Stanley Tucci has revealed he “tried to get out of” playing a serial killer in The Lovely Bones.

Peter Jackson’s 2009 movie starred Saoirse Ronan as a 14-year-old girl who is murdered by her neighbour George Harvey, played by Tucci.

But The Hunger Games star, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance, admitted in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight that he tried to back out of playing the killer.

“I asked Peter Jackson why he cast me in that role. I tried to get out of playing the role, which is crazy because I needed a job,” Tucci recalled. “But I was like, ‘Why do you want me?’ And he said, ‘Because you’re funny.’ And I thought, ‘OK.’ But I understand what he was saying.

“I think what he meant was that I wouldn’t be too – not that I wouldn’t be serious about it, but that I wouldn’t be overly dramatic about it. That I would throw it away a bit. Which is what you have to do when you’re playing somebody who’s that awful, right? You can’t play into it. Then, you know, it’s over. Like, the movie’s over. You just have to play against it.”

Tucci named George as a character he would never want to revisit simply because the role was “horrible” and he had “a tough experience” playing the serial killer.

On the flip side, he shared that he would “happily” portray Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada and Paul Child from Julie & Julia again because “those are really wonderful roles”.

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