Prose Partner Anna Meets Sports TV and Film Star Daz Crawford
Daz Crawford rose to fame when he became Diesel, one of the Gladiators on the British version of the hit TV show, back in the late 90s. Since then, Daz has embarked on a career in acting, moved to Hollywood, and has appeared alongside Pierce Brosnan, as a James Bond villain in ‘The World Is Not Enough’, and next to Wesley Snipes, as Lighthammer in ‘Blade 2’. Prior to ‘Gladiators’, Daz played National League Basketball, was ranked 9thin the world as an amateur boxer, and was invited to join the Olympic team representing England. Prose Partner Anna (@ABoswell) chatted to Daz to find out more about what drives him, what his secret is, and how this has led to his success in sport, TV, and film.
Seeing you as Diesel in ‘Gladiators’ highlights the level of dedication you have to fitness and sport. Can you remember the first sport you ever played?
It all began in Liverpool. I was about 10 years old and started going to a boxing gym. I was a skinny, lanky kid. I’d been going there for a few months, and I remember this guy one day, one of the trainers, cornered me, and he said “You’re never gonna make it as a boxer. You’re never even gonna be a good boxer.” And so that day, I stopped. And never went back there again.
So then what happened? When did you next play sport?
I didn’t do anything sport-wise until I was 16, when I joined the Air Force straight from school. And because I was so tall and lanky, you automatically get put in the basketball team, even if you’re no good! I was doing okay playing basketball, and then I got posted to Germany. When you’re posted over there, you can easily end up just drinking all the time and I didn’t want to do that, so I decided this was my opportunity to get into fitness. I started to do weights and continued with basketball. The Air Force have a competition for boxing, for novices, and a guy over there said I should give it a shot. So I did, and ended up winning my weight. The Air Force boxing coach spotted me and asked if I wanted him to train me. I instantly said “Yeah!”. His name was Robbie Butler (another Scouser actually!) and then I started this journey of boxing. He was an amazing trainer.
What was it about Robbie’s method of training that stood out to you?
It was the psychology he used — so clever. He’d say to me “Right, see you on the field at 10am.” and I’d reply saying “Well, I really need to go to the bank to sort something out.” and he’d say “That’s fine. No problem. But while you’re at the bank, the guy you’re fighting, he’ll be at the gym training.” — and that’s all it took. I was on the field at 10am.
I got into this training regime, of training four times a day: ten days on, two days off, ten days on, two days off. And I did that for seven years. Regardless of whether it was Christmas, summer, my birthday, whatever. At the bottom of my bed, I had a chest, and in that chest were thirty pairs of shorts, t-shirts, pants and socks. Every day I would pick up four of each. I’d wake up in the morning, 7am, put my training gear on and go for a six mile run. That’s the first thing I would do. Straightaway. Then I’d come back home, get a shower and go to work. About 11am I’d get a break, so I’d go and meet my trainer down on the field, and I’d do a workout, sprinting or whatever he had in mind for me. In the afternoon I would maybe play basketball or football or rugby, and then in the evening I’d do boxing training. And I did that every day: ten days on, two days off, ten days on, two days off. That’s what got me to Olympic level, and boxing for England. I was ranked ninth in the world and number two in the UK.
So you’re in the RAF, you’re committed to this intense training, you’re boxing — how did you go from here, to ‘Gladiators’?
While I was boxing, Robbie would give me specific instruction. He’d say “Right, I want you to try this…” and I’d go and do exactly what he said and I’d be able to knock the guy out! With just a little tap! And I wanted to know how that worked! I wanted to learn more about the body and muscles and hand-to-eye coordination. I wanted to know how and why things happened. So I went on numerous courses. I trained to become a personal trainer, studied nutrition, I wanted to get qualified and have the knowledge of how my body worked.
When you work out, you lose a combination of water, muscle and fat. Let’s say at the end of the workout you’re two pounds lighter, if you then go and stick a pizza in your body, you’re going to put the fat back on that you just burnt off. You’re not going to stimulate your muscles to grow because you haven’t given yourself any protein. When you’ve finished working out, your muscles are smaller than they were before you started. If you put protein in your body, that stimulates the muscles to grow.
