The spirit of  "Pacte des Loups", it's him. Discovered by Christophe Gans in "Crying Freeman", Mark Dacascos interpret Mani, an dreamlike Indian warrior as mysterious as the Gévaudan Beast.

Zen mind, angel face and perfect body. If cinema was a religion, its divine incarnation would have something Hawaiian ! In "Crying Freeman", the first long movie by Christophe Gans, Mark Dacascos incarnates a crying Asian killer. Five years later, still always watched by the French director, he's a dreamlike Indian from the Mohawk tribe in "Pacte des Loups". In between, the lovers of "heroic fantasy" could watch his television adventures as Eric Draven, aka "The Crow" . But where does this actor come from, able to transform himself, to change his own cultural identity, according to the frenzies and the fantasies of his directors?

From nowhere. Or from everywhere, to believe Christophe Gans who swears only by him. Some kind of universal actor, catalyst for all the projections.

" Mark is the incarnation of my cinema," Gans explains.  Mark has all the qualities I search for my movies! He's an ethnic, and mixed hero, thoroughbred, elegant, exotic, and somewhere, dreamlike.

In "Pacte des Loups", he symbolises the balance that I try to reach, between something classic, temperate, exotic, a little bit loose, a little bit weird a little foreign and who seems like a dream".

A sworn in standard, the presence of which in this project was, always according to Gans, Curcial. Where the penny dropped when he read in the original scenario by Cabel that there was an Indian character.

And so Dacascos became Mani, redskin, arriving in the heart of the Black Périgord before the French Revolution, as blood brother of the Chevalier De Fronsac. The incarnation of the ancestral wisdom combine with the fineness of the "Lights time", the charmanism with the scientism, the nature force with the knowledge. On the screen, the chemistry between both is perfect. Always behind the hero played by Samuel LeBihan, Mark-Mani just has to appear to give the movie a Force and an incredible dimension. "

Gans: Mark is very close to Mani. In fact, it's him!

The character of Crying Freeman is so far away from Mark's personality in real life, but for the character of Mani, I did not hesitate one second, all what I learnt about Mark, I put it in the script.

The main point when you know the actor is, to bring them closer to their own substance, build around their own personality. So, Mani is very close to the real Mark Dacascos. In fact it's him ...". If Gans imagines him like an ET from the New-World turning up at the 18th century wig-men, the person Dacascos, like a new age warrior lost in Hollywood, does he himself feel like coming from another planet?

The laugh is profound and communicative. " Good question! Frankly speaking, I always felt like an ET. Even on the PDL shooting ... Imagine : I'm a guy from Hawaii, shooting in France, the skull half shaved with extensions (hair added on to his own), the skin darker than the most of the people, without control of the language and in different clothes than the others ... It's not a surprise that everybody thought I am a hallucination! (Laugh). On the one hand, it was really beneficial, as I was put in a situation similar to Mani's. Anyway, it's simple : coming from Hawaii, a very small island from the planet point of view, wherever I go, I come from somewhere else. "

From anybody else, this kind of declaration would sound hollow. Not with Dacascos who, with a sweet and assured voice, tells obviously of his own life style, simple, healthy, close to the nature and articulate around a simple precept : "Strong mind, strong body, strong spirit". Ascetic athlete, trained to martial arts from the age of 8 by his parents who at that time were living in Germany ("His father, Al, is a figure of this disciplines, founder of his own school and author of several philosophic books on martial arts, Gans adds admiring), fearsome kung fu competitor (Italy and Europe champion, 1980 to 1982, medium weight category). Mark Dacascos became an actor by chance. He was spotted, 16 years ago, in Los Angeles streets, by an assistant of Wayne Wang, who prepared Dim Sum.

 He jumped down from his horse to save a crow!

This episode of this first meeting with the cinema (very mistrustful from the point of view of the Hawaiian), as all the stages of the life and career of this young actor as simple as nature (including the detailed story of his son's birth, the last December 31 !) are describe with a disarming sincerity and precision on his website that Mark dedicates to his admirers (www.dacascos.com). Because, before being a body (sublime, yeah, we know! ) Mark Dacascos is a spirit. The kindness becomes man elevated to the rank of fine arts. Fruit of the marriage of various cultures, Mark is as close to Mani in his animist aspirations ? Mark doesn't want to be taken as an enlighten mind, but we can easily imagine that harmony with nature forces aren't just a concept for him.

Again, his director on PDL reveals: the only time I saw him getting excited was because of an assistant who was taking care of the crows in the pond scene. One of the birds was drowning and I saw Mark jumping down his horse in the middle of the shooting, saving the crow, catching the guy and shaking him up and down... He has everything from the Middle Age warrior."

Mark Dacascos is like a pure line, whose the mystery stands in harmony as well as in self-assurance.

If  cinema had a soul, Mark Dacascos would be the perfect demonstration. As if escaped from a special world. A being from out there.. Like the last of the Mohawks ?