British actor Luke Evans takes on one of his most challenging roles to date in new movie Dracula Untold.
He stars as the bloodthirsty Vlad the Impaler who ruled the old Romanian state of Walachia in the early 1400s.
The movie was filmed entirely in Northern Ireland.
According to Evans, the film is inspired more by the historical story of Dracula, rather than the fantasy versions we’ve come to know from Irish novelist Bram Stoker and others.
“We wanted to keep it raw and visceral and we were telling the origin story, so we had the freedom and the license to tell the story how we wanted to tell it and tell the story about the man behind this literary, legendary vampire,” he said.
In order to convincingly portray Dracula, Evans spent months beefing up in the gym and even mastered sword fighting.
“It was training all the time and eat very little apart from chicken, beef and fish and green vegetables and train every day after work and rehearse with the stunt guys, it was full on. And it was for the whole shoot,” said the 35-year-old, who also starts in Peter Jackson’s three part adaptable of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Dracula Untold also stars Dominic Cooper as the evil Sultan Mehmed, Sarah Gadon as Vlad’s wife and Charles Dance as the demon who turns Vlad into a vampire.
Timed for release close to Halloween, most Europeans can see it from the begining of October. But fans in Spain and Italy will have to wait until the end of the month.
You can follow Evans on Twitter.