Working out is 50% workout and 50% food. It’s the same as a car. You put one star petrol in a car, it’s not going to run, it’s going to splutter. If you put six star petrol in a car, it’s going to be nice and smooth, so you should feed your body with good quality food and it’ll run smoothly. If you’re really active during the day, you put more fuel in your body. If you’re less active, you should put less in. If you put one gallon of petrol in a car, it can do 30 miles off that gallon. But if you only drive 15 miles, you’ve still got half a gallon left. The next day you stick another gallon in, but you didn’t burn off the other 15 miles from the day before, so the car is now heavier than what it was. So you have to look at your body like that. People are trying to sculpt their bodies and that’s extremely difficult. Somebody says to me, ‘I wanna get abs,’ and I say, ‘You can’t just go and do sit-ups, because that’s not going to work. Your body doesn’t work like that. You have to work your whole body and do some extra workout on your abs, but you still have to work all your body and your cardiac, etc.
When many people were sitting down watching TV every night, I’d be out going to a Kung Fu class (I did Kung Fu for three and a half years), or going for a workout or doing something active, rather than sedentary.
When I think about all the different sports and levels I’ve achieved, they weren’t done separately. It was all done at the same time. I retired from boxing, I’d been in the ABA three times (ABA Championships is the premier tournament hosted annually by the Amateur Boxing Association of England) and typically when you get to that standard you normally go professional. I’d never wanted to be a professional boxer. It wasn’t my career. I did what I wanted to do, I had a good time and that was that. When I came out of the Air Force, I moved to London. I was pretty big, I guess I was about 16/17 stone, just over 100 kilos or something like that and then this promotional girl said to me, “Have you ever thought about being a gladiator?” I said, “Not really, but if I got offered the job I would take it.”
And had you watched ‘Gladiators’ by this point — were you watching it on TV?
Oh I knew about it, yeah, it’s quite funny because I had been living in Norwich, in Costessey, and I was renting a room out to this girl from Birmingham who loved ‘Gladiators’. I hated the show. That’s not a sportsman. I’m a sportsman and I didn’t see them as sportsmen, I didn’t really know anything about them but I just thought they were all steroidy-type guys. I didn’t know anything about their history and I just made an assumption. She loved the show and every Saturday night when it came on I’d say, ‘You’re not watching that in the living room. You’ll have to watch it in your room!’
So then I’ve gone to London, and this promotional girl said she knew Ken Warwick, one of the producers, and Nigel Lythgoe, so I agreed, and after a bit of pestering, she got me an interview. Well, it was kind of a one-off how it happened, because the gladiators are all big guys and the contenders are all little. The concept is meant to be a David and Goliath type situation, but to do that you have to fix it. So, the way you fix it is that there are different fitness tests. The contenders’ test was very much speed-orientated, whereas the gladiators’ test was strength-orientated. That particular year, Ken said to me, “Look. I’m only auditioning for one gladiator so I’m not going to put on the whole gladiator test for that, so I want you to do the contenders’ test.” He said, “Don’t worry if you don’t finish it. Just do what you can.” And I kicked arse. The contenders were there. There were thousands of people there. 32,000 people a year applied to be contenders and they have to get it down to 40. 32 for the show, and 8 reserves. You had to do a thousand metres in a certain time, then this monkey climb, a swing, climbing a rope and whatever, but I beat them all. And at the end of it, I said to Ken, “What do you think?” and he kind of like mumbled, didn’t really say much. I went away and a week or so later, the agent called me and said, “They want you for the show.”
And how did you get your name? Diesel?
Ken Warwick came up with that. He’s the producer of ‘Pop Idol’ and ‘American Idol’ and all that, along with Nigel Lythgoe. Ken said to me, “Look, the show has got probably another two years so just enjoy it. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
What was your favourite game?
Vertigo. There were two lines of five poles, about 40 feet high These poles are like the pole vault pole that bends. They are all in a line and the first pole has got rungs on it like ladder rungs. As you start climbing up it the pole starts to bend, you have to get to the top, and make it swing until you reach and grab the next pole to do the same thing. I used to kill that. There’s another one — Pendulum. A great big ball in the ceiling — I liked that one as well.
Did you fancy Jet?
Ha! No. None of them. None of them did anything for me, at all.
