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Even though Dave Bautista first made a name for him self in the WWE and WWF, most people today would know him from his roles in Guardians of the Galaxy, Dune, and a wide range of movies from auteur directors. His decision to leave wrestling behind in pursuit of Hollywood was an obvious next step, but no one could have seen Dave Bautistas acting career coming. From Drax the Destroyer to Mr. Hinx and Rabban, Dave Bautista has elevated his craft and achieved what most wrestlers turned actors haven't been able to. Dave Bautista actually became a really good actor.
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Only older models do
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And you and your models are happy scraping the s***. Because you've never seen a miracle
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And if you've never seen a miracle, then please allow us to direct your attention
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to the career arc of professional wrestler turned Hollywood star Dave Bautista
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He's not even close to being the first person to make that particular professional transition
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but he has seemingly pulled off something that none of his predecessors were able to do
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he escaped the stereotypes wrestlers are usually stuck playing and convinced the world to take him seriously as a dramatic actor
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Born in 1969 in Washington, D.C., Dave Michael Batista Jr. grew up in a rough neighborhood
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surrounded by poverty and violent crime. After brief stints as a car thief, a bouncer, a lifeguard, and a bodybuilder
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Batista first auditioned to become a professional wrestler at the ripe old age of 30
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I didn't honestly know what I wanted to do with my life like for the rest of my life until I was about 30 years old
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And that's when I knew that I wanted to be, I wanted to entertain people. He initially tried out for the WCW, but did so badly
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he was told he'd never make it as a wrestler and was sent home. Nevertheless, just a year later
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Batista was signed to a developmental contract by the WWF. Under their tutelage, he quickly became skilled at the physical side of the sport
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But ironically, the man who would be Drax the Destroyer was extremely uncomfortable with the performing side of the job
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often being too nervous to even speak during interviews. After a lot of training and hard work, he would make his televised debut as the heel
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Deacon Batista on SmackDown in May of 2002. The Deacon schtick was quickly dropped, and he joined up with the popular heel stable Evolution
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which also included wrestling stars like Triple H, Randy Orton, and Ric Flair
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Evolution's storylines would bring Batista to the forefront of the WWE, and in 2005
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he won his first of six WWE World Championships. But according to Batista
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even though he had come to be the face of WWE SmackDown, most of the chances to appear in WWE films and television commercials seem to go to the face of the WWE Raw John Cena And his name is John Cena
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Upset he wasn't receiving equal opportunities in the wrestling business, Batista made the decision to leave the sport in 2010
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I quit! Despite the fact he, in his own words, couldn't have cared less about acting
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and felt like he was only just coming into his own as a wrestler, he decided to become a full-time actor
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At the time, he also only had one major non-wrestling related acting credit
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having played the brutish villain Aldar in a single 2006 episode of Smallville
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The part made conspicuous use of his hulking physique and wrestling abilities
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and required little in the way of dramatic acting chops. Your blood must make you strong
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I should taste it. Which is to say, it was pretty typical of the type of roles wrestlers have traditionally been used to fill in Hollywood
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If you watched our video about why nobody saw John Cena's acting career coming
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then you know wrestlers are mostly used in parts that emphasize their size
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ability to perform stunts, and deliver one-liners. I got you for three minutes! Three minutes of playtime
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There have been exceptions. Andre the Giant stole her heart's Fezzik in The Princess Bride
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the Rowdy Roddy Piper is a legend for playing the hero in John Carpenter's They Live
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but neither made a career out of it. According to Batista, he was offered plenty of such parts in low-budget and direct-to-DVD schlock
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during his first few years as an actor, and he had to take a few of them to get himself established in the business
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But despite the fact his new career was going so badly, he had to sell pretty much everything he owned and financially start from scratch
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He did his best to avoid clogging his IMDB page up with the stereotypical wrestler roles
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Instead, he worked with an acting coach to improve his dramatic skills, while becoming as picky and choosy as possible about what projects he signed on to
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A small role in RZA's 2012 film The Man with the Iron Fists led to a slightly larger one in Vin Diesel's 2013 Riddick
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and that would get him an audition for a Marvel movie based on the then-obscure comic book superhero team
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the Guardians of the Galaxy. With rumors constantly flying that more famous actors
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were being looked at for the role, Batista would be made to repeatedly re for the part of Drax the Destroyer The process was apparently so grueling that when he found out he got the part he had to pull his car over so he could cry and couldn stop himself from shaking when he told his wife
