A Versatile ‘Mission’

Like his character, master-of-disguise Nicholas Black on ABC’s “Mission Impossible,” Thaao Penghlis never likes to overstay his welcome.

But the actor, who left his daytime role as Count Anthony DeMera on “Days of Our Lives” for fear of staying around too long, has finally found a role that’s filled with enough quick changes to keep him in one place for a while.

“My whole philosophy with this (character) is to keep shifting him in different ways so (the audience) never knows what he’s about,” said Penghlis. “He’s a different character (for each episode) even though he’s the same person.”

To portray Nicholas Black’s various characters, which have included a Cockney cab driver, German scientist, Italian priest, Tibetan monk and a 60-year-old missionary, Penghlis says he relies the most on the feel of the fabric that constitutes his get-up.

“Every time I wear a different cloth, it gives me a different attitude, manner of walking and manner of speech. The fabric . . . and the shoes . . . constitute the recipe for that particular character,” the actor said.

And to turn himself back into the real Thaao Penghlis, he says, he merely takes the clothing and makeup off, showers and washes away “all the residue” of his character.

But, although he sometimes spends up to four hours being made up as Nicholas Black in his various disguises, Penghlis says it’s learning Black’s varied accents that’s the hard part.

“I’ve had to work with tapes,” said Penghlis, who has no coach to help him on the accents that he sometimes has only a few hours to perfect.

Although Penghlis laughs at the thought that his character is supposed to be fluent in 12 languages (Penghlis himself speaks fluent Greek and some French and Spanish), he seems to greatly admire the environment that supposedly produced Black’s multifluency.

“Thank God for the availability of information and all that I’ve been exposed to in America,” says the philosophical and reflective actor, who left his native Australia 18 years ago because he saw America as a place where various nationalities could blend.