So you’re doing Gladiators — where did the acting idea come from? What made you then go into acting?
‘Gladiators’ is shot in three weeks, even though it’s on TV for three months. So then you’re free for the rest of the year. I wasn’t going to sit around doing nothing. I’d done all this sport and I was fit as hell. I’d had photographers taking lots of body shots of me, and I was being asked to do more. I did some modelling in London and I’d joined about five different model agencies and some casting agencies that do extras work — not that I knew what an extra was then! I got a ‘phone call asking if I wanted this job as an extra for six weeks, paying £150 a day. It was like — have you ever seen the TV show ‘Extras’?
Yes! Brilliant!
It’s the same! Exactly the same! It’s JUST like that. I got talking to this older Greek woman. She said to me “You want to be actor? Don’t be an extra. You have to go to school.” We’d been there since 5am, doing nothing. It’s now midday and suddenly they say “Right, everybody on set.” Out come these two actors, Eric Roberts — who is Julia Roberts’ brother — and a guy called Powers Boothe, an American actor, who’s been around forever. Anyway, they come out and they do their little scene and Eric comes towards me and mumbles… he doesn’t talk to me, he mumbles, and then he leaves. And they shout, “CUT!” And that was it! SEVEN HOURS! And I thought, ‘I need to be doing what they’re doing!’ I never went back.
I came back to Norwich, went to the Maddermarket Theatre first, did some stuff there. Then I went to The Actors Centre in London, found two American teachers, and studied the Meisner technique.
In that first year, I’d done commercials and modelling, but then I got a ‘phone call from Barbara Broccoli, the Producer of all the James Bond films — it’s her Dad, Cubby Broccoli, who bought the book from Ian Fleming — and she said, “We’ve got a little role for a Bond film, if you want to do it. It’s not a big role but if you want to do it…” And I said, “Yes, course I do.” So that got me the Bond job. I didn’t audition for that. Then I got another movie — ‘Attila the Hun’ with Gerry Butler, within weeks of Bond, and then ‘Ed Stone is Dead’, a comedy. I did a guest star on that.
You played a Russian villain in the James Bond film ‘The World is not Enough’, in which you were beaten up, had a knife stabbed through your tie, and were then strangled by Pierce Brosnan! In your opinion, who has played the best Bond and which is the best Bond film?
Oh I really like Sean Connery, but I’m actually going to say Roger Moore. In terms of which film, I liked ‘Spectre’ actually but, it’s hard to choose. I’m gonna go for…. ‘Goldfinger’!
So you started life in Liverpool, then you moved to Norwich with the RAF, now you’re in London acting and modelling — how did you end up in Hollywood?
I quickly realised a couple of things in the acting industry. The first is that I have a specific ‘look’ which means in the TV world I only booked guest star roles which is usually only one episode. There aren’t many British shows and so I’d very quickly run out of opportunities. The second is that I don’t look British, and the work I was booking was American, so the natural progression was to come to LA to be able to move forward. I came here originally in 2002 but didn’t obtain a work visa till 2006, so up until then, I could only stay in the US for 90 days at a time and had to keep returning to the UK.
Would you say there was something you’d learned through your success in sport, that you also then applied to your acting?
Yes. I use the same philosophy for everything. To become good at anything, you have to do what I did, which is train four times a day, full-on, a hundred hours a week and take a couple of days off to recharge your batteries. In anything you’re going to be, whether it’s a lawyer, doctor, athlete, astronaut, whatever it is in the world you want to be, you have to give it everything if you’re going to be good. And that can be lonely! You’ll be out running on your own, or when your friends call and ask if you want to go out, you say ‘No’ because you’re studying or training or whatever. You have to be self-motivated and dedicated.
So when it came to acting, I gave it nearly a hundred hours a week. I took classes that were around 30 or 40 hours, and then I’d do homework for 40 or 50 hours. When I was doing classes in LA, the class would finish at ten o’clock at night. I would stay with my teacher until two in the morning. You can tell if someone has spent time on the character they are playing, or whether they are simply saying the lines.
How do you know whether or not someone has spent time on their character?
There’s no depth. Too many mistakes and no depth. Let’s say I get a scene and it’s just one line which is “Where were you last night?” You can go on stage and say, “Where were you last night?” or “Where were you last night?”. To get to those different ways of saying the same line, you’ve got to come up with a history.
