Ken Kirzinger, "Joy Ride 3"

A longtime actor and stuntperson in movies and television since the early 1980s, Ken Kirzinger has done stunts for movies like "X2: X-Men United," "Watchmen" and "2012." Kirzinger hit arguably the biggest role of his life when he landed one of the title roles in the long-awaited horror 2003 film "Freddy vs. Jason," playing "Friday the 13th" killer Jason Voorhees. Kirzinger's latest slasher role is Rusty Nail, the murderous truck driver who menaces lost travelers in the "Joy Ride" film franchise. The actor and stuntman spoke with The Film Yap about playing iconic slasher movie villains, being responsible for safety on set, and playing Jason (again).

Hi, Ken. How are you doing?

I’m curious, Joe, where are you calling from?

I’m in Indianapolis.

Oh, Indianapolis. I did a convention there.

Yeah, maybe a HorrorHound or Days of the Dead or Famous Monsters. Those have all been in the area recently.

Yeah, I did Indianapolis last year, I think.

Very cool. Let’s talk about “Joy Ride 3.”

Yeah, I auditioned for the part, and, uh, they gave it to me. (laughs)

This is not your first sort of iconic villain or, at least, franchise-leading villain.

Right, yeah. I got to play Jason in “Freddy vs. Jason,” and it’s gotten me a couple of other roles sort of in that vein as the killer. So stepping into used shoes isn’t new to me.

Do you feel like there’s any expectation there? Do you try to emulate anything, or do you try to make the role more your own in a case like that?

Well, you know what, I really think I do try to make it my own. You know, Declan (O'Brien, the director) had some ideas that were great, so we worked together well to hopefully create a Rusty Nail that is what people expect but hopefully gives them more.

Rusty Nail is largely a mysterious figure in a truck. Did you find that freeing as an actor, or did you feel like it limited you?

I think it gave me more freedom, definitely. It’s sort of an evolution of the character. You can make the truck sort of be the character, like it was in the movie “Duel,” or you can have the person in the truck the main character, and I think this has really made Rusty the character more than the truck. The truck is sort of his symbol, his emblem, but Rusty is more of the character.

So the character is his hockey mask, essentially.

Yeah, that’s a good analogy.

Can you talk a little about playing homicidal maniacs in general?

I think it does more for me as a person than an actor because it’s very cathartic. Because I’m a very nice guy, but you get to really explode and have fun with it being in that moment. As an actor, it’s nice to play those characters. A lot of people would say it’s harder to play the bad guy than the good guy, but it is fun as an actor and personally.

You have a lot of credits both as an actor and as a stuntperson. Can you compare those two different forms of filmmaking?

Sure. Of course, stuntwork is all about physicality, about matching actors’ walks, movements on a motorcycle, on a bicycle, on a horse. It’s about training your body to do the acting, so there’s a natural transition playing a character like Jason, or Pah, a werewolf in a movie called “Bad Moon” I did, and it’s also natural too for me that I got to start getting those goony parts, or the henchman parts or the boss’s right-hand man, so you get some lines thrown at you there. The two are very similar; one prepares you for the other. To be a stuntman, you have to be something of an actor, and these days, as an actor, you have to be something of a stuntman, so there’s definitely crossover.

How about as a stunt coordinator, which has more responsibility to it?

Well, definitely. The stunt coordinator is responsible for the safety of the actors and the safety of the crew and there’s so much responsibility there. It’s crucial to a good action movie, and the communication between the stunt coordinator and the director is important; the stunt coordinator has to be on the same page as the director and understand his vision and give him what he wants. So it’s much, much different than being a stuntman, which is so much fun. Sometimes you get to rehearse the stunt and sometimes you don’t, but you go and do those things that you really love to do, that get your adrenaline pumping, and you do it well and you walk away on a cloud. The stunt coordinator, myself, I just didn’t want people to get hurt. That was the most important thing to me, I just breathed a sigh of relief that no one got hurt, that we gave the director and the producers what they wanted, and I just wanted a nice, cold beer at the end of the day, to take a deep breath and be glad that everything went off well.

So do you have specialists who specialize on certain aspects, someone who knows about wire work, fight choreographers, etc?

Yeah, definitely. I was part of a group, I was president of a group called Stunt Canada. Within that group we have specialists in all different kinds of works, whether it was cable work, doing ratchets, or motorcycle work or decelerators, descenders, high falls, so there are a lot of people you can work with. When I was coming up, you really needed to be a jack of all trades, because the more you could do, the more you could work. There just weren’t that many stunt people out there. But now you have people doing fire gags and riggings, ratchets, stuff like that. It’s interesting to see how the business has changed. But those are my guys at Stunt Canada.

It raised eyebrows when you were cast as Jason, taking over for Kane Hodder, but then when they rebooted “Friday the 13th” they used someone with a build similar to you. Now that they are rebooting again, would you be interested in going back to the franchise?

Yeah, I would do it again for sure. I’d be really interested in what they’re doing with the next one. Being an alumni, you’re forever tied to it, so it’s kind of fun to see what they’re doing with it. Well, sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it’s not (laughs), but yeah, I’d be interested in it for sure. It’d be fun.