QUESTION : You revealed a bit of your geeky side this past year with your NEMESIS cameo.

SINGER : [Laughs] I spent 12 hours on the Enterprise - the set was on a gimble, shaking all over with explosions going off all day long. It was amazing. At one point, Patrick Stewart walked up to me and said [imitating Stewart's baritome], "Bryan, my turnaround time... I've got to work tomorrow and there are issues..." I just looked to him and said, "You mean you're leaving and I'm still working ?" And he said "Yes. Good night !" [Laughs] I later had dinner at Patrick's house once where he said he had a surprise for me. I thought it would be pictures of me in my Starfleet uniform - which he did have - but we were sitting there having hors d'ouevres, there was a ring at the doorbell. Patrick went to answer it, and William Shatner and his wife walk in ! So I have dinner with Patrick and William Shatner and his wife ! I'm a Trekkie so it was great !

QUESTION : What did you save for X-MEN 3 ?

SINGER : I love Beast as a character, and I'd like to have him in the next movie. He will have to be done with CG, because makeup would just take too much time. I'd also love to do something with the Danger Room, but that didn't work out. We built a pretty big set of it and had some plans for it, but it never fully factored into the story - we builta big section, while the bulk of it would have been created in the computer, but it would have cost $5 million to do this sequence that didn't really have a specific function. I didn't fully see how all of it would completely work - we had ideas and did some animatics, but everything's a [budgetary] battle. On the first film we tried to make a $110 million movie for $75 million. This time we're trying to make a $150 million movie for $120 million. There's always trading going on, and I still feel like I'm making THE USUAL SUSPECTS for $6 million. The day you start saying "We've got room to spare", well, the challenge is over.

The full Q&A session with Singer can be found in the April/May 2003 issue of Cinefantastique magazine, just out in the U.S.