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Mark Strong Reveals Details on Sherlock Holmes Villain

by Alex Billington
March 4, 2009

We're still waiting to see a trailer for Sherlock Holmes, so until that shows up, all that we know about it comes from past news articles or interviews. Last year when I interviewed British actor Mark Strong, he mentioned that he was shooting Sherlock Holmes with Guy Ritchie, but didn't say too much about his character. Total Film (the article has since been removed) got to talk to Strong again recently and not only found out more about his character, known as Lord Blackwood, but also about some of the ending moments in the film, which we are of course not going to mention. So instead, let's find out more about this villain.

In Sherlock Holmes, Lord Blackwood is a occult-dabbling Satanist who ends up fighting Holmes.

"There's a touch of Dracula about him," Strong told Total Film. "He needed to have an element of showmanship about him by virtue of the fact that he's trying to persuade everyone around him that he's so in league with the Devil that he's able to conquer death. I just wanted to make him an equal adversary of Sherlock Holmes."

Considering Mark Strong is one of the finest underrated and unknown actors around, I don't think he'll have any problem making him an equal adversary, especially opposite Robert Downey Jr. Strong also admits that Blackwood is somewhat based on the real life Aleister Crowley, a British occultist who wrote The Book of the Law and became known as "The Wickedest Man In the World." I'm not familiar with that reference, but I am looking forward to Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes and I'm a big fan of Mark Strong, so I'm excited anyway. I'm sure he'll be one hell of a dark and creepy Holmesian villain and I can't wait to see him big screen.

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