“I never wanted to be the next The Rock. I just want to be a good fucking actor. A respected actor” – Dave Bautista says

“I never wanted to be the next Rock. I just want to be a good fucking actor. A respected actor”. 

Another Marvel is expressing his joy at being released from the machine. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 marks Dave Bautista’s departure from the MCU, and like his co-star Zoë Saldana, he’s quite happy to be closing this chapter. Coming off of the critically acclaimed Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, Bautista is looking forward to doing more of what the MCU’s detractors might call real cinema.“I’m so grateful for Drax. I love him. But there’s a relief [that it’s over],” the former WWE star tells GQ in a new profile. “It wasn’t all pleasant. It was hard playing that role. The makeup process was beating me down. And 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.”

This is far from the only time Bautista has explained his desire to stretch his acting muscles. “What I really want to do, I like drama. Just regular old drama… Those roles for me are hard to get a hold of, but I’m constantly searching for them,” he said on the Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside Of You podcast back in 2020. “But I’m limited sometimes. Sometimes it’s really hard to get people to look outside the box and see someone like myself in those roles.”

He has also shared his disappointment in how thin the character of Drax became, noting in that podcast interview, “The stuff in the first film that I looked forward to was the dramatic stuff, like Drax talking about his family being murdered right in front of him. Stuff like that scene, the really hard scene, was cut out. It was cut out of the film, because it was just kind of slow and dark. But that was the kind of stuff I was really looking forward to.”

Bautista tells GQ he wants to be “a good fucking actor. A respected actor.” (Not, he says, like fellow WWE alum Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.) Luckily for him, more directors are giving him a chance to go dark. Describing his upcoming role in M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock At The Cabin, he tells GQ, “It’s by far the most I’ve ever spoken in a film. Just huge pages of monologues. We were shooting on film, which is very expensive. And we were shooting with one camera, so you don’t have the luxury of edits. It’s your only opportunity—you need a perfect take. It’s a lot of pressure. I want to remember my dialogue, but not at the expense of losing the emotion of the scene.”

In a new interview with GQ, Dave Bautista talked about his aspirations when it comes to his acting career. Sure, he’s starred in some mindless action films over the years. But things really changed thanks to his role as Drax in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Since then, he’s turned in some surprising performances, most notably in films such as “Blade Runner 2049” and the recent “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story.” So, when you think of the gold standard of former wrestlers who break into acting, there’s a difference between what Bautista is doing and what Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is doing, right?

Bautista is aiming to do very different roles in a variety of different films. Just this year, he’s starring in “Knock at the Cabin” (psychological thriller), “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (superhero), and “Dune: Part Two” (hard sci-fi). The Rock, on the other hand, just releases massive blockbuster action films. Bautista said his other 2023 film projects are a step in the right direction when it comes to shaping his post-Marvel acting career. He said of Shyamalan’s new thriller, “It’s by far the most I’ve ever spoken in a film. Just huge pages of monologues. We were shooting on film, which is very expensive. And we were shooting with one camera, so you don’t have the luxury of edits. It’s your only opportunity — you need a perfect take. It’s a lot of pressure. I want to remember my dialogue, but not at the expense of losing the emotion of the scene.” 

“Dune: Part Two” will mark Bautista’s third Villeneuve movie after “Blade Runner 2049” and “Dune.” He told GQ, “If I could be a number one [on the callsheet] with Denis, I would do it for fucking free. I think that’s how I could find out how good I could be. He brings out the best in me. He sees me in a different light, sees the performer that I want to be. That might be how I solve the puzzle.” Bautista wants to accomplish a lot more than what the MCU offered. The actor has always championed his tenure as Drax, but he has also openly expressed frustration over the role. Back in 2021, Bautista told Collider that Marvel “dropped the ball” in terms of doing Drax justice on the big screen. 

“I really wished they would have invested more in Drax, personally,” he said. “Because I think Drax has more of a story to tell. I think Drax has a really interesting backstory, which they dropped the ball on. That’s no dig on Marvel. They had their slate, I know what they’re focused on, that’s what they have [it] slated out. But man, I think they really missed the ball on Drax. He has such a great backstory.”

Bautista added that if Marvel had explored the character more fully, it “would have given me the opportunity to show different sides of Drax, emotionally. And physically as well.”