Villain? Not in eyes of 'Quantum' actor

In the latest James Bond thriller, "Quantum of Solace," opening today, Agent 007 is pitted against a most unusual adversary.

Just don't tell French actor Mathieu Amalric ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") that his character is the bad guy.

"Dominic Greene is a great guy," enthused the 43-year-old Amalric, over the phone from London before the film's premiere. "He has a big concern for environmental issues. He wants to help poor people to find their land again. He doesn't understand why Bond is looking for him!"

It may have something to do with Greene's plan to seize control of vital water supplies. But even "Quantum" director Marc Forster acknowledges that Greene isn't the typical Bond heavy. "I think the villain should blend in," he said. "It's important. Bond is ultimately now an antihero. The bad guy and the good guy are overlapping. Bond is not just good and the villain is not just bad. It's what I think is happening in the world. We are not all good and we are not all bad."

Still, you wouldn't want to make Greene angry; he's as ruthless as they come, and the body count begins to pile up as his mysterious organization, Quantum, looks to destabilize South America, and ultimately the world.

"The Bond films always hint about something of the time in which they are done," said Amalric. "The thing today that is more frightening is that you don't know where the villains are. The thing that's really frightening in 'Quantum of Solace' is that it's true. It's not a big fantasy like in the Bond films of the 1980s, where a madman wants to kill humankind. In 'Quantum,' you have a secret organization. You don't know where they are. They just are everywhere."

To prepare for the role, Amalric created a back story: "Greene wasn't French. He was more Swiss, coming from a very, very rich family. His father is a banker, and he was never loved by his father. Sometimes that's enough to become a villain like in Shakespeare."

He discovered that working on a blockbuster is not much different from doing a small, independent French film.

"It depends on the director," he said. "It is the director who gives the spirit of a shooting. Sometimes when you are on a big-scale movie, you discover the director is like a child. He is completely passionate and having fun and inventing things on the moment. That's what I discovered on 'Munich.' Steven Spielberg has no storyboard, and we would invent something on the moment. And Marc Forster is also like that."