The Man Behind The MASK

Touted as ‘the most famous actor you have never seen’, Doug Jones shines in the otherworldly side of Hollywood, having starred in The Shape Of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth and the series Star Trek: Discovery

- Divya Kala Bhavani

It is 12.30 am in Los Angeles when Doug Jones sits down for a Skype interview with MetroPlus. Despite being in between shoots for the new season of Star Trek: Discovery, he has the energy of a lithe teenager. It is a little jarring seeing the actor in his ‘sans prosthetics state’; the world is used to seeing him with frayed gills, distorted eyeballs or alien anatomies. But it is a comfort that throughout the interview, he speaks just as much with his hands as he does with his face.

The 59-year-old actor is quite literally, ‘the most famous actor you have never seen’, with major starring roles in the Guillermo Del Toro universe of films such as Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape Of Water, as well as 2007 Marvel film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. After the physically and emotionally taxing work of The Shape Of Water, he had decided to “hang up his rubber bits”, but when a call came in asking him to speak with the producers of a new Star Trek project, he knew it was not time yet.

On Star Trek: Discovery, Doug portrays Kelpian slave-turned-commander Saru, a much-loved character in the Star Trek franchise.