When I last spoke to former WWE star turned action movie stalwart Dave Bautista back in 2021, he was just coming off Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, and looking ahead to his role in Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. And he was thrilled — both with the radically different tones of those roles, and how, as he put it, “I’m 52 years old and my career is just getting started.”
Four years later, his career has lived up to that assessment: He’s certainly been keeping busy, and making a point of taking roles that let him try new things. Among his recent projects: Voicing a creepy parakeet king in the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron; starring as a beleaguered assassin in The Killer’s Game; and returning to his Marvel Cinematic Universe role as straight-faced comedy-relief warrior Drax the Destroyer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. He co-starred as the tragic bearer of apocalyptic news in M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin and headlined a sequel to 2020’s My Spy. And he took on the memorable but miserable task of playing the Beast Rabban, Dune: Part Two’s biggest loser in the spice wars, for Denis Villeneuve.
Those roles span comedy, tragedy, action, far-future science fiction, and horror, with a lot of soulful drama mixed in. So what’s still on his bucket list? For one thing, he wanted to star in a Western. Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich’s latest collaboration, the George R.R. Martin adaptation In the Lost Lands, gave him the chance.
“I had been looking for a Western,” he told Polygon in a video interview ahead of the release. (He was, incidentally, wearing a gray T-shirt that said simply “Woke up sexy again.”) “One of my development execs read the script before I did, and she’s like, ‘This is the Western.’ I read it and I loved it. This is a cowboy thrown into a fantasy world. I loved everything about the nature of the character. He is just a good old-fashioned gunslinger. There was nothing to dislike about this project.”
Bautista co-stars in the movie as a hunter who traverses the Lost Lands, the blasted, monster-haunted lands of his post-apocalyptic world. When a scheming queen commissions a powerful witch, Gray Alys (Jovovich), to hunt down a werewolf and bring back its power, Alys employes the grim hunter Boyce (Bautista) as a guide and guard. Ambushes, horseback chases, and shootouts ensue, alongside zombie attacks and magical explosions.
“I was super excited before I even even read the script, because of Paul — I was very familiar with his career, and very familiar with his successes,” Bautista says. “And after a couple conversations, I fell in love with the guy. I just love his energy. It’s so positive, and he’s so passionate about what he does. And then obviously, Milla. [I’m] a massive fan. I was really excited to work with her. And then George R.R. Martin’s script was very exciting.”
Why was he hunting around for a Western in particular? “I think it was just one of those boxes I needed to check,” he says. “A lot of the boxes I need to check are because I’m a fan of the genre, and I just want to get in there. I want to be a part of the process. I want to be able to say I did it. But I also want people to feel like I’m a well-rounded actor and I could step into any world. I don’t want people to count me out of any genre and think that I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t fit somehow.”
Image: Vertical Entertainment/Everett Collection
Like a lot of the projects Bautista takes on, In the Lost Lands is primarily an action movie, but it gives him space to try different things — to be a little funny, a little angry, to be a lover and romantic as well as a shotgun-slinging, wisecrack-dropping badass. But while rounded-out parts are a big part of the appeal for him on any given project — “I want to be an A-to-Z actor,” he says — there’s one role he’s still dreaming of. He still thinks he’d be perfect to play Ernest Hemingway in a biopic.
“I feel like actors really get a lot of love and respect when they conquer a good old biopic,” he says. “I had to find a person, a personality, someone of physical stature that I could meet and match and be believable in playing. Because of the way I’m built, the way I look, my choices are somewhat limited. But I always thought there’s something really amazing about Ernest Hemingway — obviously his success as a writer, but he’s just such an interesting personality.”
Reading up on Hemingway years ago got Bautista hooked on the idea. “Later in his life, he was just dark and it was mysterious, it was intriguing. I thought, Man, this is a character. I could really just dive into this. And this would be the type of role that would get me in those conversations where they would really see me as a great actor. I still have that chip on my shoulder, wanting to prove that. And I haven’t been able to find that particular role or that particular character where I can prove that.”
As much as he enjoyed In the Lost Lands, and many of his other roles, Bautista says they aren’t where his heart lies. “I don’t want to be an action star,” he says. “It’s weird — I know I easily fit into that mold, but I really fought against it for years, and I turned down a lot of roles, because I just didn’t want to be stuck in that rut, and I wanted for people to see me outside of that box.
“Nowadays, I’m less resistant, because I think I’ve proved my point, to a certain extent. And I do love action films. But they’re not at the top of my priority list. If I could find an independent film that wasn’t going to bring me a lot of money, but the role was super inspiring and would give me the opportunity to really challenge myself as an actor, I’d probably take that over the payday, over the big action film. I love to watch ’em, but they’re not my favorite films. My favorite films are independent dramas that really are inspiring.”
Part of that ongoing impulse, he says, is just about proving he can live up to his own self-image. “I need to know for myself how good I can be,” he says. “I started this journey feeling like I was just so ashamed of how bad of an actor I was. So I need to prove to myself that I can be a great actor.”
In the Lost Lands debuts in theaters on March 7.
Content shared from www.polygon.com.