Ron Perlman recently spoke about how heavy make-up made it difficult to play the Reman Viceroy in 'Star Trek X: Nemesis.'

"It doesn't seem to let much oxygen in a pinch, so I am breathing out of my mouth and nose and not much else," Perlman told Star Trek Monthly (via Scifi Pulse). "I can't take it off until the end of the day. It takes a couple of hours to put on and the days have been anywhere between 12 and 17 hours, no less than 12 and probably close to 15 on average.

"I have almost no mobility in it," he continued. "Almost everything I do - I'm fighting the costume. This is a very unique exercise in pacing yourself, and I come up short every day. Every night I go home just whipped, really whipped."

The actor explained that the costume had contributed to his portrayal of the character. "There's no way you can create a character like this until you're actually in the get-up and look at yourself in the mirror," Perlman said. "That basically is the first clue as to what he walks like, talks like and what his mindset is, and that dictates everything else. So you do some generalised homework about the guy's circumstances, but you really have to wait until everybody puts on you what it is they're putting on you to create what is not human, but an abstraction."

But he acknowledged that there was a good side to the restrictive costume. "Well, the cool thing about it is, I could be in the next Star Trek movie and nobody would know it's me," the actor joked. "But, no, I would rather do this one this one time. I've played a lot of characters that I could play for a lifetime. This is one I would prefer to do as a one-shot."

The complete interview with Ron Perlman can be found in the current issue of Star Trek Monthly, out now in the United Kingdom. Extracts are available online here at Scifi Pulse.

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