Four years ago, petite brunette actress Selma Blair starred as pyrokinetic Liz Sherman opposite Ron Perlman’s big, red superhero Hellboy. She’s back again in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. This time Liz and Big Red have hooked up bigtime, are living together and having the usual couple squabbles. Liz is better at controlling her “firepower” and is now a major part of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.) where she kicks evil, supernatural butt with her man and the rest of the good guys.

Selma, who stars this Fall in a new NBC comedy series called “Kath and Kim” opposite “Saturday Night Live’s” Molly Shannon, met with us in Beverly Hills and revealed that she loved doing more action in “Hellboy 2″ and, although she’s pretty good at a shooting range with a real gun, she “sucked” at firing a “pretend” one on set. We also learned that, in the first film, she was unsure about how to work with a “prosthetic boyfriend”.

Picture the classy actress in black walking shorts and jacket over a white tee and wearing very, very high stiletto heels. Her huge, solitaire diamond drop earrings and short, coal-black hair made for a striking silhouette.

TeenHollywood: What was your reaction when you saw the final film?

Selma: I thought the film was pretty epic. I thought [director] Guillermo del Toro really made an amazing film. I can’t believe how successfully he covered all the bases. Everything is in the film; love and death and amazing action sequences and war and monsters. It’s incredible.

TeenHollywood: How was it playing the pyrokinetic girlfriend again?

Selma: It can’t be bad. It was good working with Guillermo. It’s great working with Ron [Perlman] and he’s funny. Both of them. It’s great. I don’t want to be on fire in real life. It’s not very practical in California [we laugh].

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Selma Blair gets all fired up in Hellboy II as Liz, the pyrotechnic long-time companion of the big, red, brewski-loving superhero. Bursting into flames to take out some fantastically ugly monsters is just one more example of the outrageous turns Blair has taken since her role opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions.

In person, there’s nothing outrageous about Blair. The petite brunette is sweet and wickedly funny.

You’d never be attracted to a beer-drinking, blue-collar guy in real life would you?

“I have been many times—the guy that gets things done and then can relax with you and joke around but just doesn’t put on airs. There’s something nice about that, it’s sort of the textbook definition of what a guy is. In the movie, I love how average Hellboy and Liz are. It’s endearing that these people who have extraordinary powers are so busy killing monsters that they can’t the find the time to talk about their own relationship.”

You’ve been married [to Ahmet Zappa] and divorced. What’s your take on love?

“I’m a romantic. I think I probably had my heart broken a few times, so maybe I am a little bit more jaded now. I don’t think I could follow the ’10 commandments of love’ in those self-help books and articles because I think rules have to be adjusted for every person you meet. I don’t think there’s a real formula. And that’s why I get a kick out of Hellboy and Liz; they’re an odd couple who fight ferociously but still love each other.”

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Selma Blair has shone in dozens of films, inhabiting a gamut of characters from the frothy to the seedy. Now she’s not only a leading lady — she’s got her own action figure.

Selma Blair has Charlotte Rampling’s eyes, Dorothy Parker’s precision-strike wit, and sufficient acting chops to blow better-known actresses off the screen with a toss of her bangs. Having shone in all manner of movies, from lightweight fare like Legally Blonde, The Sweetest Thing, and Cruel Intentions (in which she famously twisted tongues with Sarah Michelle Gellar) to darker indie films like Kill Me Later and Todd Solondz’s Storytelling, the 36-year-old native of the Detroit suburbs has lately been trading up her character-actress cred for a fatter slice of the cultural pie.

“Part of me would love to have been a leading lady, because there’s a lot of glamour that goes with that, and a lot of applause,” she says, nursing a coffee in a West Hollywood patisserie. “But I’ve been very blessed. I’m not one of these girls who has to fit into a mold. I’m a working actress able to make choices based on characters rather than what I ‘should’ do for my career.”

Blair, the youngest of four overachieving sisters, was born in Southfield, Michigan. “I was always kind of the storyteller,” she recalls. “I remember being in the schoolyard when I was six, and I’d make up stories about how there was a huge carnival behind my house and then get in trouble because everyone wanted to come to see it. I had to become a recluse at a very young age so my story wouldn’t be found out.” After she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in photography and a minor in English (“I was mostly writing about despair, grief, loneliness…the usual William Styron type of stuff,” Blair laughs), a stint at the Stella Adler Studio in New York City nudged her into acting.

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Submit your question for Ron Perlman, Selma Blair or Guillermo del Toro.

In this summer of superheroes, only one is red, has horns and likes kittens.

Yup, that’s El Diablito (OK, I made that up), or Hellboy, who’ll be fighting evil on July 11 when Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters.

Hellboy may not be the most recognizable of superheroes, but as played by master chameleon Ron Perlman, he’s genuinely one of the more unique. In the sequel he’s joined once again by pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair) and, perhaps most importantly, by superstar director Guillermo del Toro, whose star has risen quite a bit since he directed the first Hellboy in 2004.

Blair, Perlman and del Toro — that’s beauty, the beast and the, uh, beastmaster? — will be interviewing each other for Moviefone’s Unscripted series using your questions. So give the devil his due and submit a question for either one (or all three!) below, and be sure to include your first name and the city where you live. Then check back here on July 7 to see if your question made the cut. Good luck!

Submit your questions at Moviefone.com!

UP CLOSE WITH SELMA BLAIR
The ‘Hellboy II’ hottie talks about her flame-throwing role in the sequel, shacking up with the Demon of the Apocalypse and the rumors she’s playing Neil Gaiman’s Death!

