Julian McMahon: Tall, Dark and "Doomed"?

We shouted "who is that hot Aussie?" when Julian McMahon played the demon/love interest for Alyssa Milano's character on "Charmed". Now, he's the chick magnet plastic surgeon we love to hate on "Nip /Tuck". This week, tall, blue-eyed Julian co-stars as a loving, if straying hubby to Sandra Bullock in the psych/thriller Premonition and will thrill us as "baddie" Victor Von Doom in the Fantastic Four sequel this summer.

We cornered the actor in Beverly Hills recently. He was slightly late to the interview and came in apologizing for being trapped in L.A. Marathon traffic. Wearing a cute knit cap and a dark brown shirt and jeans, Julian cracked us up (who knew he was so funny?) as he talked about his films and TV series with just a touch of an Aussie accent...

TeenHollywood: When you first read the script for Premonition, did you get it immediately or get lost as the days get shuffled?

Julian: Well I don't think, to be honest, I got it at any point in time. I still don't think I get it, really.

TeenHollywood: [we laugh] What did you like about it then?

Julian: I like the concept of it and, more than anything else, I was kind of touched by the story of the family. Without that you didn't have the body of the movie. You can do the psychological drama thing but, if you don't have some kind of basis, some kind of reality behind it, I think you're missing something. And so for me it was really more kind of about this couple, this husband and wife that hadn't communicated for a very long period of time and really didn't know how to communicate any more. I can relate to that. And then to actually make a choice to, instead of having an affair, run away, get a divorce, they actually made a choice to get back together and I thought that was an interesting kind of way to look at it.

TeenHollywood: Why did it take so long for you to be the lead in a big movie?

Julian: Well, firstly, when you're doing a TV series like "Charmed" or "Profiler" or something like that, which pretty much was my bread and butter for a good eight years, you don't have time. You are shooting usually ten to eleven months a season. Now at FX, and with the way that I work on "Nip/Tuck", I was able to shoot Fantastic Four and "Nip/Tuck" at the same time. It was a grueling schedule and not something I would like to do often, but you kind of work things out. I made the choice to go on "Charmed" which I never regret whatsoever, because I loved working on that show, and the people were just fantastic. In fact, it was one of the greatest experiences I've had in the business. You have to make different choices at different times.

TeenHollywood: Did you ever have a premonition that came true? Like, did you ever just know you would get a role?

Julian: No. Pretty much, I walk away like, 'Ugh. There is no way I'm going to get that.' Most of the ones I walked away thinking I wasn't going to get I got. The ones that I thought or walked away going, 'Oh, I nailed that thing.' They go, 'They didn't like you. Sorry.'

TeenHollywood: What was the mood like for Sandra and you behind the scenes?

Julian: The mood was very variable. It depended on what was going on. I had a lighter schedule than her because you know she's in kind of every frame of the movie, right? She was there every day, all day, so, I had to be a little careful, just because I'd be out playing golf or sampling the local cuisine or whatever and I'd come in and go, 'hey, there's this fantastic restaurant down here!' and they'd be like, 'get out of here!' [we laugh] But you've got to be a little sensitive to what she's going through. Sometimes it was tense when the two of us were on set. We had pretty intense scenes. But, then the first scene was just kind of a giddy scene so that was fun. We were just laughing around and having a good time.

TeenHollywood: Were you happy to get the chance to work with Sandy?

Julian: I've been as big a Sandy fan as everybody else has for however long we've known her. I've admired her work from a distance for a long time and thought 'I'd love to have had the opportunity to work with her' and I got this opportunity. Sandy and I would consistently talk about things. Whenever we thought about something, call each other or just talk about it. We both do what we do because we love it. It's one of the most important things in your life, aside from your children, your family and your really good friends. So to work with somebody like that in that kind of capacity is getting to know them in a very significant way. And then on top of that she's just an absolutely extraordinary person.

TeenHollywood: A lot of your scenes with Sandra's character are basically without dialogue. Do you like that or do you want more dialogue?

Julian: Well, both. They're both just very different things. Like my guy on "Nip/Tuck" for example doesn't shut up! You want to say to him, 'Just don't say it. What's the point?' But that's the fun of playing the character. He's obnoxious and I like that side of him and then you have other characters who say things very poignantly and are straight to the point. This was about a gap that existed between these two people and this inability to communicate. So inside of that comes a lot of air, a lot of space, a lot of walking around the kitchen and doing things and not even really noticing, trying not to notice that the other person is even there. That's what this was about. This was a very desperate and horrible place for two people who are married to be at.

TeenHollywood: Okay, let's say you are in your car, stalled in the middle of the highway and an 18-wheeler was roaring towards you, would you try to start the thing or...?

Julian: I'd get out of the d**n thing! [laughter] It felt like I was there for 20 minutes, I'm going, 'all right, where are my keys? Why am I not getting out?' 'Because it's jammed...it's jammed'. 'How long is it jammed for?' I had to play that for a very long period of time. They were like, 'do it again!' You have to kind of put your faith in the fact that the director is going to make it work and the editor is going to make it work. But, yeah, I would have attempted an escape route. I would have smashed my head through the window if it came to that, but, you know, whatever, it wouldn't have made the movie work, I don't think.

