Oscar Isaac on the End Times Inspiration of 'X-Men: Apocalypse'

It’s not often that it feels fated that an actor was, from an early age, destined to play an evil, CGI-rendered comic book villain, but that’s precisely the case for new X-Men baddie Oscar Isaac.

The actor, who will fight for the good guys in this winter’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is currently filming X-Men: Apocalypse, in which he plays the titular mutant. As you can gather from the villain’s name, there’s an ancient biblical element to the character — he was born 5,000 years ago in Egypt — that connected with Isaac.

“I was a huge fan of X-Factor — that was the first comic book collected, and that’s where Apocalypse first showed up,” Isaac told Yahoo Movies at Comic-Con last week. “I was obsessed with the end times and the Second Coming when I was a kid. I grew up in an evangelical family, and they were obsessed with it, and were terrifying us with it all the time. And when there was a character that embodied the judgment of God at the end of the Book of Revelation, I was drawn to it.”

In April, Isaac told Yahoo Movies that he had been proactive in seeking out the part, relaying his interest to the X-Men team.

“I definitely was like, ‘Hey man, I’m really into this character. I don’t know if he’s going to be in anything but it seems like he’ll be the logical next villain so let me know if that comes up,’” he recalled. “And they were like, ‘Yeah he did come up, and you’re at a place now where they’re kind of interested in you.’”

X-Men: Apocalypse hits theaters on May 27.