For six years, Spike was the ultimate Buffy bad boy. He was a leather-clad vamp whose razor-sharp put-downs and couldn't-care-less demeanour set him apart from the show's more well-meaning characters. But, by the time he was "toasted and ghosted" in the show's apocalyptic finale, CHOSEN, it seemed as if the bleached-blond bloodsucker had been through just about everything.

How wrong could we be? Resurrected for "Angel's" new-look fifth season, Spike has taken the corridors of Wolfram & Hart by storm. From barely escaping the jaws of oblivious in HELLBOUND, to swapping body blows with Angel in DESTINY, the character's rediscovered zest for life is there for all to see.

One person who's particularly delighted to see Spike back in action is his real-life alter-ego, James Marsters. DREAMWATCH catches up with the popular actor to hear in his own words why he's still undead and loving it…

DREAMWATCH: How does working on Angel compare with working on Buffy?

I'm having more fun than I ever had in this universe. I had a lot of fun with Buffy, but I'm having even more fun on Angel.

After brooding his way through much of Buffy's seventh season, Spike seems to have really rediscovered his zest for life on Angel. Are you enjoying playing the character more this year?

Totally, because I tend to internalize the character. I really feel like you have to have that inside and not worry about what's showing, and then the camera's going to document you really feeling it.

During the scenes over on Buffy where Spike was depressed, I really was depressed. I had gotten myself into a state of mind that was that bad. Probably no therapist would tell you that acting's healthy. I got all my crying out in season six and seven of Buffy. I'm serious. I had to dredge up every painful thing I could find and wring it dry. I don't think I've had a cry since then. Not that I couldn't use one - it just hasn't come out. I was coming up and whipping myself with everything I felt guilty about during my whole life, because I was trying to approximate what it would feel like to wake up with a soul and to face 120 years of mass murder.

On Angel, I'm basically functioning a lot like I did originally on Buffy, which means I'm grit in the ointment, and I get to just have fun making Angle's life really dark. This is the interesting thing. You would think that after having gotten a soul that the character would take off in a whole new direction that we've never seen before. But this is the surprise - that he goes back to the beginning. This is more like the Spike that we originally saw - he's having fun and making it hard for other people.

Has Spike made a conscious decision to be a good guy in Angel?

Yeah. The interesting thing about that is, once he makes that decision, he becomes a sucker. We'll see that coming up. That's one of the problems with caring and investing yourself in the world, because people can take advantage of that. And I thought that was a really deft thing to come out of the gate with. Right when Spike chooses the good side and thinks "I'm gonna try to be a hero," he gets used.

Although Spike has a soul and must come to terms with the horrific events of his past, he seems far less depressed than Angel was when he had to deal with his dark past…

It was even alluded to in one of the episodes that Angel spent 120 years contemplating infinite remorse, whereas Spike took two weeks of being depressed in a basement and everything was fine! Structurally, we got to explore Angel's long period of depression in back-story; we didn't have to take time out of the series to actually talk about that. If we put Spike through the same kind of journey, he'd be out of action for 120 seasons! And so he's got to get over it pretty quickly.

But what's interesting is, I'm starting to come to the idea that Spike just might not be as deep as Angel. There's something beautiful about shallowness in that way. It helps you survive. If you can just slough that guilt off, better power to you! But it really may just mean that Spike is probably not that smart and that he's probably not that deep. We love him anyway.

Spike started on Buffy as an out-an-out villain, didn't he?

When he took a vampire kid into sunlight and fried him and laughed about it in his very first episode {season two's SCHOOL HARD}, yeah, I knew what the trajectory of the character was at that time - psychopath {Laughs}. But you don't think of yourself as a villain. You just think of yourself as a person, because no real person in life thinks of himself as a villain. Everybody thinks of himself as a hero. So if you're trying to be villainous, then you're on the wrong track as an actor.

This is your sixth year playing a vampire. What keeps the role of Spike fresh for you?

The thing about Joss {Whedon, Buffy/Angel creator/executive producer}, is he doesn't write because he enjoys employing what's tried and true; he doesn't write vampires because he wants to show a lot of bloodsucking. He's using the vampire mythology as a metaphor to talk about how hard it is to actually try to be a force of good in the world, how many pitfalls there are to that choice, how arrogant a choice it is to begin with, and how easily you're duped once you decide to care about the world. We live in a world where no one can be bothered to care about anything. And Joss is really swimming directly upstream from that and going, "Here's someone who does care about stuff and is going to take the hits to try to create something good in the world." It's a morality tale about good and evil.

So it's not so much about just playing the vampire as it is exploring the person. And that's much more terrifying and much more exciting, because there are five or six things that you are if you're a vampire: you're strong, you're sexy, you're thin, you suck people's blood - even if there were 40 things, they would quickly get exhausted if you concentrated on them. But, really, the vampire thing is a leaping-off point to talk about the human experience.

Do you still think of Spike as a vampire?

