DarkMode/LightMode
Light Mode

Stone Cold Steve Austin Heats Up His Hollywood Career with ‘The Condemned’

[IMG:L]Wrestling may be fake, but it’s not easy. The superstars of the ring have to make it look like they’re handing out serious beat-downs live, without all the tricks movie actors get to pull with CGI. The fact that they don’t get hurt is amazing when you’ve got 300 pound beefcakes piledriving each other.

They’re all starting to migrate to film now. Sure, back in the day Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper made their low budget comedy, sci-fi or mixed genre movies, but today World Wrestling Entertainment has a whole production entity designed to make them into movie stars. The Rock is doing well and Kane and John Cena had movies in the last year. Now it’s Stone Cold Steve Austin‘s turn.

In The Condemned, Austin plays Jack Conrad, a death row convict recruited to compete in an internet reality show. 10 convicts will fight to the death with the survivor granted his freedom. Since Conrad is ex-military, he takes it upon himself to be the “good guy,” stopping the really bad criminals from torturing the less evil ones. Luckily, Austin had enough self-deprecating humor to get through an interview on the simple film without sounding at all pretentious.

- Advertisement -

Hollywood.com: What kind of acting preparations did you do for the film versus in the ring?
Steve Austin:
All my stuff in that ring is adlibbed, it’s on the fly. When we signed on to do this movie, the producer from WWE film, Joel Simon, said, “Steve, we’re going to hook you up with an acting coach.” And I said, “That sounds good to me.” We tried one guy. He was, for this movie, a little bit more comedy-based, and this movie wasn’t about comedy. I was talking to Scott Wiper, our director who did a killer job with this movie, who I’ve become good friends with and highly respect – he put me in touch with a good friend of his named Alan McCrae. That guy worked with me for many hours and helped me in breaking down a script, realizing there’s a lot more than words on that page and going over and over dialogue and delivery and we rolled the camera in the studio and see what we had. When we first started, it was brutal. When you see yourself with no lighting, no makeup, no nothing, you’re just in that studio doing dialogue, it was hard to watch, but I’m very proud of my performance in the movie and I have a lot to learn. I will be the first to admit that I’m green and I’ve got a lot to learn, but I’m proud of what I see, and that’s a big part to Scott Wiper the director and Alan Mcrae, my coach.

[IMG:R]HW: Was it nice to swear and drop the F-bomb, which you can’t do on live TV?
SA:
You know what, this was a hard movie. It was a violent movie but there was humor in this movie. And the instances that Jack Conrad is using those words, it’s a release. So it was funny. I mean, it was fun and then along the same lines, but not really related, in this movie, we never went out for one-liners and we never went out for anything cute. As far as Jack Conrad’s dialogue, I would go to Scott Wiper‘s room and we’d watch some stuff and we’d have a few cocktails and we’d be discussing tomorrow’s scenes and I would tell Scott, “You know, I don’t think I need to say this.” And it was a relief for him because he’s thinking the same thing, because Jack Conrad didn’t need to say a lot of things. He says something when it’s necessary but you’re not going to get too many actors who are the main reason the film is being shot saying, “Hey, let’s take out some of my dialogue.” So he was thinking along the same lines so we’d tweak stuff and we’d change it around and make it what it was. It was a fun process to go through.

HW: Your character doesn’t want to kill. He’s forced into it. Did you want that in there?
SA:
Yeah, I liked that because he doesn’t want to be in the situation that he’s put in. He was in prison in El Salvador. He got caught doing a job for the government. He’s fine with that. He’s not bitter at the government. He’s not mad. That’s just part of the gig and he accepts that. So when he gets bought out of that system and there he does that interview with Ian Breckel, after that very interesting interview segment where he gives up no information and is somewhat of a smart ass, he tells him. He goes, “I don’t know who you are, don’t care, but I don’t play games.” So he has no interest from the word go. But then after the torture scene on the bridge with Paco, “Game on.” Clock’s ticking, do or die, he’s gotta do something about this. And the guy wants to go home. So he does try to avoid it.

HW: Do you think we need to pull back on violence, what people see on TV?
SA:
You know what, I don’t know because TV is TV and you see what you see on TV just because it’s TV and anybody can watch that. As far as The Condemned goes, this is an R rated movie. It is a hard movie and it’s a violent movie with some humor in it, but for the people that go to this movie, I’ve seen this movie with seven audiences nationwide and it’s a fun ride. When people are really taking notes and watching the movie to talk about the ins and outs of it, they probably watch it with a little more intensity and scrutiny than a moviegoing audience would watch it, I’m assuming. The places I’ve been, people are jumping on for the ride. They’re jumping on for more of the ride than I originally thought. When we were filming this thing, I was thinking, “Man, this is a heavy duty movie.” And now they’re having a lot of fun watching it. That’s the truth.

HW: Actors aren’t trained at light contact fighting like wrestlers. Were you or Vinnie Jones injured in your fight scenes?
SA:
You know, Vinnie’ll tell you: we had the one fight scene on the river bed where he got a bunch of lumps and bumps from me pounding on him. And then early on in the movie there’s a fight with me and the Mexican, Paco (Manu Bennett). 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 re-watch 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.

HW: How do you think Vince McMahon looks with a shaved head?
SA:
Let me say to cover Vince real quick, I was there up close and personal, and man, I’ll tell you what: I’ve been around the horn with Vince for a long time. I love working with the guy because he’s such a unique guy and I learn so much from him, but he’s got the ugliest head. He’s got creases and divots and stuff because he actually had a thick head of hair, so he didn’t get any sun down there. Like I have a pretty tan head, but his head’s brutal. I’m begging him to grow his hair back.

- Advertisement -