First of all, let’s say it’s you and me doing the scene. I go away and I think, ‘Right. What’s the relationship? How long have I known her? Do I like her? Do I hate her? What has she done to me? Do I know her family? How did I get here? Where have I come from?’ And I could sit down and go right back to when I’m four years old, and bring all of that forward, just before the moment I say to you “Where were you last night?”
Now, I’ll add on some layers and I’ll say we’re a couple — when you get given a script you don’t get history. So I create one. We’ve been dating for three years and it’s got stale, but I haven’t said anything. Two days ago I saw you out, making out with my best mate, but you didn’t see me. We’d had an argument four days ago because you keep standing me up and I said to you that if you do it one more time, it’s over. I still love you, but I’m fed up. Now, I’ve come round to your apartment and I knock at the door. I’m pretty upset that I saw you the other day with my best friend. You stood me up again. I’ve said that we’re going to break up if you stand me up again. So, I’m going to be bawling my eyes out at this point, and then, I deliver the line:-
“Where were you last night?”
I don’t want to act it. I don’t want to pretend. I want to be IN that emotion and to do that you have to have history.
There was a girl that used to rent a room from me in Hollywood. She went to two classes a week. I said to her, “You do six hours a week. You’ve got a two-year visa. Six hours a week is 24 hours a month, 24 solid hours a month. One day a month. That’s 12 days a year. How long do you think it’s going to take for you to become a good actor when you’re training one day a month? You’re 25 years old, you need to start watching ‘Desperate Housewives’, because you’re not going to be a good until you’re 40 years old; you’re wasting too much time. You should be doing a hundred hours and going to as many classes as you can, study as much as you can, learn about emotions and how to get in and out of them, learning everything about the whole acting world in a condensed time.”
So you use this same philosophy, this same mentality, and apply it to everything you do? And that’s what you believe makes you successful?
Yes, everything I’ve done. I’ve never been driven by money. I’m driven by being successful, and if money came as part of that success, I saw that as a bonus. When people put money first, I don’t think they’re ever going to be happy, because they always want more and forget the enjoyment side of it.
Actually, there’s something else. I want to go back to when I was in Liverpool, I grew up in foster care, in different homes and different places. Different people’s houses. I remember being about five or six and sitting in the gutter, on the street, with a stick and a stone. They were my toys. I remember playing with them and saying to myself, ‘I don’t want to ever be here again.’ That’s always stuck with me and I kind of feel that the driving force, for everything, has come from there. That ignited it. It gave me a focus. I just said to myself ‘I can’t be in the gutter’. I couldn’t fail because if I did, where am I going to go? I don’t have a mum and dad and a bedroom to go home to. So the only option was to succeed.
I think you have to remember to enjoy life, enjoy the journey. When I was playing basketball I wanted to achieve something. When I was boxing I wanted to achieve something. Now I’m acting I want to achieve something, and what I want to achieve might be impossible, but I want it and that’s what drives me. Not money. It might never happen, but if I aim for ‘A’ and I retire at ‘B’, then I’ve still enjoyed the journey to get to ‘B’. Every day I wake up, I’m enjoying it.
Do you know the saying, ‘Happiness is not a destination, it is a way of life’? It sounds like you’re somebody that definitely lives that way!
Yeah. I do. When I first started, I did want it all quickly and I was frustrated. Then I thought, ‘No, I’ll mess up. If I do achieve it very quickly, I won’t appreciate how hard it is.’ People get lucky very quickly in the acting world and they’ll be cocky and arrogant. I think if you work really hard and you get a lot of rejection, then it’s got more value.
You focus on the journey, on your mentality. I go to the gym and I’m totally focused. I don’t talk to anybody. I know exactly what I’m going to do. I need to get my heart rate up to 150, 160, 170 beats a minute — it goes up and down, up and down. I’m fat burning or muscle toning — I’m there for about 70 minutes and I will not talk to a single person. I’ve got my headphones, my music, and I’m on it, I’m just on it. And when I see people sitting on chairs or on equipment, on their cell phone texting or whatever, I just want to go and knock ’em out. They really fucking piss me off. They really do because they’re hogging a bit of equipment and you just think, ‘Go home and do that. Don’t do it in the gym!’
