Golden Globe winner Paul Walter Hauser has revealed his morality line for choosing the right role.
The 40-year-old actor and wrestler, who will be hitting the ring for PROGRESS Wrestling in London on Sunday, has been open about his Christian faith, but he’s still willing to work on raunchy comedies like Balls Up or Zach Cregger’s gory Resident Evil movie.
Speaking exclusively to Metro, Paul said: ‘I really feel good about still doing R-rated comedies or an action film or something violent like wrestling. For me, it’s more about the ideology.’
The Hollywood star is much more likely to turn down working for a Trump supporter.
‘I’ve been asked to work with certain people in the faith-based realm who I think support Donald Trump and don’t support equality and human rights,’ he admitted. ‘There are some folks I’ve steered clear from, or told them the truth and just said I don’t think the writing’s up to snuff.’
Paul’s heard of plenty of ‘Christian believing people’ in Hollywood who refused to work on anything ‘edgy’ because they ‘feel like they’re sinning’.
‘I kind of feel like that limits your opportunities and also limits your ministry as a person,’ he added, noting he sees himself as the ‘potatoes’ on the plate of the entertainment world, with a filmography including Inside Out 2, Richard Jewell and more.
‘Sometimes I get to be the entree, but I’m usually just a part of the plate,’ he smiled. ‘And hopefully it’s making the plate even better.’
Then there’s the wrestling, with Paul regularly appearing for Major League Wrestling (MLW) in the US, and the UK’s own PROGRESS, where he is the current Proteus Champion.
‘My intention is to be 47 years old with an Academy Award Oscar,’ he said with sincerity. ‘And still wrestling and bleeding all over the 2300 Arena in Philly at the age of 47.’
Paul will defend his title in an Open Challenge at Camden’s Electric Ballroom on Sunday for Chapter 199: Bonestorm, and he’s thrived in the role of the ‘Mercenary’, playing off his real-life Hollywood success.
‘That’s not who I really am. But as the mercenary, I get to employ that psychological methodology and try to get in his head and surprise him,’ he explained, admitting it hasn’t come easy. ‘In my daily life, I want to be liked. So wilfully making people not like me or playing into the very thing that they don’t like about me, that was tricky.’
Wrestling fans are sometimes sceptical of Paul as a performer, despite his numerous intense and bloody performances over the past few years, and even some major stars don’t want him around.
‘I think that when I first started, everyone was just watching me to see if I get injured, if I could survive the matches, and I think I surprised some people,’ he pondered, while he’s heard a ‘certain high-level wrestling star’ has been talking behind his back.
PROGRESS Wrestling this weekend
- What: Paul Walter Hauser will defend the Proteus Championship in an Open Challenge
- When: Sunday, October 25 at 3pm
- Where: Electric Ballroom in Camden
- Tickets: Still available here
‘They were basically alluding to the fact that I didn’t really belong in wrestling,’ he said, adding that they ‘took a few shots at me in different ways’.
‘It was somebody I actually am a fan of and admire their work, so I was kind of bummed,’ he added. ‘But, it’s good to find out about that stuff because it puts a healthy chip on your shoulder, and it also lets you know who to help and who not to help when they call.’
Paul certainly isn’t shy of friends and contacts in wrestling and Hollywood. He’s got ‘seven movies in the can’, including Olympic Curling comedy Sticks and Stones, dark comedy The Very Best People, and crime thriller Tommy Karate with Pete Davidson.
‘It’s one of my favourite movies I’ve ever been in. I’m just okay in it, but Pete Davidson’s amazing. He’s transformative, and the movie itself is unbelievable,’ he beamed. ‘Most people would think he and I are doing a comedy, but that’s a cool mob movie.’
Paul reiterated that he’s fine working on darker movies where there’s a chance for lightness, although that isn’t always the case in the final edit.
‘Resident Evil was one where the original ending was a bit more sacrificial, where the character was kind of taking his own life to ensure that it didn’t take more lives,’ he explained. ‘In the ending it ended up with in the edit, it was less of that sacrificial thing and more like, “Chaos ensues, this will never end.”‘
He joked that it wasn’t ‘totally’ what he’d signed up for, but he was ‘really proud’ of the film, and loved working with leading man Austin Abrams and director Zach Cregger, who he hailed as ‘super smart’.
He’s excited to see his next sci-fi horror The Flood, which will star Jennifer Lawrence, and he’s expecting great things.
‘Zach knows the balls he can hit,’ he added. ‘I think that film is going to be another magnum opus from him.’
Paul, who’s also working on a Mick Foley biopic which now has a writer attached to take the project to the next level, is keen to keep pushing his diverse body of work as a true character actor, which includes the intense world of wrestling.
‘You get some bit of pent-up frustration or energy out you wouldn’t necessarily get otherwise,’ he said, even if his wife ‘probably wishes’ he’d quit in the next couple of years. ‘I would be shocked if I wasn’t 48 years old, bleeding from my skull in front of 800 people.’