Thomas Jane’s career has taken in the likes of Deep Blue Sea, Dreamcatcher and The Punisher, and he has also appeared in non-genre movies such as Stander and The Sweetest Thing. He talks to David Grove about his new film, an adaptation of the Stephen King story The Mist.

Do you see your character David as the hero of The Mist?

I think David’s more of a leader than a hero. What I found interesting about the story is that there are no real heroes, just a bunch of people who are trying to survive.

There’s a scene in the film where a woman decides she has to leave the supermarket in order to get home to her child, even though she might get killed by the mist. She asks all of us if we’ll help her, but none of us, including my character, do anything. My character’s number one goal is to protect his young son. At the same time, David tries to be the voice of reason and tries to think of the best way for all of the characters in the supermarket to survive the mist.

How did you enjoy working with director Frank Darabont?

Frank’s a great director and just a really nice guy. He’s a writer, first and foremost, and he’s always thinking about the characters, how we should talk and act in every scene, above everything else.

One of the biggest challenges in acting in a film like this is knowing the right way to react when weird things are happening - like when the front door opens and a character goes outside and you see them getting attacked by a creature, or you hear them getting eaten. How do you react to that? We’d talk about things like that, and he’d listen to my ideas, and it was a great collaborative experience.

How does David interact with the other characters in the supermarket?

The theme of the story is that there’s all kinds of monsters, not just the slimy kind. In the story, you see that some of the human characters are monsters too. The characters soon realise that they can’t leave the supermarket because the mist will kill them - and they realise that because some of them do leave and they get eaten.

These different factions form inside the supermarket and David becomes the leader of one of the factions, and he’s very reasonable and he makes sense. And then there’s another faction that’s run by Mrs. Carmody who’s a religious zealot. She thinks the mist monsters represent some religious meaning, like some sort of Armageddon, so she’s really nuts. Some of my favorite scenes in the film were with Andre Braugher who plays Norton. Norton is David’s next door neighbour and they have an ongoing rivalry because of some of the stuff that’s happened between them in the past, and that plays out right through the film.

Are you a big genre fan?

Yes, I love horror and science fiction. I actually did my own comic book called Bad Planet, which I created with Steve Niles. It was about an alien organism that attacks Earth. It was an idea I came up with when I was recovering from an accident a couple of years ago and I started having these hallucinations about aliens. The comic was well received and I’m actually trying to develop some movie projects with my partners. I want to do more comics in the future because that’s something I love doing very much.

As for acting, I’ve been in movies like The Punisher and Dreamcatcher and I think I bring a lot of enthusiasm and energy to genre projects because I’m such a big fan.

What attracted you to The Mist?

Frank’s movies are so great, and I’m a big fan of Stephen King’s story. I loved the monster movie element of it, and the fact that all of the characters are so interesting…I thought it was scary, and I liked how the situation in the supermarket is just as intense and scary as the mist monsters are.

As an actor, it’s a great challenge to be stuck in one place, like a supermarket, and being forced to interact with the other actors because we have such a great cast of actors. You can’t hide as an actor in a film like this. The whole movie is the interaction of the characters, surrounded by the mist monsters.

Do you like working with special effects?

Yes, it’s a lot of fun when they’re as believable as the effects in this film are. It makes it easy as an actor. When we film a scene, they pump the mist throughout the store so the mist is always there and you can see the tentacles sliding under the doors, and all of the other stuff, and you can see everything that’s happening.

I think the monster effects in the film are effective because of the tense situation among the characters in the supermarket. I think the way Frank’s doing it is that you never know when the monster’s going to appear. You see the mist and you never know if there’s a creature inside of it or not. The hard part of doing a scene where there’s a monster effect, like a scene in the film where I discover that one of the characters has been killed, is that you feel pressure to nail the scene in one take. You don’t waste a lot of time in terms of them having to set-up the effect over and over again, although it usually doesn’t take that long. They just move the tentacles back and forth.

Did you like playing an artist?

Yes, it was fun, even though that doesn’t play a big part in the story, in terms of what happens at the supermarket. I think it informs David’s character because you see that he’s a creative person and has an imagination and can use that to maybe think of a solution out of this mess they’re trapped in. I’ve worked in comic books, created my own book, so I can relate to David and how he thinks. David’s a poster artist, he draws movie posters and stuff like that for a living, and Frank hired a real artist to do the drawings in the film, and they look great.

What was it like working with Nathan Gamble, who plays your son Billy in the film?

Nathan was a great kid, a great actor. The relationship between David and Billy is very important in the film because all David cares about is protecting Billy and getting them out of the supermarket. There’s a scene where Billy sees a character get killed by the mist and he’s really freaked out by it. I have to comfort him and I try to make him think that everything’s going to be okay. I really like those scenes in the film, between David and his son.

Frank had a rule on the set that no one could swear in front of Nathan. If anyone swore there was a penalty, a couple of dollars each time. I think I ended up paying more than anyone else…

The Mist opens in UK cinemas on 4 July 2008.