By the time the journalists catch up to Denzel Washington for a round-table interview (which means several journalists all asking him questions instead of one-on-one interviews), he’d been shooting for almost a month.

“Somebody jump in,” comes a big chuckle from Washington as he sits down at the table across from the journalists.

It turns out that the first part of the shoot has been mostly running and jumping, shooting guns and his character Tobin Frost getting inside the head of Matt Weston, played by Ryan Reynolds.

“I’ve talked with Carlos (played by Rubén Blades), though he did all the talking, but I haven’t had a scene of dialogue with Matt in a good six weeks probably.

“We’ve got one coming up,” Washington says.

He refers to the actors by their screen names and is known as a consummate method actor who stays in character on set.

He chuckles heartily when a German reporter asks him how hard it is to come to the set and turn into a sociopath: “Who says it’s hard?”

“I’m sure that there are people in this crew who think: ‘He’s weird, he doesn’t talk to anybody,’ which I don’t. I don’t do a lot of chit-chatting, I’m not the warm and fuzzy guy. But I’m not worried about that, I’m here to do my job. Nobody looks at a movie and goes: ‘Man, he sucked, but I bet he was nice to everybody.’”

“This is unusual, to come in here and talk, but it’s called show business so I have to deal with getting the story out, so that when you read all those other articles about what a pain in the a** I was, you can set the story right.”

The film is set in Cape Town, where a young CIA agent (Reynolds) is tasked with looking after a fugitive (Washington) in a safe house.

The 57-year-old didn’t know he’d be coming to Cape Town when he got the job. Originally, the script was based in Buenos Aires but he agrees with the director’s assessment that the Mother City was a better fit, having already worked in Latin America (Mexico) on Man on Fire.

They shot all over Cape Town’s foreshore, in Bellville, Langa, Woodstock and eventually ended up going to Moorreesburg.

“Do you know where that is, anyone? Is that wine country or out in the country?” he asks.

Wheat country, we tell him.

“Oh, wheat. Okay.”

And cows.

“And I’m not eating meat right now. So, they’ll wave to me,” he chuckles. “But, I might manipulate them, sociopath that I am … manip- ulate the cows …”

You expect him to rub his hands together, the way he’s laughing.

In researching the role, he read several books about sociopaths, including Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door, which points out that not all sociopaths are murderers, but simply want to manipulate people around them.

“It talked about how America, in fact, is a good breeding ground because… I forget, I’m going to mess this quote up, but it talks about ‘what’s more dangerous, the person who does evil or people who don’t do anything about it?’.”

He doesn’t see his Frost character as bad: “That’s for other people to decide.”

“You need great soldiers, you need great warriors. Nobody wants to do the job but be thankful that somebody has the ability to kill and not get nervous in the face of danger.”

Nor is the character a villain.

“Everybody else is wrong and he is right. I don’t know how to play a villain.What do you do? I don’t know what that means? How do you do that?”

He calls Reynolds’ character a greenhorn, somewhat idealistic in the eyes of Frost: “He’s been protecting a safe house and 90 percent of the time nobody’s there, so it’s a bottom-level position, and then one of the most notorious and experienced members of the CIA falls into his lap.

“I’m looking to win, to get away, to dominate him, Matt not Ryan, and manipulate him in any way I can.”

“That’s what a sociopath does, he’ll find an opening and dig in there and turn it back on you.

“All he wants to do is get away, if he has to take this kid’s life to do it, he’ll do it. But, I remember doing The Manchurian Candidate, and the character I played was homophobic and Jonathan Demme said: ‘You know, at the end of the movie, he’s not leading the gay and lesbian parade, he changes a small degree.’

“I think that’s the case here. I don’t think by the end of the movie I’m all lovey-dovey and sensitive and ‘go get him Matt’ – I couldn’t care less. But, he’s changed six degrees or eight degrees, which is the most he can. But, we’ll see… maybe three degrees.”

How much of yourself is in this role is the next question, which raises a couple of nervous laughs.

“How much of yourself is in that question,” says Washington, turning the question around and laughing.

“I don’t know. You always bring yourself to any part you do. You can’t divorce yourself from what you’re doing, it’s you thinking about it, it’s your perspective,” he says, getting serious for a minute.

He’s turning out to be affable and articulate, but his mind’s already turned to the coming night shoot. They’re about to shoot a fight scene in Salt River. Later, on the set, he’s business-like and focused throughout several re-takes, patiently doing the same moves over and over.

When asked whether there was anything particularly difficult about the role, Washington jokes that the only hard thing was jumping because he’s got a bad knee. “It’s what I do, I’m an actor. This is not difficult, nothing about it is very difficult.”

Then he recalls that at the beginning of the shoot he was waterboarded: “I forgot about that, having somebody pouring water down your nose, with you upside down. That was difficult. I was acting; they were more nervous than I was.”

He likes working on scripts and, for the past 20 years, helping to develop characters. He’s directed two films of his own and is develop- ing a couple of projects.

For Washington, being a director isn’t about telling other people what to do. “You put your best people around you and let them do their job. Why bring talented people around, if you only want them to do what you see. That’s a bit egotistical; it’s small.”

He has high praise for director Daniel Espinosa.

“He’s a fine filmmaker. I don’t know if you saw Snabba Cash? It’s really an interesting film. He has a different take on things. I’m sure that Hollywood is looking at him as the new hot guy. He’s really passionate and has a really interesting background. His father fought in the revolution in Chile, he was raised in Africa and lives in Sweden. He’s got a lot going on, he’s very passionate and talented. And nice. And very good.”

Washington believes that a great actor should be fascinated not only by human nature, but life.

“Once I get something, get a hold of it like this sociopath madness, I love it. I live a great life. I’ve seen a lot that the average tourist doesn’t see, that’s the great thing about making movies – you go places you wouldn’t go to if you were just visiting.”

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