Acadian wrestler tackles Sherlock Holmes
Last Updated: Thursday, December 17, 2009 | 1:47 PM ET
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Robert Downey Jr. is shown in a scene from Sherlock Holmes. Acadian wrestler Robert Maillet gave him an accidental punch during shooting last November. (Warner Bros. Pictures/Associated Press)A larger-than-life Acadian wrestler is about to grab some screen time alongside Robert Downey Jr. in the new movie Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Maillet stands a ceiling-scraping seven feet tall and wrestles under the name Kurrgan.
His first movie role was in the film 300 but he's attracted even more attention with his performance as a villain in Sherlock Holmes because of a scene that went wrong.
While shooting last November, Maillet accidentally hit Downey.
"I knocked him down, but not knocked out — he was still conscious, but barely," Maillet recalled in an interview with CBC News in Montreal.
"Basically, he zigged and I zagged, hit him in the mouth. It happened so fast, that even I didn't realize what happened, and he went down. Blood was coming out of his mouth."
Downey Jr. took it all in stride, buying him a bottle of champagne to show there were no hard feelings.
Maillet plays a villain "kind of like the Jaws character from James Bond," with his huge size and a silver tooth.
'Treated like a movie star'
Early in the shooting, director Guy Ritchie enlarged his role.
"At first I only had a couple of lines, but the day of filming, they found out that I spoke French, so Guy Ritchie had this idea to make me into a Frenchman, and I got more lines," he said.
Maillet lives in Ste. Marie-de-Kent, N.B., and works as a machine operator. He was trained as a wrestler by Bret Hart and Stephen Petitpas and made his debut in 1989.
"It's weird. I go from that to doing movies and being treated like a movie star," he said.
In 300, a film about the Spartan's war with the Persians, he played the Uber Immortal after being referred for the role by a wrestling contact.
He said he took to acting immediately.
"For me, it's not much of a stretch, it's all telling a story. Wrestling is theatre, physical theatre. You tell a story in a ring," Maillet said.
After Sherlock Holmes, which opens next week, Maillet has a role in The Big Bang, with Antonio Banderas and Sam Elliott.
With files from CBC's Anna AsimakopulosShare Tools
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