TeenHollywood: Christian on "Nip/Tuck" will be the king of L.A. soon, right?

Julian: [laughs] Did you see the last episode of us under the Hollywood sign, wasn't that hysterical?[we agree]. It's very rare that you get to shoot that sign. I thought it was pretty incredible. You know I don't really know exactly what we're doing. We're going to have a sit-down in the next couple weeks and talk about what we're doing. But they have set up their practice right on Rodeo Drive, which is obviously pretty central to where you think it should be and then it's funded by Rosie O'Donnell's character-it's going to be a lot of fun-a lot of great characters.

TeenHollywood: Do you think the LA scene is going to faze Christian's way with women? Will he face some resistance?

Julian: [he laughs] Uh-ha [pauses] I don't think so...I don't think resistance is going to be a part of it, no. He's evolved a lot over the series you know the four years, but, I don't think he's ever had any resistance. I don't think that's going to stop. That's the fun of the character.

TeenHollywood: On Premonition, the director and Sandy would talk in German and you'd go 'what is this schnitzel talking stuff?' Did they do that a lot?

Julian: They did that a lot, whenever they felt like they wanted to leave me out of something, they would talk German. It was very upsetting and it was very annoying, so I came up with this whole character it was 'Hitler's coiffeur' and I came up with this German accent and I was commenting on Hitler's mustache and how he should cut it a little shorter, a little tighter. We're going to make a movie about Hitler's coiffeur.

TeenHollywood: Yeah, sure you are. Didn't you shoot a time travel movie in Canada a while back? Another Day with Shannon Doherty?

Julian: Well, that was good fun. [That character] was a very kind of quiet, sweet guy, and I hadn't gotten the opportunity to play a guy like that before. We shot in Winnipeg. It's a great place but it's the weirdest place on earth. It's so cold for nine months of the year that nobody goes out. I swear to god your eyeballs freeze over and then, when it gets warm, they have those worms that drop out of the sky. Right? Literally you're coming out and your car will be covered in these worms about this big and then they have mosquitoes the size of cats. So everybody's going, 'Don't go out, no, no, no! Mosquitoes are out there!'

TeenHollywood: On to the Fantastic Four 2 questions! Does your character Doom have a more classic look in the film?

Julian: The final costume is this pretty amazing costume. It's a similar kind of mask. It's kind of a larger type of fit and probably a little more sturdy look to it. The chest plate, it's a very heavy outfit. It weighed about 45-50 pounds depending on what cape I had on. That's a lot of weight to carry around. It's a darker suit than the one he had last time. It's kind of more Batmanesque in a way, but with the mask its obviously very Dr. Doom, and it's a great-looking outfit. I was up on this jib about fifty or sixty feet high with a half cut off surfboard put on this massive tire and then I had like a support system strapped to my back and I had to pretend that I was doing all of these different things.

TeenHollywood: Sounds tough and amazing. So even with all the new characters in the sequel, they still give you a lot to do with Dr. Doom?

Julian: Yeah I had quite a lot to do actually, because he went through all these transformations, you know, different to what happens in the comic or the cartoon.

TeenHollywood: Have you always been a fan of comic books?

Julian: I have, yeah. Fantastic Four in particular. I think maybe I just liked the fact that there were four people with different types of powers. But I was big fan of other stuff too. I was a big fan of Batman and Spiderman and Superman but Fantastic Four, in particular, I got into it actually with the cartoons. We used to watch the cartoons every morning, and I don't know maybe its team work but it was just good.

TeenHollywood: You also have a role in Prisoner. What's that about?

Julian: Prisoner is a pretty intense movie. It's about a guy who's this arrogant filmmaker who gets in prisons and it's a very psychologically orientated imprisonment. It's a little trippy like this movie is, and I guess that throughout the movie you wonder if he was actually really in prison or if it was his own spell that he put himself under. Hopefully he comes out of it at the end as a better man or at least having learned something. It was great fun. We were stuck in a prison cell for five weeks or something. It was pretty intense.

TeenHollywood: A personal question to end with. You grew up the son of a Prime Minister of Australia and you studied law. Did you ever imagine you would be an actor back then?

Julian: The older I get the more I realize that being an actor is pretty close to being a lawyer. I'm far from where I started. I'm far from where I should've been in a way, but that's what has been great. I pretty much just grew up in Sydney. We never went outside of Australia and when I first left Australia at like 17 years old, just getting on the plane was exciting. I was one of those ridiculously gregarious people who wanted to meet the person that sat next to me on the plane. I got to go to places like America and Japan and all through Europe, just the taste of the travel was exciting; the people and cultures. I felt like growing up in the public eye had certain limitations. There were expectations and I just didn't want to have expectations. So I came here where no one knew who I was. It was nice to be able to say, 'This is going to be my own path and my own steps that I'm going to take and I'm going to own my own life'.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.