Arnold Schwarzenegger compared SWAT and DEA teams to graceful ballet dancers.
At age 66, following two terms as California's governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back on the big screen and making up for lost time. And his new film Sabotage gives him an unusually dark character, albeit one who runs around shooting big guns and beating up people just like pretty much everyone else he's played. So was he looking for a more complexity in this role?
Arnold Schwarzenneger Is Back With 'Sabotage'
"I don't have a master plan," he said while in London to promote the film. "I think it has something to do with being at a certain age. Especially coming out of a government job, you see the world as complex as it really is. Therefore you start getting attracted to characters that are written as more three-dimensional. Maybe 20 years ago I wouldn't have been attracted to that very same script."
Schwarzenegger doesn't think his character Breacher is necessarily bad. "He's a good guy, although he's also someone who deviates from his mission," he said. "His mission is to wipe out the drug cartel and get rid of the drugs. But he starts looking for revenge because they've tortured and killed his family. So he becomes a flawed hero."
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He also explained that Breacher is incapable of going home after work and switching off, which is something he has no trouble doing as an actor. Although he still works out every night when he's making a movie.
At least he was able to learn something new for Sabotage. "I've handled a lot of different weapons in my life in movies, but the DEA and SWAT handle weapons in different ways," he observes. "The way they breach doors and storm buildings without killing the good guys but taking out the bad guys - you have to learn that and study it. It's sort of like ballet the way they move. And that made it really interesting."
Even so, Schwarzenegger's next three films will see him returning to his back-catalogue to reprise his roles in sequels to The Terminator, Conan the Barbarian and Twins. Yes, for Triplets he'll team with Danny DeVito and long-lost brother Eddie Murphy, probably without big guns. But you never know with Arnie.
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