Actor Kevin Durand lives by the age-old expression “No Pain, No Gain” not only when it comes to training, but in his acting career, too.
“I’ve played some hideous human beings during my time,” Kevin told Muscle & Fitness. “When I read a script and I see a character I’m asked to bring to life … if I’m afraid of it then I feel like I really have to do it. When we push ourselves into really uncomfortable places, that’s when we really grow. The same is true in the gym, too.”
In many ways, Kevin’s life has centered around growth in just about every sense of the word. As a person, he’s grown from a chubby boy to a muscular man.
And as an actor, he’s grown from smalltime roles in the Austin Powers movies to fighting Hugh Jackman as Blob in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the main villain in the Joe Weider biopic Bigger, playing now on HBO.
In many ways Kevin is still growing today, as someone who battles with anxiety, an aspiring screenwriter, bodybuilding enthusiast, and more.
He spoke bluntly about all of these topics in a wide-ranging interview with M&F ahead of the premiere of his latest TV series, Swamp Thing, in which he plays Dr. Jason Woodrue, a mad scientist and creator of the title character. Swamp Thing debuts on the CW on Oct. 6.
Kevin grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada with pictures of bodybuilders plastered all over his bedroom wall. The idea of being big and strong wasn’t that foreign to him, though. “I’m 6’6” and by the time I was 13 or 14 I was pretty close to the height I am now,” he says. “If I hadn’t become an actor I probably would’ve been a ninth-generation lumberjack.”
Although he had some size to him, he didn’t have the aesthetic physique of the models in M&F. “I was a chubby kid for my whole childhood,” he says. “All the girls just wanted to be my friend and be my friends’ girlfriends and they would talk about their problems with my friends to me.”
Kevin says he one day saw a “ripped” guy and thought maybe that was the answer to his girl problems. “I did sit-ups until I threw up,” he says. “I would do that and then push-ups, and then I wasn’t chubby anymore.”
He then picked up the barbell and has been obsessed with training ever since. “If I stayed focused I could define who I could become through hard work,” he says. “It gave me such an enormous amount of confidence. Training gives you such a tangible response to your hard work.”
2 of 5
Davis/Impact/Kobal/Shutterstock
Why He Works Out
A great physique isn’t the only reason Kevin works out — during his interview, he was upfront about the mental struggles he sometimes deals with. “Anxiety and depression are very much a part of me,” he says. “I strive very hard not to live in that space.”
When he’s under heavy iron, Kevin’s usually battling his inner demons. “When I’m lifting it feels like I’m home,” he says. “It feels like this is where I deal with my anxiety and my lack of certainty.”
That’s why he never liked working out at public gyms much. “The gym is not a social thing for me,” he says. “So I built a gym in my house.”
3 of 5
Jaimie Trueblood/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock
Hollywood Beginnings
Acting was something Kevin always enjoyed. “I was always trying to figure out how to talk like somebody else,” he says. “I wanted to imitate their expressions … I’d become different people from my family, different TV characters. It was so goddamn fun for me.”
He never really thought about making a career out of it, though, until his poor grades nearly derailed a prior dream of his — one of playing basketball. “I was being courted by a few different colleges for basketball but my grades were getting in the way,” he says. “I wasn’t a very good student.”
In an effort to bump up his GPA, he enrolled in a drama course and fell in love with the works of Shakespeare. From then, acting was the only thing he wanted to do.
4 of 5
Russ Martin/Fx/Kobal/Shutterstock
His Acting Approach
Unlike many actors, Kevin doesn’t have a preferred kind of role, though his filmography does include many sci-fi flicks. Instead of looking at the plot, he pays closer attention to the character he’s being asked to play.
“I function from a place of what gives me an honest, visceral reaction,” he says. “When I read something, if it gets me excited then I feel like I kind of have to hone in on it. It just so happens a lot of this is sci-fi, action-thriller stuff.”
Asked who his inspirations are, he pointed to Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis — two of the best method actors of all time. “Those guys could just disappear into a role,” he says (Oldman reportedly once spent $30,000 on cigars while playing notorious smoker Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour).
5 of 5
Carolyn Contino/BEI/Shutterstock
Future Aspirations
Kevin hasn’t spent his time in quarantine watching Tiger King or making sourdough — instead, he’s been focusing on a secret hobby of his: screenwriting. “I’ve always been a closet screenwriter,” he says.
He says quarantine has forced him to learn how to be more creative, and when it comes to his screenwriting that means figuring out ways to allow his passion project to see the light of day. “How do we make things work for us, as opposed to against us?” he says. “Quarantine has made me feel more excited about my career than I’ve ever felt.”
The answer for him is to shoot his screenplay when it’s completed, rather than pitching it to a film studio. He offered a small snippet of the project he’s working on, which he described as a thriller/comedy.
“It’s kind of like Deliverance meets The Hangover,” he says.