No! When I think of Spike, I don't think of vampire right away. I think of punk rocker. I think of someone with a lot of passion and maybe not so much common sense. I think about his vulnerability and how hard he works to mask that - all the things that resonate as a human being.

What's been the hardest part of playing Spike?

The pressure to look the same as you did seven years ago, like a vampire would, becomes enormous. You just hope the audience likes the acting well enough to forget what you looked like originally!

In the opening episodes of Angel's fifth season, Spike is a 'ghost.' As an actor, did you have to do anything differently?

Yes. One of the trademark Spike things is to lean against something as if you just don't care enough to stand up. And that's great as an actor in the middle of a 16- or 20-hour day. You get to sit down a lot or lean against something. But at the start of the season, I couldn't lean against anything. And I had the biggest arguments with the writers, saying, "OK, I can stand on the floor {without sinking through it} - Spike can't touch anything? I accept that, but he can float where he wants to? So I could float as if I'm leaning up against the wall, right? And they said, "No, it looks weird, it looks to corporeal." So I had to stand up. And that sucked. I didn't feel like Spike. They really wanted me freaked out and weakened by the whole thing. They really wanted the fear of him fading away to be there for the audience. You're working so quickly on a television show, so I just decided to play cold - I played it as if I didn't really have a body temperature and being a ghost is just really cold, almost as if you'd just saved someone from a freezing river. When you see those rescued people in the blankets and how they look - I tried to do that.

When Spike becomes corporeal again, basically, he gets unleashed. He gets to truly be a potent force in the world, as opposed to just commenting on it and saying, "Hi, Angel, aren't you silly" again. Now, I get to come and say, "Come here, I've got something that has to happen!"

Is that really you swapping blows with David Boreanaz in DESTINY?

Oh yeah! Toe-to-toe the whole day. Both David and I have done enough fights that it's pretty much like working with another stunt man. You know, the concerns are the same. Neither of us are professional stuntmen - we're not that good - but for actors, we're pretty damn good. And pretty experienced at this point.

What's great about working with David is that you get the acting stuff as well. And I feel like we have really good trust between he two of us. It's never, "Oh, he going to do that to me - I don't trust that!" If I had to do a cliff scene and the only thing keeping me from falling over the edge was David, I'd be cool with it. Seriously. You could count on it.

David Boreanaz made his directing debut this season with SOUL PURPOSE. Will you be directing an episode any time soon?

Well, I think that I'd do well with actors - I was always good with actors as a stage director. But I need to know more about the language of film. I mean, in all honesty, they could hire me as a director now and I could sit in the chair and say, "Action," and get it on my resume {CV}, but it would be a lie. I haven't done my homework. I don't want to do it before I've read a couple of books and really talked to a couple of good DPs {directors of photography} and got my stuff down, because I don't want to weigh the crew down with someone who doesn't know what he's doing.

David's a great director. He came in and he did better than any first-time director I have seen - stage, movies, TV or anything. He impressed everybody!

How about writing an episode?

I've got a couple of ideas. Most of the writing that I did was when I had a theatre company. I was involved in a lot of projects I'm proud of. But I'm so busy right now, most of my writing is really more writing music. When I get rested and feel creative and the sunshine is beautiful again, usually a song comes.

Speaking of songs, is it true that the band you're in, Ghost of the Robot, and recurring Angel guest star Christian Kane's band Kane tried to do something together recently?

Oh, man, we tried! Kane was playing Club Lingerie in Hollywood, but our band was busy up in Sacramento. I would love to do something with Christian Kane - his CD sounds great and his voice is fabulous. His band is country-rooted and my band is rooted in blues and punk, and it's hard to reconcile those two musical styles, as far as making one sound. We could double-bill with each other - that would be really cool. But it would be fabulous if we could fuse something.

Angel has enjoyed some of its highest ratings in the US this season. Do you think Spike has helped take the show to a new level of popularity?

I think some of the ratings increase is down to the fact that they've made some really daring choices about Angel, having him make a decision {to become CEO of the evil law firm Wolfram &Hart} that could possibly be a devastating mistake, for him and everyone around him. And that's inherently dramatic. I think that I've added something, but there's also a lot of other really good decisions that are helping to create the show that we have now.

I think that the way that a TV show is going to succeed, ultimately, is by ensuring the lead character becomes more interesting season to season. You might be able to squeeze out a couple of extra good episodes with your secondary characters, but if you forget about your home turf and abandon your lead, then the show's going to fail, no matter how good your supporting cast is.

Has working on Angel turned out to be everything you hoped for?

I knew David Boreanaz was a great guy, but I also knew that he'd been doing the world fame thing for six years, and that can really play with your head. But the man is more a man now than when I first met him {during the making of Buffy's second season}, and he was a great guy when I met him. He is a really great guy to work with. He just wants to do it and go home to his kid. He's so respectful.

It's a much happier set than I expected. I expected kind of the norm for television, and what I walked into was a really supportive group of people. I'm really lucky to be in this situation and I think it's coming across on screen too. I think my work is better than it's ever been. I'm just happy.