My biggest goal was to impress and make the Robert E. Howard fans really, really happy and the Dark Horse comic fans. You want to impress the source material people.

To me, I wasn’t there to impress the Arnold fans because you’ve had that and I didn’t want to regurgitate a movie that had been done thirty years ago. We wanted to re-imagine the franchise. I think we came really close to Robert E. Howard’s stories.

- How much of a say did you have in the re-imagining aspect of it?

A lot. I tried my hardest

What did you contribute?

The look of Conan. Obviously it’s my performance so how that handled. You know, little choices like when he gets a scar on his eye. It’s all small things. If you break it down scene to scene everything I do is character based.

Liking shoving my finger into a nose... I wanted to have the small things like the way I fight with my father’s sword.  I fight it reverse grip style from the Japanese Samurai. I fight in a completely different style. And have it always upside down. There are countless things that you put into it.

The action was going to come easily, I wanted to make him human, I wanted to have him be vulnerable. You want to hit those moments as an actor where it makes him human, putting in a sense of humour.

It’s all small moments and you can break it down scene by scene but that’s what you’re supposed to do as an actor. I wanted to incorporate Robert E. Howard’s quotes that weren’t in the scripts. 'I live, I love, I slay, I am content. I will follow you to hell. If you hide from me I will tear down the mountains to find you and follow you to hell'. 

That’s all me taking from Robert E. Howard. I wanted to have that philosophy injected into the script.

- There’s such a dearth of action heroes around today is this the sort of thing that you see yourself doing more of in the future?

No, I just really want to play Conan. I just want to finish off the series.  I think if I do three of these could be great.

I think that I want to write and direct and do other things. As far as super heroes go he’s amazing. I wouldn’t want to do anyone else.

Lionsgate presents Conan The Barbarian at UK cinemas Wednesday 24th August 2011.

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