GalaxyCon 2024 closed the book on Raleigh on Sunday, but not before one of Hollywood’s most well-known intimidating characters stopped by the day before.
Ron Perlman graced the main stage of the Raleigh Convention Center for a Q&A with fans. Perlman is most known for his roles as Clay Morrow in the hit FX show, “Sons of Anarchy,” and the titular hero in “Hellboy” and “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.”
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Perlman entered the stage and started off the Q&A panel jokingly admonishing the parents who had brought their children with them.
“Didn’t they (expletive) warn you?” he asked. “Uncle Ron don’t (expletive) play around.”
One of his favorite movies he worked on was “The City of Lost Children,” despite having few lines and being told by French people that he had a terrible French accent.
“They put all of my lines on one page and said, ‘This is your part, but you’re gonna be here a while,’” he said. “They were looking for someone who was a fish out of water … so they wanted someone who French wasn’t their first language.”
Perlman, who also voiced several characters in the “Fallout” video game franchise, said no one told him they were doing a television series based on the video game. He hopes that one day showrunners will ask him to appear on the show.
“You can write your local congressman,” he joked with a fan.
Perlman added that he always has fun on the movie set, whether on “The Retirement Plan” with Nicolas Cage and fellow GalaxyCon guest Ernie Hudson, or on the Hellboy set.
However, one thing made the hours of makeup required to look like Hellboy easier.
“The check. It almost did the trick,” Perlman said.
Ron Perlman spent a lot of time in the make-up chair. He spent at least four hours in makeup for several roles, including Beauty & the Beast, Hellboy and other projects. Some days on the Hellboy set required as much as six hours.
“I was with [the makeup artist] for four hours … That (expletive); if I find them, I’m going to get everyone one of those extra minutes back,” Perlman joked.
In addition to his extensive live-action career, Perlman has done several voice acting roles, including Slade in “Teen Titans,” Fire Lord Sozin in “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” Clayface and Orion in the “DC Animated Universe” franchise and Bular in “Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia.”
He said while he doesn’t have a preference as to which roles he takes, his wife does.
“My wife prefers physical acting because it gets me out of the house more,” he said. “I love being an actor, taking what little in terms of what’s on the page, and then trying to figure out what that looks and feels like … I just love the process of acting.”
While Perlman is arguably most known for his role as Hellboy, producers didn’t ask him to return to the franchise when it was rebooted with David Harbour as the titular hero in “Hellboy (2019),” or in the second reboot, “Hellboy: The Crooked Man,” which releases later this year.
When asked if he’d like to finish the original trilogy started with Guillermo Del Toro in an animated medium, he said he'd prefer not to.
According to Perlman, in the third movie, Hellboy would decide if he’d destroy the world or save it and nurture it.
Perlman said he’d only come on one condition.
“If I got a call right now and they said, ‘Get in a taxi, go to the airport and show up anywhere on the face of the earth,’ to do what I just described, with Guillermo Del Toro directing … I would put this (expletive) microphone down and do it,” he said, which brought cheers from the crowd in Ballroom B of the convention center.
“Anything short of that, I would rather leave it as what it was than entertain it,” he added.
Perlman, who also played Clay Morrow, one of the leaders of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original in “Sons of Anarchy,” said he doesn’t take many props from sets when he wraps filming, but he did take Morrow’s gavel.
He also tried to take Hellboy’s primary weapon, a pistol known as “The Baby,” but “Del Toro got to it first.”
Additionally, Perlman said he was one of the worst bike riders on the show after a fan complimented his motorcycle-riding skills, and joked an entire insurance company was created to protect people from the mayhem he was about to cause.
“Bikes don’t like me, and I don’t like bikes,” he said. “To say that you could believe that I did like bikes and that I looked like I rode? That’s better than an Academy Award.”
Many people associate Perlman with portraying intimidating characters who have heart. As for how he got those roles, Perlman said he feels like they were an “act of God.”
Ron Perlman on playing intimidating characters
I feel as though I got those roles not because of some agent or manager or director and all that, but I feel like they were an act of God. And here's what I mean when I say that. When I was a kid, I was one of those kids like you felt this way, or you knew someone who felt this way and had low self-esteem. I felt like I didn't fit into the world. I wasn't proud of myself or how I felt about myself. And then I watched a movie called The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton. And that is, along the way, to me, the most magnificent makeup that's ever been applied to an actor. He played a hunchback. It was a Victor Hugo adaptation, and this was, outwardly, you almost had to turn away from his ugliness, and he was the most beautiful soul in the movies. And the reason why you couldn't take your eyes off this movie. You were so moved by the pain that he had to singularly live through his life by being an outcast. Yet, by yearning to be seen for what he was, which was this feeling, loving, generous, beautiful thing. And I got to do that. Twice. I got to play the exact thing that was the spark that lit the fire in me that made me want to be an actor. I don't know who to give credit for. For the fact that that poetically came to take place. You can't give credit to any directors, lawyers, actors, Hollywood crews or studios. That was an act of God that I got a chance to play two characters who were so outcast, physically, that they couldn't operate in public. They had to be hidden underground, yet they were the most beautiful souls you've ever met and exemplary in all their human qualities.
Perlman said he has eight movies releasing in the next year, including “The Instigator,” a film about two thieves who botch a robbery and go on the run, bringing their therapist along with it.
The film stars Perlman, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck and Ving Rhames, and releases on Apple TV on Friday.