Being in sports, you probably were never an outsider like your character is in Never Back Down, were you?
“I was never the outsider, but I was never the insider, either. I kind of hung out with everybody. I didn’t have a particular clique or anything like that, so I never formed really strong ties with any particular group. All my best friends went to a different school, so I just kind of was there. High school to me was just four years of me waiting to get out so I could move to California. It essentially ended up being two and a half years of me waiting to get out so I could move to California because I spent the first two years, freshman and sophomore years I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. And then I kind of discovered acting and that was that.”
With sports taking up so much time, how did you get involved in acting?
“It just kind of happened. I think the acting was because of my competitiveness. That’s why I was so successful because I’ve always been, I’ve always succeeded at whatever I put my mind to. If I wanted it, I’d be one of the best at it. And it doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I don’t mean this in any cocky sense or whatever. If I was a lawyer, I’d be a top lawyer with my firm. If I was a salesman, I would be top of the class of salesmen. I make everything a competition. I want to be the best. I don’t go out and party with everybody when I’ve got an audition the next day, like all my other friends. I don’t go out and party, period, when I know I have an audition that week. I stay focused. I try to. Sometimes I slip up.”
How do you manage that with all the temptations?
“I don’t have the desire to. I have a future. I’ll have a party when I get there. …I’ll do my work now, and I’m not getting any younger. I just turned 26; I just play young, I play really young. I play 18. (Laughing) I would love to graduate high school again.”
How hard is it to tap back into that high school mentality?
“A little bit, now it is, especially since I’ve been on my own, supporting myself for eight years. You deal with so many different situations in life that make you grow up as an adult with responsibilities and whatnot. But I’ve come to realize that adults are just kids, big kids with more responsibilities and a little more wisdom.”
Never Back Down is not necessarily about the violence. There’s a lesson involved. Was that the attraction or was it to do something with Mixed Martial Arts?
“Well I’ve always been a fan of MMA, so I definitely was attracted to the action, wanting to learn it, wanting to be a part of it, shoot it and be there and all that. That definitely attracted me to it, but I love the message in it. I’ve always been a bit of a pacifist throughout my life. The great thing about football is you let all that anger and aggression out without ever having to get into a fight. You know what I mean? I think sports are so important, so important. Also, too, if you’re not doing things right and staying focused on your sport, then you’re not going to succeed either. And whenever you’re putting in all that time, you want to succeed.”
“I love the message, though. The message is very clear that a lot of fighting occurs out of insecurity and fear. Our message was pretty clear, I thought, that you need to learn to fight for the right reasons and fight to defend yourself and fight to defend those you love. And that doesn’t really happen to my character until he starts to train in MMA because he learns the discipline and self-control that goes along with it.”
Why do you think most people get into MMA?
“I think maybe a lot of them start off in it to kick ass, but inevitably if they have proper trainers - you know, proper masters or Senseis or whatnot that really, really teach what it is truly about, what martial arts is really about: it’s about self-control essentially… My character has a change of heart and he starts to see how happy he is when he’s got self-control.”
Djimon Hounsou plays your trainer.
“Djimon is an amazing person. I love the guy. He’s very shy, he’s very low-key. Just by observing him I saw what it was like, what I needed to do to be a leader on and off set. He broke my back – the L3 spinal transverse process by accident. In the midst of filming, one of the heavy body slams he does to me cracked my transverse process. He body slammed me onto the mat. Flat on my back – oh it was bad. But I never took a day off. Always just went right through it - lots of Percocet, lots of muscle relaxers.”
That’s dangerous. You risk getting hurt more because you can’t feel it.
“No, we were very careful. We pushed all the fight scenes to the very end. We did all dialogue for about three weeks. It gave me a little bit of heal time and then had to finish up the movie.”
That actually worked with your character having to heal throughout the movie.
“Yeah, it added a natural layer.”
How’s it feel now?
“I’m fine now.”
Any other accidents on the set, besides your back injury?
“I dislocated or broke my thumb or something. Whatever happened to it, I snapped it right back into place so we finished up. It was the second to last day of filming.”
Does it snap out easily now?
“No, but every now and again I’ve got to pop it back in.”
That can’t be good for you.
“Yeah, but there’s not a whole lot you can do for it.”
Anything else?
“I got cracked behind the ear by Djimon. It swelled up real bad.”
It sounds like it was dangerous to be around Djimon on the set.
“No, no, no, no, no. The one thing was because we did too many takes. The other thing, these things happen. It’s a fight movie, we’re swinging at each other, we get out of sync, we block, we block, we block, ‘All right, stop.’ But sometimes you’ve got to get your hands up to block and if you don’t, well… And then, yeah, I got hit in the face a couple of times by various stunt guys we hired up there because our timing was different. Because we didn’t get to train the choreography with them before we shot. We trained it with our stunt trainers and then went right into shooting it with different stunt guys for camera, so sometimes the timing was off a little bit.”
Page 3: On Stunts and The Glass Eye
