X-MEN: The Bad Guys

By: Steve Fritz
Date: Thursday, July 27, 2000

If you met the entire cast of X-Men, believe it or not the guys you would probably love to spend the most time with would be the actors who played the evil mutants. In spite of his impressive size and incredible resemblance to Sabretooth off camera, Tyler Mane is a remarkably soft-spoken and friendly guy, more than ready to talk about his days as a heel for the WCW and European wrestling leagues. Seems he had a blast as a wrestler but doesn't miss the dislocated shoulders and other severe injuries in the slightest. His only gripe about making the movie? The makeup.

'And I shouldn't be the one who complains,' Mane smiles. 'I only did two hours a day. Mine was nothing compared to Rebecca's.'

'Makeup would turn me into a real evil bitch,' Rebecca Romijn-Stamos jokes, commenting on her intense makeover as Mystique. 'I would spend eight hours in makeup and then shoot for ten-to-twelve hours, and then get four or so hours sleep a day. Needless to say that blue is no longer in my wardrobe.'

If anything, according to Romijn-Stamos, one of the few things she truly enjoyed about working on the set was the full-length fur coat she got to wear off-camera. What most people by now realize is that the actress basically was running around naked, sporting some strategically placed plastic at key points on her anatomy but otherwise wearing nothing much more than blue body paint. As one can imagine, while this didn't leave much of her to the imagination, it also wasn't the warmest outfit to wear in Canada in the late winter-early spring.

Actually, the friendliest of the friendly bunch is Ray Park. He actually truly enjoyed what the makeup artists turned him into. 'As for myself, I had fun trying on different stuff, especially the makeup,' Park says. 'They gave me a special device to use for Toad's tongue, and I had a lot of fun practicing with it. I mean you can't help but get into character after the makeup, especially when I started using the animal styles I learned in martial arts.'

The evil actors also had a great time working the fight scenes. 'I spent quite a bit of time in the wrestling ring. Wearing the wires was totally different. In the wrestling ring you don't get that added assistance, although you wish you did sometimes,' Mane notes. 'The stunt coordinator and his entire team were very professional. They walked me through the entire process because I had never really done wirework. I remember when we were testing it I got to fly around like Superman and do all these other neat things.


'So when it came time to be Sabretooth, it was fun,' continues Mane. 'I mean you'd be up there in front of a blue screen and they'd be telling you 'imagine you're flying over trees now.' I wasn't as used to that as Ray was. But after four hours in makeup I was definitely getting into character, and the wires helped even more. I mean, the makeup is enough to piss anybody off. You can really tell with Rebecca because when she got the chance she really kicked the crap out of everybody. But the wires make you feel more cat-like.'

Romijn-Stamos' infamous kick scene with Senator Kelly was one of the few times she was actually allowed to be in a fight scene. Because her makeup was so delicate, a stunt double was often used in her place. The crew didn't want her to start losing pieces of her 'uniform,' leading potentially to another eight-hour round in makeup.

'I still got them to let me kick Bruce around in that one scene,' the actress chuckles. 'I got it because it was one of the very few times Mystique actually got to say a line. Let's say I got a lot of anger out of my system in that scene. We had to shoot that scene over and over, too. So I really put Bruce [Davidson, who played Kelly] through it all by the time we were done. The funny thing is he kept encouraging me to kick him harder and harder. He said it would make the scene look more authentic. I'm surprised I didn't knock any teeth out of him by the time we were done.'

As for Park, working the wires was old hat. That didn't mean he didn't enjoy putting the harness on again. 'I've always been a big martial arts fan,' says Park. 'Also, I got to use the wires when I was playing the Headless Horseman [in Sleepy Horseman]. So I'm kind of used to them. It's a lot of fun. I get to be Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan in my mind.'

Like the rest of the actors, the bad guys hadn't read many of the X-Men titles before getting the job. As such, they didn't have an idea about the extremely cultish fan following the comic has garnered over the generations. While they may not have understood what they were getting into, it didn't take them long to find out.

'I was kind of aware of it, having watched the cartoon some,' says Mane. 'Then when I went onto the Internet I realized just how big being Sabretooth was. I found out there was thirty-eight years of history there and how it's been changing and evolving since. So, what I did was relied on my background in wrestling and used it in becoming Sabretooth. That didn't mean I was sure of myself at the beginning. Then one day I was on the set in costume and there were some kids there. When they saw me they went running and screaming and crying away from me. That kind of put my mind at ease.'

From the look of things, we should not be surprised if all these actors make return visits in the X-Men movie sequel. Mane, Romijn-Stamos and Park are quick to state they'd want to be in the future films. We can certainly hope so. While their characters may not be people you'd want to meet in a bar, the people who play them are the kind of guys whom you'd be glad to buy a drink.

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