INT: Steve Austin

I am not what
you would call a fan of wrestling. I
understand its place in the world and I see the attraction for some,
but I am not a follower. But
even I knew the name Stone Cold Steve Austin.
I’ve seen him on television and he also appeared in the
remake of THE LONGEST YARD. And
now, he takes on a leading role in the action flick THE
CONDEMNED. He joins a
group of other convicts who are all rigged and their only chance of
survival is to kill all the other cons.
Mr. Austin carries the weight well and is very believable as
the tough guy who is not really what he seems.
His southern accent and his machismo charisma really feel
right at home, as does his surprisingly grounded work.
Hey, fans of Stone Cold are about to see Mr. Austin the actor
as opposed to the wrestler.

As I mentioned,
I was not a fan of wrestling before, but I am now a big ole Stone
Cold Steve Austin fan. Imagine
walking through a crowded convention center with this guy,
surrounded by comic book and wrestling fans alike.
Well, let me tell you, it’s a trip and a half.
All eyes were on him and the respect and dignity he showed
the autograph seekers was astounding.

On his way to
getting a coffee at Starbucks, he didn’t even flinch when asked
for an autograph or a picture. He
is a classy guy that gives props to those who admire Stone
Cold…you can’t not respect that.
And he was also just a damn friendly dude who has a kick ass
ring on his finger by the way. And
if you are a fan, you’ll not be surprised when I say it’s a
skull. He talked about his
career and his admiration and respect for his fans.
He also spoke about his respect for the other actors among
THE CONDEMNED. As I said, I am
now a fan of Mr. Steve Austin; check out what the man is all about.

Steve
Austin

I told a friend of mine that I was meeting you, and they
wanted to know all about you being a guest referee. How
did this come about? [Vince McMahon and Donald Trump’s
head-shaving match]

Well
you know I’ve been with WWF since 1995, and hadn’t been
wrestling for about two years. We’ve been working on this film for
about two years. The storyline started happening and they said
let’s bring Steve in here and use him. First of all it’s
going to be good for Wrestlemania, and one of my homes is
Wrestlemania. It doesn’t matter where it’s at; I’ve been
there to so many of them it was only natural to bring me in.

Also from a
thinking standpoint, I’ve been out there for about two years and
in this storyline starting a couple of weeks ago in Phoenix, D.C.
last week, I won’t be in Indianapolis this week with Chicago
coming up, I will be in Chicago and then we go to Detroit for the
press conference on the 28^th and then from there we go to
New York for that press conference, and then Detroit for
Wrestlemania so that basically, to keep a long story short, get the
exposure back up and my face back out there because after
Wrestlemania it goes to mainstream places, I’ll probably do two
more Wrestlemania appearances and then the push is more the
mainstream stuff all the way to the 27^th with the opening
of “The Condemned”. So it is a great storyline for
me to be involved in. To me it is the best spot on the card so using
it as a tool to get the face back out there. No doubt about
it.

You are kind of new to acting, you’ve done a little bit.
Is this something
you want to continue doing?

I had an
absolute blast. What I tell people is I learned so much, this being
my first movie and the first of many I was so intrigued by the
process. The learning process…. you know, taking a
script…when I met my acting coach Allan, who helped me out as far
as breaking down scenes and when you look at the words on the page,
that’s not all that is on that page, you know, there is stuff
between the lines. And so learning all of that, where that
character is in that moment and going into the filming process
with different lenses. It is a very controlled environment,
different from professional wrestling in front of the cameras..

I love the movie
making process and want to make a lot more. I look at this
first movie which I am very proud of, I am proud of my performance
but I look at it as being… I remember when I first started
professional wrestling I was very green and I learned a lot and I
turned into arguably one of the best ever…now in this movie I did
one hell of a job but this is my first movie. I’ve got a lot
to learn, and I want to work with so many good people, you know, the
actors that you like to work with, the directors you’d like to
work with, much like you want to work with the great players in
professional wrestling because you can learn from them. So here is
my start and we’ll see where I finish. You can only improve
with repetition. I think that life is about repetition that is
how you get better with stuff. And watching other people and
learning from them.

Were the other actors really good to work with? Did
they teach you a lot?

The only…I did
not get a whole lot of chances… but I remember standing with Rick
Hoffman, and I love to work with Rick Hoffman because I think he is
great…not only is he a wonderful actor but I think he is a really
funny guy. I thought the guy that played Ian Breckel [Robert
Mammone] an Australian actor that did one hell of a job. I
only had one scene with him, I’d like to work with him more, but
you know, that being said there were not a lot of veteran actors
that I had scenes with but the young actors that were in the movie
all gave great performances. But in answering your question
there is a lot to learn from experienced people that’s what I look
forward to in the future.

What was it about this film that you were like this has got
to be my first big film?

You know an
agent brought me this script in Santa Monica a couple of years back
and I showed it to Vince and it was a rough concept, a good concept
but it just needed a lot of work. And Vince got behind it with his
WWF films, so we need a writer/director and we hooked up Scott
Wiper, and I think the world of him. I think he is going to be
a very busy guy in the future. He is very organized, very
prepared. He is very thorough. He rewrote that damn
script about eight times until he came up with the version to shoot.

Originally when
this script was brought to me, he wanted me to be McStarley, the
Vinnie Jones character, I would have been the bad guy. Like some
guy, a bigger name than me, an actor, to play Jack Conrad but when
we got this over to Vince, he said “no, no you be Jack Conrad”
and I said “ok I’m cool with that” I don’t always like being
the bad guy.” But that is part of the story there. I
think it is a part that is good for me because although it’s a
movie that I don’t think you’d expect a cat like me to be in, it
is my first movie and I’m not biting off more than I can chew.

