After I found that I had become an actor, slightly to my surprise, I did have some insecurity, and I did take some rather strange acting classes at a place called The Actor's Studio in London. I don't think they did me any good at all.
I looked for acting classes in Paris just to do something different than modeling. And then one day I just thought, 'Okay, that's enough, I have to start doing something.' I went to the acting agency and I just told them I wanted to act and asked them if they would give me a chance, and they did.
It took many years of acting classes to get even remotely comfortable, but that's OK. It helped me so much on a personal level, not to mention professionally.
I was bored one day, so my dad took me to this acting school. I liked it more than having fun - I liked it for an actual job.
It's so funny, you go to acting school thinking you're going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.
At 15, I refereed my first match, and I was training at my dad's school even prior to that, so the only thing that I was concerned about - I guess the only thing that made me reluctant and was the reason I was in L.A. and the reason I went to acting school - was I thought maybe I wasn't big enough - physically big enough - to compete with WWE.
A big moment for me was when I did a play that was a new adaptation of Dostojevskij's 'Crime and Punishment,' and I played Raskolnikov. It was actually the first thing I did when I got out of acting school.
When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
I'm such a horror geek, comic geek and action figure geek. I'm inspired by so much - from Hunter S. Thompson and Quentin Tarantino to 'The Dark Knight' and 'Halloween'. Just show me something that doesn't suck, and I'm happy.
Don't treat your heart like an action figure wrapped in plastic and never used. And don't try to give me that nerd argument that your heart is a 'Batman' with a limited-edition silver bat-erang and therefore if it stays in its original packing it increases in value.
If I am just, like, on a run by myself, I've never been stopped. Even if I'm at Target buying my own action figure, people would not believe that it's me. I actually was like, 'This is me!'
I'm a big movie fan. After a show, if I'm on the bus or a plane, it's often hard to get to sleep, so I'll watch a film. An action film can even relax me.
To me 'Qurbani' was a good action film - it was fast, had one plot, and moved along at a pace, and it didn't really divert attention.
I have a lot of brothers. It's easy for me to do physical stuff. I had to survive. I really love it, and I'd love to do more of it. I want to do action films. I want to go and hang off of wires, and jump off of bridges, and hang on bungee cords. I've always really loved it.
Everyone wants me to do the comedy thing. But I always wanted to do action adventure. I want to be a guy like 007 who fights against the establishment. If they can make Bruce Willis believable as an action hero, I could do it, too.
I want to play an action hero. I'm ready for roles that totally aren't me.
I get mad when people call me an action movie star. Indiana Jones is an adventure film, a comic book, a fantasy.
For me, there have been times when an action movie, even a 'Tomb Raider,' has helped me get out of myself and be physical again. It's like therapy.
I really, really, really love my job, so it's not like I'm trying to quit wrestling to do movies. They just all seemed like cool things to do. I mean, I'd love to be the bad guy in an action movie because then people would get to see another side of me they don't get to see.
