How many people come up to you and say “I Must Break You?”
“Yeah, they still do. And it's funny, some things kind of outlive other movies and somehow that line and that character has kind of grown in stature. It's strange. It's gotten bigger and bigger. I never expected it. It's kind of cool in a way. I was even talking with somebody, a journalist and he even brought it up. I don't think about it because I'm working on my own on this stuff, but he was saying, ‘You know something? Do you realize long after you're gone and I'm gone, people will still talk about Ivan Drago?’ I thought, ‘Damn, maybe he's right.’ I don't know that I care that much, but that's the power of movies.”
What is your workout now?
“I still do martial arts. I do a lot of hitting the bags and pads. I do some sparring. I try to keep that alive. And I do weights. I do different workouts depending if I travel or if I have more time. Every four weeks, I train for about a three to four week cycles, then I have one week where I do light stuff, like maybe biking or swimming. Right now I'm doing some power plate workouts which are power plates, the weights that the Russian cosmonauts are using in the space stations. It's interesting. It kind of gets your body in a different way, breaks the blood, calcium and stuff. So I do cross training, as they say.”
Are your next projects directing or acting?
“Well, I've got two actually that are kind of connected. One they are writing now for directing, then I've got two movies in Eastern Europe. One I want to direct which takes place in Russia, but I want to shoot it in Bulgaria. A friend of mine's directing a movie there so I'm probably going to go and act in his picture. While I'm acting in his picture, I'm going to start scouting and looking for locations for the one I'd like to direct.”
Has taken on directing changed how you approach acting?
“Yeah, it has because you're seeing it more as a function to make the picture work and playing to your strengths, because you're watching so much footage of yourself, and other actors too when you're editing. You're looking at it and you kind of become more functional. You just want to make it work as quickly as possible. You don't look at it as much as a way to get your kicks, get your frustrations out and stuff because when you direct, you can express yourself through directing, not so much through acting, if that makes sense. You simplify things really.”
Did you get tired of bad guy offers?
“I did for a while but I haven't played a bad guy for a while, so I'm looking at some scripts. I'm actually developing one or two of them where I play a bad guy, but trying to make him interesting. The funny thing is, invariably like if you play an interesting bad guy or an adversary, let's say antagonist, a more sophisticated bad guy, invariably you do that and the next offer you get is playing the good guy. It's interesting how many careers from Jack Nicholson to Tommy Lee Jones, a lot of people who are stars, a lot of people come on playing the heavy and people just seem to go for the heavy a lot of times in movies - especially on the big screen. If I'm trying to get a theatrical picture, that could be a good way for me to go.”
Any roles you still dream of playing?
“Not that many but I usually focus on pictures that I'm working on, but I think most actors have historical figures they are thinking of. There are some scripts. I've got one that's like a World War I piece I really like where I play a bad guy in that one. Then there are some biopics that I like. There's one especially I'd like to do that takes place during the Second World War. But otherwise, not really. Those are the roles that I would like to play, would be real life characters. Usually, a lot of them are history and wars, involved in the war.”