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We've already established that you're destroying the ship that I'm on is not saving me. When did we establish
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Like three seconds ago. No, I wasn't listening to this. I was thinking of something else
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But we can now easily say it was worth it. Batista turned out to be perfectly cast as Drax
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and Drax, a surprisingly layered character that gave the former wrestler a way to show off both his comedic and dramatic
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abilities, was, at the time, the perfect role for Batista. Directed by James Gunn, Guardians of the
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Galaxy was a massive hit, and the awkwardly literal Drax character was an instant favorite
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of audiences throughout the world. After that, things turned around real fast for Batista
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and the offer started rolling in. The actor, however, would remain picky about what he worked
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on and who he worked with, a strategy that has left the list of directors he's acted for looking
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like a who's who of respected modern auteurs. For example, his next major role would find him
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sharing the screen with Daniel Craig's James Bond in 2015's Spectre, directed by Sam Mendes
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Then, after reprising his role as Drax in 2017's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
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he mixed it up with Ryan Gosling in Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049
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Batista apparently made an impression on the director because Villeneuve would invite him
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to play an important villain in 2021's Doom and its sequel, which was arguably the most
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highly anticipated movie of 2024. But before that, Batista would show off his comedy skills once again as YouTuber and murder
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victim Duke Cody and Rian Johnson's widely praised 2022 Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion
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He would also reprise his role as Drax in a Guardians Holiday special, as well as a third
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part of the trilogy, a slew of Avengers movies, and a Thor sequel. Of course, not everything Batista has done has been quite up to his usual high standard
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The 2019 buddy cop comedy Stuber, for example, was praised for the comic chemistry between Batista and Kumail Nanjiani
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but didn't exactly set the world on fire. There's no gas! It's an electric car
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You got an electric car that doesn't use gas?! And 2020 My Spy which teamed Batista up with The Little Kid was a cliche family action comedy right out of the traditional movie tough guy actor handbook And of course he still takes on the occasional generic tough guy role here and there
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like the Escape Plan sequels and Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead movies. After all, Dave Batista has bills to pay like the rest of us
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The point is, though, he could easily be raking in the cash by cranking out forgettable, interchangeable action flicks
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like a certain other high-profile ex-wrestler, but in Batista's own words, I never wanted to be the next Rock. I just wanted to be a good f***ing actor. And it's hard not to
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say he's succeeding. While Dwayne Johnson seems more concerned about never playing a character
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that loses a fight, and John Cena is just out here living his best life, Dave Bautista continues
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to pick artistically interesting projects that challenge him as an actor. For example, he recently
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lent his voice to the American dub of Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award-winning 2023 animated
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feature The Boy and the Heron, and starred in M. Night Shyamalan's 2023 horror film Knock at the
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Cabin. Batista himself considers the latter a major leap forward in his acting career
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citing the huge pages of monologues he was given by Shyamalan. According to the actor
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it was not only the most dialogue he ever had to deliver in a film before, but because they
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were shooting on expensive film from a single camera, there could be no edits and every take
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had to be perfect. This was kind of the opportunity that I've been wanting for years and years and
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years. There are likely more leaps forward coming in his future. For example, starring as Beowulf
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in Robert D. Krzyszkowski's forthcoming version of Grindel, in which he'll share the screen with
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heavyweights like Jeff Bridges, Bryan Cranston, and Sam Elliott. After parts like that, a leading
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role in a non-action-based dramatic film seems almost inevitable for Batista. As Rian Johnson
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once said, someone is going to give Dave a real dramatic lead role in a movie, and they're going
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to look like a genius. As his star continues to rise, Batista has said goodbye to the role that
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made him famous, Drax the Destroyer. In his own words, "'I'm so grateful for Drax
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I love him. I just don't know if I want Drax to be my legacy. It's a silly performance, and I want to do more dramatic stuff.'
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And he's dead serious, even going as far as to say he would work for free if Denis Villeneuve
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or, presumably, another director of that caliber would make him number one on the call sheet
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And it's going to happen sooner or later, because Dave Bautista is exactly what he hoped
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to be, a good f***ing actor
#Film & TV Industry
#Drama Films