WIZARD: Four years have gone by since the first movie; did you think you’d get to play the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman again?
BLAIR: I hoped that I would. I kind of thought that it was never going to happen, but ["Hellboy" and "Hellboy II" director] Guillermo del Toro just didn’t give up. When he gave me a call at 11 o’clock one night to tell me that they had the financing, I was really relieved. It was something that I had been waiting and hoping for and this does feel like we’re back with family even though it’s a whole new amazing experience. The first one was such an introduction to Hellboy that I always thought the meat would be in the second and third, at least for Liz, because in the first one she was afraid to take a step. She was a zombie, not wanting to own up to her power and not having the memory of what she’d created in her life. So I was really eager to come and play Liz with a little more vibrancy.

How much has she changed since the first movie?
I thought I would get here and already know this girl, but I realized that I don’t know her at all because I don’t know her as a woman. It seems like such a straightforward role, but it’s really been a challenge for me not to suck the energy out of Liz because that’s kind of how I played her in the first one, like she was in a vacuum.

Was the haircut something that Guillermo suggested, or something that you came up with together?
It was together. My hair, I basically went nuts and shaved my head. There was actually a girl who wanted my hair and I’m a giver. So I gave her my hair. [Laughs] I did that to make a wig for a child, but then I just made it a fashion thing that I had this strangely shaped head. But I thought, “Oh, God, Guillermo is going to kill me.” But he saw the short hair and I think he really wanted it. I think that it’s a little anime inspired.

How has Liz’s relationship with Hellboy developed since the first movie?
Well, it’s worked out about as much as my marriage in real life. [Laughs] [EDITOR'S NOTE: Blair divorced musician Ahmet Zappa in 2006.] That’s terrible to say. We’re very good friends. It’s difficult living with someone, especially a guy that takes up as much room as Hellboy, with as many cats as Hellboy has. So we are very happy together, but there’s trouble with spending so much time with someone that you love after you’re used to being alone and having your way. Between my fire and his little-boy sloppy behavior, we’re a mess—a lovable mess.

You’re packing heat in addition to your fire powers this time around; why are you carrying a gun?
Talk to Guillermo about that. It’s really embarrassing too. I wouldn’t pull this out if it weren’t completely rubber, but it’s really embarrassing. I spend so much time in this movie holding this gun up and I’m like to Doug [Jones, aka Abe Sapien] next to me, “Jesus Christ, don’t I have fire for this?”

You did the voice of Liz in the animated movies; has there been talk of any more of those?
I know that one was nominated for an Emmy, and I’m glad that that one person who nominated it bought it because that’s about the only copy that I know of. I don’t know if anymore are going to happen, but one of them was really beautiful. [Laughs].

Has the cast dynamic changed with the addition of psychic Johann Kraus?
I had just one scene with Abe Sapian that was really touching in the first one. That was actually really my only scene where I felt like a person communicating with someone, and in this one, he’s my buddy and we’re together all the time. So I feel closest to Doug in this and always Ron [Perlman, aka Hellboy]. I live next to Ron in real life, so he’s just someone that I’m really close to and have kept in touch with. Then John Alexander and James [Dodd], the couple of people that play Johann, I think the more the merrier—the more people that can suffer in their costumes and I can make fun of them because I don’t have one. I bedevil them. It’s awful. They’re sweating and dying and can’t breathe and I’m like, “Oh, my God, this cotton tank top is just really too much. I don’t know how you guys do it.”

Del Toro is also producing the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Death: The High Cost of Living. That seems right up your alley. Are you jockeying for that?
I’ve wanted to play Death for a long time. On the set of the first ["Hellboy"], people would see me and say, “You have to play Death. Oh my God, you have to do it.” I didn’t know he was doing “Death” at the time. He knew for sure that he’d be teaming up with Neil on that and he said, “Yeah, you’d be good for Death.” Then it’s been crickets. I think he definitely has his eye on someone, and I would know if it were me and it’s not me. [Neil and I are] good friends, and that still didn’t get me the job. [Laughs]

From Wizard Universe

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY’S SELMA BLAIR

NEW YORK — She’s no longer a Sherman crank. Selma Blair told The Continuum her character in the Hellboy franchise, Liz Sherman, is “definitely grown up” and geared for action for the sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

“She was more like a teenager in the first one, kind of afraid all the time,” Blair said at last weekend’s New York Comic-Con. “Now she’s with Hellboy, they’re in a relationship, which is very strange and wonderful. And I’m a full part of the B.P.R.D. and I’m using my powers. Liz is taking control a lot more.”

Blair said a shift in the character presented acting challenges for the sequel, due in theaters on June 23.

“I was so used to Liz being this mopey girl that really dwelled on her past and the harm she had caused,” Blair said. “And it took a bit for me to learn to take charge of Liz and control things and to mature. Hopefully Guillermo (del Toro, the director) and I did it, because there’s a lot more for me to do in this one. I have my gun, I have my powers and I have my man.”

Blair called the Hellboy-Liz relationship “the real deal.”

“They’re really in love,” she said. “They’re soulmates.

The more mature Liz gets a revamped look for the second film. “It’s something a little more older and a little more chic. I think it reflects the character,” Blair said. “It’s a little more sophisticated.”

Blair — who also provided the voice of Liz in both animated Hellboy films — said there are built-up expections for Hellboy II, even in a summer loaded with comic-book movies.

“Hellboy 1 got so many fans on DVD and built such a huge fan base,” she said. “And I think Guillermo, with the success of Pan’s Labyrnith, so many people have taken notice in him. I think this is an epic movie. I think it’s better than the first one, and Guillermo’s imagination is the best there is. I think it will do great.” .

From Comics Contunuum