Yeah, you are not doing Shakespeare.

Yeah, it’s not
Shakespeare, we are spinning some camera time around, I do consider
myself a lead actor in this or one of the leads however you want to
say that, but yeah, I carry enough weight of the movie, enough
weight on my shoulders that I learned a lot, and that being said I
came with some information since I worked in front of cameras for
ten years, so I was not totally green and it was very natural for
me. I feel very at home in front of the cameras, I was not
nervous at all. I did do my preparation and I showed up ready
to go and I think it shows. I think you always have something
to learn in any endeavor you do, but I am very proud of my
performance in this movie.

I liked you a lot. I think you’ve got charisma on
screen and in this role in particular, you come
across as the everyday man.

That is what I
tried to do but without trying to do it. That is kind of what
happened with my other career too. So anyway, I think we had
so much fun and there were no egos, none whatsoever, I mean Vinnie
Jones, who has been in about thirty movies now and he comes in just
you know, Vinnie, funny, witty, wisecracking actor. He is a
hunter and a fisher, and so am I so we had a lot of stuff in common.
I met Vinnie back in 99, but had not seen him since then, but he has
been a busy guy. And then Rick Hoffman shows up and he’s
great. Robert Mammone
did a great job. So there are great performances in there and
no egos. We had so much fun behind the scenes. You know
it’s a hard movie, but you can tell… you can watch this movie…
this is going to surprise a lot of people, it just will.
It’s a good movie and we had a lot of fun behind the scenes I’ll
say that.

It looked like one of those films were you had a blast
filming it. It looked fun. After this, do you
have anything planned?

We are trying to
find a script right now. We are having a tough time trying to
find one. We want to make sure that the next one is the right
one. Obviously I want to carry more of a load, less of an
ensemble movie. So being smart in that decision, this is an
important decision so we have to plan things out like a big chess
game you’ve got to think a couple moves down the road if this is
the right choice to make. It is a little bit of a tough thing
finding a script. I am looking forward to this movie coming
out.

When I first
kind of came into this town, you know, you take movies and it does
not matter if you are the box office champ or pay per view champ,
which I am in another world, it does not matter that they want to
see you in a movie. I would not say “The Longest Yard” was
anything… I did not have a resume. So I am looking forward
to “The Condemned” coming out and then it is like this is
something that this cat can do. So finally, I’ll get
basically a reel, a movie or whatever it is, here it is. So I
hope to get some stuff out of that.

I hope you do because honestly dude when we were walking up
here the way you deal with your fans, it blows me away. I
mean here you are a bigger star than anybody you know. Do you
ever get tired of that?

No, because
first of all, it is just the way I was brought up, man I was on top
of the wrestling world, I was red hot, and then I get dropped on my
head and almost got paralyzed and had to have my neck fused up and I
was gone for fifteen months. So when you are on top of the
world and you get that yanked out from under you, then you come back
after, that was potentially career suicide and the fans welcome you
back like they did me and I was right back on top again, that’s
just the way it was. And so the way my parents brought me up
was keep everything in perspective.

Like my dad told
me “Steve if you are going to do anything don’t half-ass it, do
it right the first time and then come back and do it again” it is
just a work ethic and perspective. Anytime you are in the
entertainment industry, like I’ve been in for seventeen years, and
that’s not a real job. Well it is, but you are a lucky
person so the attention and the fans that go with it are part of the
territory, and if you do not take care of the people taking care of
you, the people that stood by you, the people that stood by me after
all the things that I’d been through, and I just consider myself a
lucky person.

And I always
consider myself to be in the right place at the right time,
sometimes there’s a delay here or there whatever, but if you
don’t support the people who support you then you are a very
stupid person. I always treat people like gold and sometimes
you run into rude people but that’s just the way rude people are,
and when you run into good people you’ve got to treat them good.

Yeah, your fan base of seventeen years. How hard was it
getting into that when you first started as opposed to
if someone was going to become a wrestler right now? What has
changed?

The thing in
wrestling was, I grew up 100 miles south of Houston. I grew up
on Houston wrestling, and I just remember watching two guys fighting
for the Houston championship belt and I was in love immediately.
This was when cable or TV was very regional. I started getting the
other promotions, the last one I got was the WWF, and then I went to
North Texas State on a football scholarship, and one of the
wrestlers out of wrestling school said…and at the time I was out
of school working at a freight dock… and I saw the commercial for
wrestling school and said that is for me.

So I went in,
and it cost me $50 for the seminar and $45 and $1500 for the
wrestling school costs, and they beat the shit out of me for two
months. Now this was back when wrestling was not exposed and if you
had to believe anything, it was more real than not real. Then
I starved for a couple of years, and then I finally got my break
with the WWF. Back in the old days you used to have a
territory for your promotions, it was like mini-schools everywhere
so a guy got a chance to learn and there were jobs.

When all the
territories got knocked down and there were just two big promoters
the feeder system dried up, so there is no place for guys to learn.
So these days guys get picked out of gyms, and they train them but
not in front of people. They are not in front of people, like
the movie thing, it is repetition, the more you do something in
front of people the better you are. That is what has changed, the
feeding system has dried up and now they pay the guys to go to
school rather than you paying them to let you into the school.

Let me know
what you think. Send questions
and comments to [email protected].