To say Dave Bautista is one of the biggest names in Hollywood sounds like I'm making a size joke, so to be completely, earnestly clear: Dave Bautista is one of the most interesting actors working today. After powerbombing people into oblivion for eight years in the WWE, Bautista made the jump to acting in 2012, quickly landing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy. Buoyed by the biggest franchise in the world, Bautista often aims for something a little left of your average wrestler-turned-actor path. He stole Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi epic Blade Runner 2049 with one achingly quiet scene. He turned down a part in James Gunn's DC Comics film The Suicide Squad to take on a leading role with an emotional center in Zack Snyder's zombie-heist Army of the Dead. Down the road, he's got a reunion with Villeneuve in Dune and a part in Rian Johnson's Knives Out 2 lined up. The point being: Dave Bautista has done a lot with the last nine years and he's not going away any time soon.
“I just have this real big fear of wasting my life," Bautista told Collider. "So I’m always looking for the next step ahead, the next move, the next thing that’s going to get me to where I want to be. And where I want to be is gonna change from now to two years from now. It’s like a hunger I can never satisfy.”
Over the next half-hour, we discussed everything from winning the heavyweight championship at WrestleMania 21, to the immense pride and disappointments he feels in his Guardians of the Galaxy role, to the game-changing artistry of Villeneuve he's seen on both Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, to what separates Zack Snyder as a filmmaker and a whole lot more. Check out the full interview in the player above and below is the breakdown of exactly what we talked about.
- Looking back at the night of WrestleMania 21 in 2005 and reflecting on all that's happened in his career since. 0:40 - 4:55
- Why he feels so much more vulnerable on a movie set than he does in a wrestling ring. 5:10 - 7:29
- How much he misses the instant feedback of a live wrestling crowd (and why he'll never go back). 7:45 - 9:45
- How his role in Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 changed his career, and the advice the filmmaker gave him on set to build the character of Sapper Morton. 10:20 - 13:13
- The pride he felt in being asked to reunite with Villeneuve in Dune and why he was "blown away" by the script. 13: 28 - 17:35
- The details of the time he told Warner Bros. he wanted to play Bane, the twist he feels he could put on Batman villain role, and the other characters he has lobbied studios to play. 18:16 - 21:39
- Looking back on getting cast as Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and why he feels Marvel "dropped the ball" on the character's backstory. 22:34 - 24:05
- Why he's excited to "finish out" Drax's story in Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 3. 24:06 - 25:15
- What it was like behind the scenes when James Gunn was briefly removed as director of Guardians 3 and why he couldn't have lived with himself if he didn't speak up about it. 25: 40 - 28:56
- What it's like to work with Zack Snyder on Army of the Dead and what he learned about filmmaking by watching Snyder work as cinematographer and director at the same time. 29:25 - 31:45
Army of the Dead hits theaters on May 14th and Netflix on May 21st.