Daniel Cudmore talks playing the Master Chief

Daniel Cudmore talks playing the Master Chief

Daniel Cudmore is the dude that's playing the Master Chief in the Forward Unto Dawn series that's being used as the vehicle to promote Halo 4. You might know him from Twilight or the X-Men movies. Two episodes in and we haven't seen the Chief yet..... Game Informer has done a quick interview with Cudmore about the role of the Chief. 
Would you consider yourself a gamer?
I am and I’m not. I enjoy playing games and then I’ll have a bit of an ADD moment and I can’t sit around for too long, but I think it also depends on the game too. The funny  thing is, I think I was bought Halo 3 by my girlfriend at the time, who is my wife now, she bought it to kind of impress me and I think that’s the only game that I played front to back. There might have been some other ones, but I think that was the one.
Do have other favorite games other than Halo 3?
I do remember when I was in college when the very first PlayStation and Call of Duty came out. I remember everyone went away for Thanksgiving and I was one of the only guys stuck in the dorm, and I think I played Call of Duty 8 hours straight every day – it was ridiculous. I’m a pretty good fan of Assassin’s Creed. I enjoy that game too.
Cudmore as Colossus
So you’re playing Master Chief in the Forward unto Dawn series, were you nervous about playing a character that has such a strong legacy in the world of video games?
Yeah it’s always daunting, especially that kind of character who is the staple of the series throughout most of the games. It’s funny, I was talking to people about how you become him. Each player becomes him. Everybody has their own interpretation of who the character is, but I just did a lot of research and bounced as many questions as I could off of all the guys at Microsoft and 343. I just read a lot of fiction and I just thought, "I’m going to go with what I think it is and I’m not going to stray too far from what they created and just add a little bit of myself to it and hopefully everyone likes it."
In the games Master Chief is a little bit of a blank slate for the sake of the player. He is a badass but he doesn’t exude a lot of personality. In the show were there opportunities to add more humanity to Master Chief? How much were you able to accomplish working behind a mask?
Well that’s also a tough part of it, you’re really going to see more humanity though someone’s facial features in their eyes and various other places, so when you can’t see his face it makes it hard. There are definitely moments where there is a little bit more humanity in certain aspects, but at the same time he’s really trying to just helps these kids get out of here alive and there is not a ton of opportunity to really kind of interact as much as you would like to as an actor or a character, but it’s really not who Master Chief is.
Read the full interview here.

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