The Mortal Instruments City of Bones opens on 21st August, based on the bestselling fantasy book series by Cassandra Clare. Stars Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower and Robert Sheehan joined director Harold Zwart in London for a press conference with fans. Check out what Jamie Campbell Bower in particular had to say about his role as shadow hunter Jace.

Jace is a very cool character was it a fun role for you ?

Yeah he’s everything that I’m not basically. You know performance is always a very cathartic process for me and I’m not particularly cool. Put it that way! He was great character to play. It was tough; I put a lot of work and a lot of effort into it. A lot of the characters that I’ve played beforehand have been let’s say soft or rounded physically. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on what way you look at it, you have the book and there’s a guy thee with his shirt off and he’s looking pretty buff and pretty hench. So I had to get into that sort of physical shape. But I’ve always liked to push myself and challenge myself in some way, shape or form. I quite like that because I get bored easily without that. I have quite a short attention spans as I think you can probably tell. It was fun and it was difficult. Honing my skills in terms of stunt and fighting was a real joy. But I did come out the other side groaning.

Jamie we’ve heard you always have a tattoo to mark projects you work on. Is that true an have you had anything to mark this movie?

Yeah I was meat to go in today but the tattoo parlour I got t in soho is closed today. I’m getting “I am after all what you made me”, which is a quote from one of the later books, on my back with two roses. But recently I got a skull and a cross on the back of my leg and arm recently. It’s my own stupid fault that I’m sitting in a makeup chair for like five hours.

I’ve got conversations with the costume designer next week, so I think from now on they’ll be a lot of long sleeves going on. It took about four hours to cover up my tattoos and hen but on the new ones over the top. I didn’t just get the character tattoos done because we didn’t know if we were getting to do movie two at that time. But I quite like having my tattoos there underneath the skin and makeup. I quite like knowing that I’m still Jamie underneath all that at the end of the day. So that wherever I go I’m still me.

You’ve spoken in the past about the negative reaction of fans when you were first cast, do you feel like that’s changed?

I think upon being cast I was very aware of a negative reaction from the fandom. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t aware of that. That reaction was based on image and looks alone. That was two and a half years ago. As an actor and a performer I’m very much aware of the fact that my job is to change physically and emotionally. That was what hurt the most, because of the fact that people were judging me based on nothing. I’ve been told not to swear but when I talk about this I get  very…. It’s totally fine. I get it. I think sometimes with social media and the internet there is no brain to hand co-ordination. People don’t think, it’s like this continuous diarrhea. People don’t really understand that that affects people. I think particularly now with what’s happened in recent history should show the fact that particularly with young people, that’s not acceptable. I just don’t think that’s acceptable in any way shape or form. I’m not saying it affected me in that way necessarily because it didn’t. I mean it affected me somewhat for sure but not too much. Have I seen the reaction change, I think so. It’s always hard for anyone in our position I suppose as an actor to receive praise. Naturally as people we are quite self-deprecating. I think sometimes we do what we do as people because we’re looking for recognition.

I have seen a reaction, I was very fortunate to receive a book that had been made by fans that came together. That is something that I look at every day and I’m very grateful for.  I carry it with me everywhere and it’s in my bag. It’s a book of all these people who had pictures with posters saying Jamie is Jace around the world. I feel incredibly honoured to have that. If there’s one thing that someone can take form this monologue. Next time before you judge anyone just think, just use your brain. Don’t be an idiot! It’s annoying!

There’s a lot of elaborate CGI and special effects in the film what was it like to work with that?

What’s fascinating about this industry is that things are made so much more difficult than they have to be. For example, with the thing we use to carve the runes we had battery packs the size of a bottle of water strapped to our backs with wires taped down our entire arms. Then I went to the mall tour the other day and the merchandise it’s just a battery operated pen! I was like why didn’t we have that he we were shooting?

What was your favourite costume to wear?

I’d probably say my Diesel leather pants, just in case anyone from Diesel is listening now and can help me out. The leaher trousers were great. Everyone’s always like “Oh the leather must have been really difficult to work in, it’s like quite constricting”.  Leather’s actually a very versatile material. It’s stretchy. Although I did rip my outfits quite a few times! I was doing superhero jumps and then I’d rip the crotch. It would be like “Hey we’re going to need a clean-up on isle three here!”. If you look very closely at some of the stunt scenes you can sees there’s rips appearing and then disappearing. No, course our continuity is brilliant…

At the heart of this big fantasy adventure is quite a relatable love triangle. What was it like to work on that aspect of the story?

I think every character g son their own journey. Ace is a shadow hunter prior to the movie starting. Jace goes out there and he kills demons. He protects the human world. His world is turned upside down by her introduction. So his entire motivation and shift is because of her entrance. I don’t want to speak for Robbie but I think Simon is someone who has been a part of Clary’s life and so he is thrown into a world of the shadow hunters and he’s trying to find his place in the world too. So it was never something where we came at it together and said this is the main focus of our story. The main focus is actually the journey that each character has to go on and that’s what makes it an ensemble and that’s what makes it actually an interesting piece. You can relate to very single character. I can see bits of myself in all of them. There’s not one character that make me think I don’t understand what that person’s going through. I think for each of us we were very focused on our own journey within our own love story.