not up to you to tell me what's moral. It's certainly not up to me to tell you what's moral. It's America, baby.