I had a meeting with JJ, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzmann about two years ago when they were beginning to put this project together. And they were just beginning to conceive how it might be and how it might work. I enjoyed the meeting a lot because for many years Spock had been kind of marginalized. Now I felt that these people really wanted to re-embrace the character and all the other original characters and the sense of what Star Trek was originally when I was actively, physically and emotionally involved with it. I felt very good about the meeting and I felt that this could work.
The first challenge was o get the make up right. There were make up people who had never done this Spock character before. So, you gonna get the ears right and the eyebrows and the skin colouring and so forth and that takes time to refine it and work on it until it feels comfortable. And then there is the wardrobe because the clothes are entirely different to any of the clothes I had worn before in any of the Star Trek projects, TV or movies. And then, finally, to get the voice into the character. How does he sound? What is he all about? What's his internal life all about?  All of that goes simultaneously with the rest of the work. And the script gives you indications of where the character is and his life. I finally realized that Spock in this movie is very much where I am in my own life right now: Really comfortable with who he is and what he is and how is is going to function.

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I wouldn't say surprises, I would say an excellent execution of what that back story was all about. The back story of Spock specifically has been referred to a lot during the series and during the subsequent movies. We know that Spock's childhood was difficult because it he was half-Vulcan and half-Human, he was considered sort of a half-breed at the Vulcan planet. He is not totally at home there. He is not entirely at home on earth either because he looks strange; he's an alien and alien looking. So, he finds his way in the Federation, in the space work as a result of that. But it has never been quite so well told as in this film. It is extremely well told and I feel very touching and very emotionally told.

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I think that a lot of people coming to the film and seeing it for the first time don't know that Spock is half human. They see him as an alien creature with these strange ears and the eyebrows and so forth. And They are going to learn that not only is he half-Human but he has to deal with the difficulty of being half-Human in a Vulcan environment on the Vulcan planet, on his home planet of Vulcan having to deal with a human mother and a Vulcan father. I think this story is very effective.

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To begin with: He is a very intelligent and a very talented actor, looks enough like me to make it work, so that it is believable that it is the younger version of me. But more important: He has a real good sense about what Spock's internal life is all about as he is living through the years before the original Star Trek series. So, in other words, we kind of book in the kind of Spock he plays before the Spock I played in the original series and the movies and I play Spock much, much later. And we book end the character. And I thin he is extremely effective.

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I don't think it's fair to say I gave him guidance or tips. I think we had a lot of very good conversation. I think he absorbed a lot of my sense of what the character was, just from a very general conversation. I never said: You should do this or you should act that or you should raise your eyebrow, or you should lift a hand or whatever. But I think it was useful for both of us to have this conversation about the origins of the character were.

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It's a time shift, it's a time shift, so that the Spock I portray in this movie is about 175 years old. Vulcans live a lot longer than humans do, obviously. Kirk in this movie is younger than the Kirk that William Shatner played in the Star Trek series. But I really enjoyed working with Chris Pine. He is a terrific actor, I think he is going to be very successful with the character.

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He is considered a half breed and there is prejudice against him and he has to learn to deal with that. There is some wonderful scenes, particularly there is a scene about him as a young boy and the father, who is played by Ben Cross, who is excellent as Sarek, as is Winona Ryder as his mother, she is wonderful. Those scenes give shape to the psychological and the emotional development of the character and I think they are wonderful in the movie.

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In their origins and their dynamic and what drives them to bring them together in it, is so compatible, almost brotherly like in their mutual respect and their admiration finally. That's they way it goes in that movie, very powerful, very powerful relationship. Not unlike a lot of relationships we've already seen between of a leading man and the person who is there to help him and be the opposite to him and make some contribution to what has got to be done. They do extremely well. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt4eaFkUAw8