Matthew Goode, the dashing, deep-voiced Brit best known for Match Point, Imagine Me & You and The Lookout, is "frightened as hell" of hardcore Watchmen fans attending the con.
Goode, 30, plays Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, in the big screen version of Watchmen, a legendarily dark, legendarily legendary graphic novel about discredited superheroes struggling to survive in a world teetering on nuclear apocalypse (it's an alternate history of the 80s), a world that no longer trusts them. It is one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of next year.
Like a lot of his English actor friends, "I didn't know the novel (it began as a 12 issue comic). I think I got the part because of The Lookout (which had him playing a most menacing American thug). I'd auditioned sitting on the toilet in my hotel room with a sheet up behind me (a video audition), reading two scenes, one of which has my character admitting that he'd just killed 15 million people! So they must have seen Lookout. 'Oh, he CAN act? He's not just another posh Brit!'
"So I finished filming Brideshead on Aug. 19, and on the 21st, I was in Vancouver with a couple of weeks rehearsal ahead of me for Watchmen.
"Finally read Watchmen when I got there and went, ‘Oh my GOD! This is ridiculous! So complicated!’ But it’s everything you’d want to play as an actor, all those gray areas, and in a movie millions and millions of people are dying to see.
"I was frightened as hell when I realized what sort of fan-base this thing has. Everybody says, ‘These fans are just insane.’ But that’s not it. They’re unbelievably intelligent and they know the material almost too well. That’s what’s scary. That book is the bible to them. But our bible is the script, an adaptation of the novel."
"So going to Comic-Con? Yes. I will be throwing myself to the lions, yes. But I expect to defer ALL my questions to (director) Zack. 'I dunno, what do YOU think about that, Zack?'"
And the one friend among his social circle who knew the novel? What did he say when he learned the Brideshead star was following that with a comic book movie?
"You lucky bastard!"