“I read a lot of comic books as a kid,” Jane said. “I used to draw the skull on my notebook at school, but I wasn’t really aware of ‘The Punisher’, the book, until I got into the movies. I never consider myself a superhero. Marvel had come after me for a couple different superhero parts and I’ve turned them down, as I did this one initially, because I didn’t see myself as a superheroic kind of a person. But as Marvel was quick to point out, this really was an antihero. He didn’t have any super powers. He relied on his God-given talents and his wits to overcome his enemies and that became much more interesting to me. I’ve been waiting to play this kind of antihero since I was a kid. When I grew up in the ’70s and watched movies with my dad, those ’70s action films were really inspiring to me.”
Jane would not say what other Marvel properties he turned down, but did comment on the previous film version of The Punisher starring Dolph Lundgren. “I saw parts of it, yeah. I think that’s ‘Punisher’ in name only. I think that they use that as a template to jump off and create their own sort of story and the respect wasn’t there for the source material that we have now. It was a different period of filmmaking. And again, one that we just weren’t interested in the antihero for a number of years. I guess I got the kind of face where people aren’t going to cast me as Superman or someone like that.”
To become Frank Castle, Jane put on 25 pounds of muscle by working out in the gym and trying various diets, including one liquid diet for three months. Now that the film has wrapped, he’s gone back to normal eating habits. “Krispy Kreme donuts and Guinness beer come out the day we stop. When the check stops coming, I stop going to the gym. Absolutely. My fiance said, ‘You did? I’ll write you the check, here’s the check. Here, go get back out there. Take the cheeseburger out of you’re mouth and go to the gym.'”
There is no CGI enhancement to The Punisher‘s action scenes until one moment at the end. Most of the film is real people, whether stuntmen or actors, fighting, driving and chasing. Jane said that it’s more often the real actors than stunt people, and he has the injuries to prove it. “I did 90% of my own stunts. You go into it thinking it’s like a professional sport. You go into it knowing that there’s going to be some cuts and bruises and you’re going to get banged up but I got great guys around me, fantastic people to help me come through it relatively unscathed. So that was a real help.”
