It’s Good To Be Bad

The thing about British actor Jason Isaacs is that he's just too nice. So much so, in fact, that it's almost impossible to reconcile him with some of the truly vile characters he's played on screen. After brutally murdering two of Mel Gibson's sons in as Colonel Tavington in The Patriot, one of the most impressively hateable villains to emerge in years, Isaacs has recently been in talks to play the dastardly Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. Empire Online can safely state that Isaacs would be perfect for the role and we caught up with the actor at last night's Black Hawk Down premiere (17 January) to find out just how much he'd like the role. "Are you kidding? I'd love to do it," he told us. "All of my godchildren have begged me, I swear to you every one of them phoned me and begged me to do it. " But even someone with Isaac's villain experience might have his work cut out playing someone like Malfoy, a servant of 'You Know Who'. "He's not that bad is he? He couldn't possibly be worse than Tavington. Does he burn churches full of women and children? Actually I said to my godchildren 'why do you want me to be in this film if I'm playing that part?' but they insisted that it was Harry Potter. I said 'do you think the children of the guy who played the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were proud of him?' But they just want to be able to tell everyone I'm in Harry Potter. I don't know, I hope it happens but we'll see." If there is justice in the universe then we're confident he'll get the part but, if so, will the dark-haired Isaacs don a wig to play the father of platinum-blonde Draco, or will he go the whole hog and break out the bleach? "Actually I'm trying to get the whole spectrum of hair covered," he muses. "I had a ponytail in The Patriot, I'm bald as an egg in Black Hawk Down, I had a lovely big red wig in Sweet November so I hope to go blonde next. It's all about the hair for me."