Let's consider this a friendly counterpoint to Capone's awesome AICN Legends column, shall we?

You may not know Chin Han by name yet, but I can pretty much guarantee that everyone who reads this site is familiar with his performance as Lau in Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT. And this weekend, a good many of you will see him as a heroic Tibetan monk in his next mega-Hollywood production, Roland Emmerich's 2012 aka TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION. As for "Who is Chin Han, and what's his deal with $200 million blockbusters?", that's what I'm hoping to remedy with the below interview.

Chin Han's acting career began in his native Singapore, where he successfully navigated the always tricky transition from stage to film and television. But, according to Chin Han, the goal was always Hollywood. And when he finally made his move, he was quickly rewarded with a significant role in the second-highest-grossing film in the history of the medium. When Chin Han recounts the whirlwind auditioning process, which led to him being whisked off to Shepperton Studios, he sounds like he still can't believe it.

It's a fun little success story, the kind every up-and-coming actor dreams about, but rarely achieves. Whether this tale continues to have an upward trajectory is up to Chin Han and the whims of Hollywood casting directors. Should he continue to make favorable impressions in massive blockbusters, I've a feeling we'll be seeing a good deal more of Chin Han - either as a character actor or a leading man. It's all wide open at this point.

It's rare that you get the opportunity to interview an actor at the moment when they're about to make the leap, so I was more than happy to get on the phone with Chin Han a few weeks before the opening of 2012. My digital recorder, however, wasn't so sure, and decided to cut out at 12:09 of our twenty minute conversation. I had no idea this happened until I sat down to transcribe the interview, so I can't really reconstruct the rest of the discussion (which mostly addressed the myriad differences between Nolan and Emmerich). My apologies.

So here's twelve minutes and nine seconds with the gracious and quite talented Mr. Chin Han.

Mr. Beaks: You're at an interesting place in your career, in that you're building on the heat of THE DARK KNIGHT and, in a few weeks, have 2012 coming out. Looking forward, what kind of career would you like to have as an actor?

Chin Han: The objective has always been the same. Even when I was a teenager starting out in Singapore doing theater and making $500 for a few weeks of work, you just always want to do good material. That hasn't changed. And if I could come to Hollywood and have access to the kinds of scripts and movies that I could be proud to be a part of, that's the direction I would like my career to go in.

It's been a surreal two years. From the minute I was cast in THE DARK KNIGHT - which was in April 2007, to... what is it now? (Laughs) October 2009 - it's pretty much been a dream. I was shooting in London and Chicago for THE DARK KNIGHT, and after that I was up in British Columbia for 2012. Now I'm back in Hollywood, and I'm about to go to the premiere. It's been very surreal, but it's all that an actor could dream of. Obviously, it's not just the quality of the work; it's also the scale of these two movies. My first two movies in Hollywood are huge, $200 million movies. (Laughs)

Beaks: That's quite a change from your theater background.

Chin Han: It boggles the mind for me. Sometimes I'm sitting here in my apartment in Beverly HIlls - and I have a very nice, northward facing view of the hills. I'll be looking out at the sunset, and I can't quite believe I'm here.

Beaks: It's always interesting how people find their way out here. When I left college, I went to New York City thinking I'd try to make it as a playwright. I always told people I'd never never "sell out" and move to L.A. to whore for the studios. Twelve years later, here I am in L.A. Seeing as how you started in theater, I'm wondering if you had any convictions like that.

Chin Han: I didn't. I was never quite the angry artist - even though I did have fantasies of being a bohemian actor living in New York and facing those brutal winters in a trench coat with a cigarette dangling off my lip like some actor from a French movie in the 1960s. I loved the romance of Hollywood. From the movies I was exposed to as a young man - from Cary Grant and Grace Kelly classics to those really awesome movies from the '70s, like THE GODFATHER, JAWS and THE EXORCIST - there was always a sense that those are the movies I would like to be a part of. There was a larger-than-life aspect of Hollywood filmmaking that I always connected with and wanted to be a part of. Growing up in Singapore, which is just a small island on the tip of the Malaysian archipelago... we had just broken free from British rule in the '60s, and in the '70s Singapore was going through a phase of industrialization. There was a lot of construction. But for a young man with an active imagination, there was very little to do and very few places to go, so what I would do is read a lot and hide out in cinemas. That's where my imagination took me. I think that's one of the reasons I connected with all of the kinds of movies that were coming out of Hollywood at the time. It was a form of escape, really.

Beaks: So you get out here and find yourself caught up in this whole DARK KNIGHT craziness. What was it that Christopher Nolan saw in you? And, once you were cast, did you have any idea what you were getting into?

Chin Han: (Laughs) Um, no. Not quite. I remember the script being under such tight wraps. When I went in to audition, I just had two pages of dialogue, and all of the characters were jumbled and mixed up. There was no explanation about the characters or the story at all. There was very little you could surmise from the script. I mean, you kind of had an idea about the role you were playing, but you had no idea what the movie was about. So, as far as I was concerned when I went in for the audition, the character could've been a twenty-second-long cameo or as large as the character of Lau. I had no idea. But I knew I wanted to work with Chris Nolan, so I got on the plane.

I was living in Singapore at the time, and got a call from my manager at that point; they told me they'd set up a meeting for me in Los Angeles, thinking I was in Los Angeles at that point, which I wasn't. (Laughs) So I called him back and said, "If I want to make this meeting, I have to get on a plane in three hours. Could they see me any other way? Could they see me later?" And you know how it is with these juggernaut movies: they break for nobody. (Laughs) So I had this four-hour window to make up my mind, and I made that decision in about ten minutes. I remember my family helping me to pack because I had just returned to Singapore. My bags weren't even unpacked, really; I had come to spend Christmas and Chinese New Year with my family. They weren't even sure what I was going in for, but they got me packed and on the plane. It was a twenty-hour flight back to Los Angeles. When I got in, I took a nap for about four hours, and there I was in the casting office of John Papsidera reading for THE DARK KNIGHT.

But I had no idea about the scope of the movie until the first day I got on set. They sent a driver for me, which was the first time in my life I had ever experienced that; before that, I'd done some independent movies and television in Singapore. So they sent a driver for me, took me to the airport, flew me to London first class, drove me to the legendary Shepperton studios, where I was fitted by Lindy Hemming. Then I was driven down to the set. I don't know if you've been there, but it's just this gigantic hangar that used to house air balloons during World War II. So they brought me to my trailer and let me relax there for a little bit. Then one of the assistants comes up to me and says, "Chris Nolan is ready to see you." So I walk over to the set, and the first thing I see is Christian Bale doing a photo shoot in his Batman outfit, the Bat-Tumbler and the Bat-Pod. That was when I first realized what kind of movie I was in. (Laughs)

Beaks: Did you have a complete script?

Chin Han: I got a more complete script later. I got it in parts.

And that, tragically, is that. Pretty frustrating, really. But I have a feeling there will be more interviews with Chin Han in the future.

Go get assaulted by 2012 this weekend in the largest theater with the most obnoxiously powerful speakers available. And enjoy.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks