Aidan Quinn is happy the producer of the current action film he's filming didn't see his boozy brawl in "The Eclipse," which is just hitting theaters.
The 51-year-old actor told PopcornBiz he probably would never have gotten the martial arts-heavy role in "Unknown White Male," which he is shooting with Liam Neeson and January Jones, if the folks behind the flick had seen him as a drunken mauler.
"I love that 'Eclipse' fight. I think it's great," Quinn said. "But it would not get me a martial arts job at all. I don't think he would have hired me if he had seen that fight."
In the award-winning drama, "The Eclipse," Quinn's character has an ugly, drunken fight with his love rival (Ciaran Hinds) which verges on the "stupid and ridiculous" with just enough menace to make it scary. In the just underway "Unknown White Male," Quinn plays a man who might have stolen the identity of Liam Neeson's character, and the fight sequences are paramount to the story.
"What I am going through here is literally hour after hour of practice, going again and again and again," he said of the fight scenes on set in Germany. "I'm doing intricate martial arts with directions that have to be followed to a T."
The fights are a close combat style of martial arts called Wushu. Quinn wearily admits the hours of work and the combat are taking a toll on his body.
"I've got a hot bath running and when this is done," he said, "I'm going to enjoy it."
