Billy Zane: Give actors 'emotional stunt pay'

Billy Zane believes actors should be given "emotional stunt pay".

The 58-year-old actor put on weight and had to film several abuse scenes for his role as cult leader Larry Ray in 'Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story' - in which he plays a former prisoner who moved into his daughter's dorm at Sarah Lawrence college in 2010 and took control of her roommates' lives for over a decade before he was jailed for 60 years - and he admitted the production sparked "weird trauma" in his body.

He told Entertainment Weekly: “Actors should get emotional stunt pay.

“The secondary experience encroaches on the primary. It really does. You’re recreating much weird trauma. We’re putting coursing adrenaline through our bodies and depleting serotonin and dopamine and freaking ourselves out and the body registers it.”

Despite the emotional toll of the role, the 'Titanic' star mostly "enjoyed" his physical transformation.

He said: "[It required] “putting on a bunch of weight because he was imposing not just in height but in mass.

"Getting a big belly. He was obviously trying to feed something. I think there was trauma eating going on there.

"Then the accent, and the weird affectation of his lisp. It’s a lot to chew on, so to speak.”

And Billy was thankful the film is a Lifetime movie because of the "restraint" the network asks for, meaning the story wasn't "eclipsed" by sex and violence.

He said: “I’ve played nefarious characters in the past and then shied from it for a while.

“I couldn’t resist this one because of just the curious nature of it. And I hadn’t gone there in a while like this.

"I liked the platform a lot for it. I have never done a Lifetime movie. I hadn’t considered it. And I thought the network was so well suited for the story, because had it been on any other streamer, the story would’ve been eclipsed by graphic nudity and violence.

"The fact that there was restraint and a level of censorship required in this story, we could go deeper into character.”