When Christian Bale's just-born Dark Knight goes into battle against Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow, you might be tempted to see if there's any genuine animosity there. After all, Murphy, one of the stars of such films as 28 Days Later... and Cold Mountain, had originally been on the short list of actors being looked at to play Batman.

"In the end, Christian was cast, which I think was the right decision," says Murphy, without a trace of Hollywood flannel. "Honestly, I never saw myself as Batman material. I think that Christian is perfect for that and I think that this role of the Scarecrow suits me fine. Besides, my interest in the movie at the start was the idea of working with Chris Nolan."

Impressed with Nolan’s achievements on Memento and Insomnia, Murphy admits that he was genuinely looking forward to collaborating with the director—whatever the project. "I was amazed at how at ease and at home he was on the Batman sets," he says. "You would be standing in these enormous multi-million dollar sets and he would be in total control. He's also very succinct and precise in the notes he gives you as an actor. There are no long deliberations and he's very open to collaboration. You're also aware, again, of the immensity of it. A Batman movie is an event. But on set, because Chris had worked with a lot of the crew before, there's this really easy-going vibe. Obviously there was great secrecy about it, but nobody was stressed out. It was a very nice atmosphere. It didn't feel like I had stepped up to some new league, it felt like any other movie I've done where people are just working hard and doing their best."

Screenwriter David Goyer was another of the attractions for the actor. "He's the real thing," Murphy enthuses. "He's taking it back from where it was and reinvesting it with what Batman was all about originally, exploring the psychology of it all as it goes back to the genesis of the Batman character and everything around him."

As for his dual role of Dr. Jonathan Crane and the Scarecrow, there's so much that he would love to discuss—but simply can't, for fear that it would reveal too much about the film and ruin the experience. "I can say that he is not going to be as theatrical a character as he was in the early comic books," he muses. "There's this underlying theme of fear that runs through the Batman character anyway, it's fear that causes Bruce Wayne to become Batman. For the Scarecrow, it's kind of the opposite. Reading the comic books that D.C. sent me I learned that he was terribly bullied, an outcast and a geek when he was younger. Those were the formative experiences for Crane. What I did was look at all of the different incarnations of the character throughout the comic books and kept all of that information in my head. I used as much or as little as I needed in the different scenes that we shot. I think the character should be scary as hell, because that fear toxin he uses is a pretty ferocious thing."

"Crane is not a good guy," Murphy adds in conclusion. "I think it comes from serious, deep issues from a very young age. I think he's got a serious inferiority complex, although he's brilliant at the same time. And the Scarecrow incarnation—well, aren't all of these villains a little whacked out? I think it's much more interesting when there's a distinction between the two sides of the character because when you put on a mask you want to justify it. The freedom the mask allows someone is to live all those fantasies in your head, good or bad, without revealing yourself."