I’m only doing four, maybe five times a week, 70 minutes, but at super high intensity, super high. I’m only one kilo over my boxing weight, right now, after all these years.
So the strapline for the sports portal on Prose says, ‘Be bold. Be brutal.’ Would you say that that was something you’d applied in your own experiences of sport, and acting — ‘Be bold. Be Brutal’?
A hundred per cent. One hundred per cent. Those two statements — if you’re not brutal, you’re kidding yourself. If you’re not brutal you’re skimming the surface and not taking yourself to the extreme. Being bold can mean a lot of things. When it comes to fitness, I hear a lot overweight people say, “Oh, I want to get fit before I join the gym.” Well, that’s defeating the object. You’re meant to join the gym to get fit, so be bold. Just go. Everybody starts somewhere. Be brutal on yourself, kick your own arse and you’ll see the benefit.
As you know, Prose is a writing community that provides people with a social platform for creating and consuming literature. It’s a place that actively encourages not only experienced writers and published authors, but also people who are brand new to writing and want to give it a try. Why do you think it’s important for people to write?
I see writers as artists. Writers have brilliant imagination. When I worked on ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ just recently, there were ten writers, and what surprised me was how quickly they could change things and adapt things and come up with these incredible stories. Look at George Lucas and ‘Star Wars’ — he created that in his imagination and then wrote it. We need writers to bring things from imagination to life.
What are you doing with yourself right now and when are we next going to see you on our screens?
Right now, tonight actually, at 9 o’clock, on Channel 4 or E4, is a show called ‘Marvel Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D’. I don’t know if I’m in this episode, I think next week I’m in. I was in last week’s and the week before. So, that’s currently showing. There’s a new film coming out, which is going to be shown at the London Film Festival, it’s been nominated for four awards, called ‘Awaken’ with Vinnie Jones. It’s a thriller about body parts, about people kidnapping people to get their body parts. We shot that in Belize last year. I’m this character called Stitch, part of a group of people that have been kidnapped and put on an island. We don’t know why we’re there, what we’re doing or anything. And we try to escape. I’m a good guy in this one…
And then, I’ve worked on Disney’s ‘Jungle Book’. It’s motion capture, but the boy is real. I’ve done motion capture before as a character called ‘Kratos’ for a game called ‘God of War’ on the Play Station. That was about three or four years ago. So then last year, I was playing Shere Khan, the tiger, for the motion capture. But Idris Elba will be the voice. I had to learn to walk like a cat, but you’ve still got to learn all the lines, because the little boy is on set, as well.
The boy, Mowgli, is looking at me, he’s not looking at a tiger, he’s looking at Daz. But Shere Khan wants to eat Mowgli, and we want the boy to react to that. Jon Favreau, the director, said to me, “I want you to scare him.” So I didn’t talk to him between scenes. He was trying to make conversation with me and I was like, ‘Go away.’ I was horrible to him. I wanted him to be scared of me, so when I go into the arena, he just sees me. I can see a tiger on the screens but he can see me and I’m giving him a load of shit, so he’s reacting to me, to Shere Khan AND me at the same time. So, when you watch the film, it may be Idris Elba’s voice, but I did all the movements the tiger does!
Some quick-fire questions…
What’s your favourite film of all time?
‘Trainspotting’.
What’s your favourite book?
Well, it’s not a traditional book, it’s not a story as such. It’s more to do with, I guess, spiritual psychology — ‘The Four Agreements’. It simplified my life. Someone bought it for me, because they’d read the book and they’d seen that my own philosophy was similar. I read it, and it gave me structure, by simplifying things.
Who’s your favourite actor?
Jack Nicholson
If you could sum up your career in terms of boxing, basketball, Gladiators and acting… in three words?
Fucking. Good. Life !!! [laughing]
Intriguing isn’t he?! Thanks so much Daz for taking the time to chat to us! We think you’re wonderful! Daz will be posting more about his experiences in sport and acting on Prose! Join us at theprose.com where you can follow him as @DazCrawford
You can also find Daz on his facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DazCrawfordOfficialFanPage/ and Twitter at @DazCrawford
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Originally published at blog.theprose.com on May 1, 2016.
