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Even Jason Momoa gets star-struck working with Sylvester Stallone By Richard Crouse Metro Canada January 24, 2013

bullet-to-the-head-image05A glance at Jason Momoa’s IMDB page reveals that he is best known for playing roles described as a “vengeful barbarian warrior” or “powerful warlord.”  The burly 6′ 4″ actor is famous for roles in Conan the Barbarian and Game of Thrones and often plays tough guys.

Next up he plays a muscle-bound mercenary in Bullet to the Head, an action flick the Hollywood Reporter called “beefy, brainless fun.”

It’s another case of typecasting, perhaps, but it did give him the chance to go mano-a-mano with one of the masters of the genre, Sylvester Stallone.

“You can’t say enough good things about Stallone,” says the Hawaiian-born hunk. “Truly, he is an icon. A legend, and so good at what he does.”

Mamoa even went through a special initiation rite courtesy of the superstar.

While shooting an epic fight scene on the film’s New Orleans set the older actor suggested he “tune me up” with a couple of real looking hits. Promising to pull his punches, Stallone instead landed a “monstrous” knock to the younger actor’s side. Second take, same thing—“He just crumbled me,” Mamoa says—and that’s the shot that made it into the film.

“He got me a couple of times,” Mamoa says. “He’s the old bull. It’s fun to get in there. I’m thirty years younger than him, so it’s cool. Rocky punching me in the ribs. It’s like a shout from the rock.”

But how does someone raise a family when their day job is pretending to decapitate people on screen? Mamoa, who has a young daughter and son with actress Lisa Bonet, says his family always comes to visit when he’s working.

“My daughter was actually on set when I ripped a guy’s throat out on Game of Thrones,” he says. “It’s hilarious. She was with the wardrobe lady, knitting. I said, ‘Are you OK sweetie?’ She said, ‘Yeah Papa,” and went on knitting.”

“They also saw me put the wolf on for the next one (the Canadian-made lycanthropic thriller Wolves).”

He admits it’s an unusual way to raise the kids and when they get older it might be more difficult.

“School’s pretty expensive,” he says. “I may as well get a teacher and bring them with us. I’d rather have my kids going to the Louvre than learning about it in a book.”


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