Dave Bautista has long resisted Hollywood’s gravitational pull, keeping Tampa, Fla., as his home base. For fans, spotting him walking his dogs there is as likely as seeing him topple villains onscreen — maybe more so. Geography helps, sure, but he’s quick to minimize its impact on how he stays grounded.
“What’s kept me normal is me. I didn’t have an ounce of success until I was well into my 30s. I grew up poor, surrounded by poverty and violence. When I finally made something out of my life, I never took it for granted,” he tells Yahoo. “So it’s not so much where I live — it’s how I grew up, how I was raised and it has a lot to do with my mom.”
That relatability — the image of a movie star who unwinds with his dogs and shops for his own groceries — is a big part of why Bautista has maintained an almost “everyman” status. His characters, though, are anything but. Over the years, he’s played aliens, beasts, henchmen and fighters. Now, with his new film Afterburn, he steps into the role of a survivor.
Chasing adventure
In Afterburn, out now in theaters, Bautista is a scavenger navigating a burned-down Europe after solar flares devastate the world. The actor thinks he’d do OK if dropped into a similar situation, but he admits he’s not exactly outdoorsy. He’s never grown a plant in his life, and explains his survival strategy would come down to stocking up on canned goods and dog food. “Not the most inspiring answer,” he says with a laugh. “I just pray we never get there.”
That humility is part of the fun of Bautista’s new movie, a post-apocalyptic adventure that he says was his chance to finally check something off his bucket list: make an “adventure film.”
“Not to compare it, but National Treasure was a reference for me,” he says. It’s the kind of project Bautista craved, even if it came with challenges: tight budget, limited time and a script that went through multiple rewrites.
He wanted to create a hero who felt different from the invincible archetypes that dominate action movies — and ones he’s used to playing. He didn’t want to be a soldier, as the original script called for, but a resourceful scavenger. “More Nicolas Cage,” he jokes.
Still, there’s no shortage of fight sequences to keep his fans satisfied, and Bautista insists on throwing himself into as much physicality as a role demands. OK, some of that physicality.
“I typically do my own fight scenes,” Bautista says. “I love fight sequences. But stunts are life-threatening… jumping off a bridge onto a train? Getting set on fire? I leave that to the pros.”
That balance — knowing when to push his body and when to pull back — is something Bautista thinks about more these days. At 56, he’s in a stage of his career where many action stars start scaling back.
Finding a new rhythm at 56
When I ask Bautista if his approach to training has shifted from sheer intensity to sustainability with age, he laughs. Before pre-production on this film, he wasn’t focused on building more muscle or learning new stunts … he was simply trying to slim down.
“If anything, I was trying to lose weight,” he says, explaining it wasn’t for a role, but just “for life.” And, as he jokes, maybe a little bit of vanity. “I’m a bald guy with a beard — I can only change my look so much.”
Bautista’s body has been central to almost every chapter of his career, but as he ages, his priorities are shifting. “It’s more about finding stuff I enjoy. You work out harder [that way],” he says. “In the past, being in shape was a side effect of my mental trauma. Working out was therapeutic. But as I’ve gotten older, lifting weights just became boring. I started finding new things: martial arts, jiu-jitsu, cardio training. Things that made my body feel better and improved my cardiovascular health. At this age, that’s more important.”
But fitness is only part of the equation. For Bautista, wellness also comes from finding small, everyday rituals that ground him. It’s not a meditation app, though.
“People can meditate all they want … it doesn’t work for me,” he says. “If I can spend 10 minutes playing with my dogs, that’s worth 20 hours of meditation for me. I find my happy place in that. So I think everybody has got to find their, you know, ‘spending time with their dogs’ therapy.”
Fulfillment over fame
That perspective feeds into how he thinks about his longevity in the entertainment industry. Bautista doesn’t want to just be a movie star. He’s not chasing paychecks or padding his résumé with every franchise role offered. It’s a mindset he emphasizes as we talk, because it explains almost everything about the choices he’s made since he walked away from wrestling and carved out a second act in Hollywood.
“That approach has driven my career. I still feel the same way,” he explains about not letting fame or money dictate his decisions. “I don’t like to talk about finances, but I just took a massive pay cut for a role I’ve wanted to do for years. I didn’t think about the money — just the role itself and what it would mean to me personally.”
“At my age and where my career is now, it’s about fulfillment,” Bautista says. “I am on the downside of my career and I want to do things that are meaningful, where I can leave the business feeling completely accomplished, fulfilled and maybe inspire a few people along the way.”
That sense of fulfillment also shapes how he sees life beyond Hollywood. In Afterburn, Bautista’s character navigates a world without modern technology, a concept the actor admits is tempting. In real life, he dreams of ditching his phone, even though he admits he’s tethered to it. “I’d love to just give up my phone, forget about it,” he says. “At the same time, I can’t live without it. I panic if I lose it. I feel disconnected from the world.”
He’s not endlessly scrolling Instagram or TikTok. “I could give up social media tomorrow,” he declares, though he won’t — not yet. “I love connecting with fans. Fans are not a given, they’re a blessing. But one day I’ll say, ‘Thank you for all the years of support, I love you,’ and just go live my life with my dogs. Right now, I’m not there yet. But that will come one day.”
And when that day comes, Bautista already knows where he wants to be. Not in Bel Air. Not on a soundstage. Not in an arena. “I’ll probably be in Northern Virginia or Maryland, where I can have property for my dogs to run around,” he says. “My hometown is my heart and it’s the place I love more than any place in the world. So that’s what I want… just me, my dogs and no phone.”
In the end, it’s classic Bautista: the action star who can take down villains on screen, but off camera just wants purpose, peace — and enough dog food to last the apocalypse.
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