Comparing His Character to Characters from the First "XXX:" “The main bad guy in the movie had sort of a posse of bad dudes and they’re kind of condensed in me in this movie. There’s a whole bunch of ex-Navy Seals who do a lot of evil-doing, but I’m the head of that group.”
Connelly on Stunts in “XXX State of the Union:” “I wanted to. I did a lot of fight training for it and I trained a lot for the fights. I was very up for the stunts. I said to the stunt coordinator, ‘Let me do it. I’m up for it. I’ve got four brothers and I’m rough and tumble. I’ll do anything.’ He’s like, ‘Great, man. Cool. Thanks a lot. We’ll use you as much as we can. Now sit down.’ [Laughing] It’s like, ‘If you break your toenail, we’re screwed.’ So I didn’t do as much as I’d liked to have, but the last couple of days were the big fight scene and they saved those for the end, I think, because if I got hurt they’d be like, ‘It’s okay, we’re done.’
My final fight scene is pretty tough. It’s basically hand to hand combat on a speeding bullet train so it’s me and Ice Cube fighting to the finish. I’m this close to offing him finally and, well, I can’t tell you what happens. But you’ve heard of him and you haven’t heard of me so…”
On Sticking to the Script: “I don’t think I actually ever said the dialogue exactly as it was written. I’d learn the lines and then I’d get there and it would be, ‘Alright John, let’s try something totally different now.’”
Working with Ice Cube: “I had a great time. He was a lot of fun. One of my big scenes is with him at the end of the movie on this speeding bullet train. We trained for this fight scene, choreographed it, went crazy planning it and then the last two days of the movie we actually filmed this thing. It was pretty tough. We had stunt guys and all that but a lot of the time it was just him and me. Once in a while one of us would actually clip the other guy. I had blood running off of my lip at one point. “
Up Next: “I’m probably going to do a musical on stage. I’m going to go in a radically different direction, back to the boards.”
