As more and more WWE superstars are becoming film actors, they are all realizing that Hollywood is quite a different lifestyle from touring the country giving live shows. On the road, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin may wrestle 300 nights a year. On the set of his first movie The Condemned, he had too much time to kill.
Steve Austin on The Condemned
"I have a whole new respect for actors and actresses just as far as the long days on the set," said Austin. "Or if you go into nights and shooting in the early mornings, just the preparation that you take into a role, whatever the part is, just the long hours and in this case dealing with some really, really tough locations and weather."
Fighting in a movie was actually harder. Austin regularly does 20 minute segments with his colleagues, but filming in 20 second increments required a whole new skill set. "When you take my loose brawling style that I use in the wrestling room and all of a sudden I'm Jack Conrad and I have a military background so I need a precise fighting style which is what I should have had, and you take that and now all of a sudden you're forced to remember choreographed fighting moves. You're not familiar with the moves because they're different from the old ones and now you've got to remember every duck, every punch, every kick. And then you have seven or eight fights on top of that, it was very frustrated."
The Condemned
The Condemned
The Condemned
Inevitably, some people made contact. "Early on in the movie there's a fight with me and the Mexican, Paco. He's supposed to hit me low and then hit me high. Well, he leaves out the low shot and hits me high right in the eye, gives me a black eye. If you rewatch the movie, you'll see the black eye in the movie. We just had to cover it up with makeup because we needed to be time efficient and keep going. I always tell people, in professional wrestling, you really hit each other but you don't really try to hurt each other. You take care of each other but there's contact made. So that when someone hits you too hard, you send back a receipt. So I never got a chance to send him my receipt. I'm going to put him in the next movie and I'm taking him out."
Still, Austin is a trooper and he's happy to take his licks in order to create entertainment for his fans. "You know what? We had some real long, tough days on the set but I always look at it like this. If you're lucky enough to be on a movie set, that's great because I worked on a freight dock, loading and unloading trucks, for a living. That's what I did before I got into wrestling. I know what hard work is. I'm a manual labor specialist. There are people out there working construction, saving lives, jobs like that. When all you're doing is working on a project entertaining people like that, it's a good day at the office."
The Condemned has a theatrical release on April 27th.
For the poster, trailer and more movie info, go to The Condemned
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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