The movie Robert Patrick only made for the money: “I really needed a job, and there it was”
Every actor would love to play an iconic character. The thrill of forever being associated with a truly unique, original, and beloved creation is what being a performer is all about.
Your face on merchandise, your name etched into the very fabric of popular culture, who could ask for more? Unfortunately, though, sometimes this can be a double-edged sword. Just ask Robert Patrick, best known for his starring role in the Terminator franchise.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Patrick plays one of the most creative and replicated villains in all of cinema – the T-1000. The second killing machine sent back in time to murder a young John Connor, what sets the T-1000 apart from its predecessor (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800) is its liquid metal body. This allows it to change form, creative improvised weapons, and get past almost any obstacle with ease. It also rendered the android almost entirely indestructible. The groundbreaking visual effects used to bring the T-1000 to life changed Hollywood forever and Patrick’s face immediately became one of the most talked about in the movie world.
Considering what playing the first Terminator did for Arnie, you’d have thought Patrick’s career would have gone in a similar direction after playing a much cooler version. Sadly, this never came to pass. Following his stint as the T-1000, Patrick found it hard to shake the character off. It didn’t help that he kept reprising the part in cameo roles, appearing in both Wayne’s World 2 and Last Action Hero in his most famous guise. He did manage to find more success with the likes of The Sopranos and The X-Files, but to this day, he’s still mostly known as ‘that guy from Terminator’.
As Patrick explained to AV Club, this reputation did some serious damage to his career. He spoke about taking a job in the action movie The Marine, revealing that it came about due to necessity rather than a genuine interest in the project.
“I think it was at a point in my career when I really needed a job, and there it was,” he said. “It was a WWE film. Another archetype villain. I wanted to see what I could do within that genre. I had fun with it. I got to do some stuff with the director that he and I kind of concocted that I thought worked. It ended up being one of the most successful films that WWE ever produced. I gave it everything I could, man. That’s all you can do. I committed wholeheartedly. I got to go to Australia and take the family, I remember that.”
The Marine stars John Cena (in his first lead role) as John Triton, a soldier whose wife is kidnapped by a group of diamond thieves. Patrick plays the head villain, who ends up going toe-to-toe with the multi-time WWE Champion in the movie’s final scene. It’s not quite an ‘hasta la vista, baby’ moment, but it’s still pretty cool.
Over a decade later, Cena and Patrick reunited on the show Peacemaker, with the former in the title role and the latter playing Auggie Smith/Blue Dragon. Hopefully Patrick got to enjoy working with the former wrestler this time, instead of having to worry about his bank account.
