RONDA’S CHALLENGE
As her new movie Mile 22 plays in the UAE, former UFC fighter and actress Ronda Rousey talks about how the same determination that helped her become a judo and martial arts champion will help her conquer Hollywood
THE ONLY PERSON who can beat up Ronda Rousey is Rousey herself, but she does it a fair amount of the time. “I’m a perfectionist,” Rousey said, wearing a white, extrafluffy bathrobe as she sat for an interview at a Beverly Hills hotel, “and I don’t like to lose or to let people down.”
That’s why she was nervous when, after years of success in judo and mixed martial arts, she tried her hand at acting in The Expendables 3 (2014) – and why it drove her crazy that she kept getting things wrong and forcing the cast and crew to go through take after take.
It was co-star Harrison Ford who saved her.
“He had this line in the movie, ‘Get these guys off my tail,’” Rousey recalled, curling her knees under her solid body. “Harrison Ford kept saying, ‘Get these guys off my trail.’ Then you would hear the director say, ‘Um, I’m sorry, Mr. Ford. It’s “tail.”’ We’d go again, and he would say, ‘Get those guys off my trail.’
“It was just so cool to see him do several takes and mess up here and there,” Rousey said. “He was so calm about it. I learned that I’m not the worst human being on earth if I mess up at something once in a while.”
The 31-year-old martial artist, wrestler and, now, actress hastened to make it clear that she remains driven and focused on winning.
Nonetheless, this was a new Ronda Rousey, far from the familiar grimacing, sweating athlete with a killer look in her eyes. She actually seemed, dare one say it, girly?
“I just asked my husband (Travis Browne) for video of our ducks swimming in their kiddie pool this morning,” Rousey admitted, laughing. “Is that so wrong?”
This version of Rousey, in her fluffy robe over a flowing green dress with little slits up the side, her light-brown hair pulled back off her forehead but falling down her back, was worlds away from the image her Ultimate Fighting Championship fans remember from December 31, 2016. That was the night when Rousey was knocked out 48 seconds into a comeback fight against Amanda Nunes and left the cage in her mother’s arms.
That stunning defeat, which followed a 2015 loss to Holly Holm that ended Rousey’s run as an unbeaten master of mixed martial arts, ended her U.F.C. career.
“I did a whole lot of crying,” said Rousey, a bronze-medal winner in judo at the 2008 Olympics, “and my amazing husband Travis held me and let me cry.
“In the end,” she continued, “Mom taught me to never prepare for failure. She also said it’s fine to allow yourself to be heartbroken and to let it hurt. You also have to move on.”
Next female star?
For Rousey, moving on includes a new job with World Wrestling Entertainment, plus a movie career – in which, naturally, she hopes to become the next big female action star.
She co-stars with Mark Wahlberg in Peter Berg’s Mile 22, playing now in UAE theatres. Wahlberg plays an elite American intelligence officer in charge of a top-secret tacticalcommand unit that includes tougher-than-nails agent Sam Snow (Rousey). Their mission is to get a government asset (Iko Uwais) out of a foreign country alive, bringing with him sensitive information.
“What I really loved about this film was that there are so many women involved in the action and it’s not really a novelty,” Rousey said. “This is a story about people. Some of them happen to be women, and they do tough and dangerous things.
“Real progress is made when that becomes normal.”
Rousey arrived on set without much acting experience. Her filmography thus far includes The Expendables 3 (2014), Furious 7 (2015) and Entourage (2015), plus a 2017 episode of the NBC series Blindspot. She wasn’t intimidated, though.
“There aren’t many goals I find difficult to accomplish,” she said simply. “With acting, it’s just hard to learn something
new with the world watching. But I love those kinds of challenges – I love people doubting me.”
She’s already come a long way.
Jump to the big screen
Raised in Riverside, California, and then in Jamestown, North Dakota, Rousey was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, which damaged her vocal cords.
“I couldn’t even speak correctly until I was about 6,” she said.
At age 8, snooping around the house one day, she discovered something she hadn’t known about her mother, Annmaria De Mars.
“I found a scrapbook in the closet,” Rousey recalled. “There were all these articles about my mother being a judoka champion and the first American to win a world judo championship in 1984. I had no idea that my mom was the greatest fighter on earth.
“At that moment the idea of being the best at something was planted,” she continued. “To see a world champion walking through your living room made me think, ‘Whatever I want to do, I can be the best if I work really hard at it.’”
Rousey’s father, who had broken his back sledding with his daughters and been left a paraplegic and in constant pain, committed suicide when she was 8.
Rousey began her own judo career at 11, with her mother as her trainer. At 17 she was the youngest judoka at the 2004 Olympics, in Athens, and at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 she won a bronze medal at 21. After winning her medal, she retired from judo and began her M.M.A. career.
Those were hardscrabble days, as Rousey shared a studio apartment in Venice Beach, California, and spent her days bartending and working as a waitress to support herself and her dog while she learned mixed martial arts. She made her professional debut in 2011, and the next year signed with U.F.C. as its first female fighter.
She won 12 consecutive M.M.A. fights, becoming the U.F.C.’S female bantamweight champion, before her loss to Holm in November 2015. Her loss to Nunes ended that career, but not her resolve to make her way in the world.
The same determination that helped her become a champion in judo and then in mixed martial arts, she believes, will help her conquer Hollywood.
“In life it’s very easy to protect yourself from disappointment by not allowing yourself to hope too much for something,” she said.
“The sad thing is, most of us expect to be let down. I look at it this way: If the worst happens, I can take it. I will still throw myself into something 100% and make it the most important thing.
“If it doesn’t work out, then I know it will be OK.”
She reserves her contempt not for people who lose, but for people who refuse to try.
“It’s easy for people to say, ‘Oh, I didn’t try that hard. I didn’t give it my best,’” Rousey explained. “I believe those people don’t want to know that their best isn’t good enough. That’s a hard thing to face.”
Life on her farm
These days Rousey is on the lookout for acting opportunities, but her primary commitment is to World Wrestling Entertainment.
“There’s nothing directly on the horizon,” Rousey said. “W.W.E. is taking over the majority of my life now.”
When she isn’t working, Rousey is to be found on the expansive farm she and her husband – Travis Browne, a mixed martial artist in the heavyweight division for U.F.C. – own outside of Venice, California. There they tend a large group of chickens, five goats, three dogs and various other critters. Yes, that includes ducks.
“Those ducks make me so happy,” she said. “No one would recognise me, the farmer and homebody. I’m cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for my husband and hand-feeding my little runt-of-the-litter goat, Rio, in my free time.
“I bottle-feed Rio,” Rousey continued, “and he does that goat thing where he shakes his little tail, goes cross-eyed and leans into me with that frothy milk mouth while he’s drinking. It’s the best thing in the world.”
In the afternoons, she and Browne take their goats for a walk.
“We’re trying to get them to form a pack,” she said, “so we walk our goats across the property as one large group, plus the two of us. I call it ‘Apocalypse Goat Training.’”
The evenings are dedicated to television. “My husband and I watch one show each night before we go to bed,” Rousey said.
“Two nights are devoted to Westworld, because the first time one of us will fall asleep, so we have to watch each episode twice.”
The sad thing is, most of us expect to be let down. I look at it this way: If the worst happens, I can take it. I will still throw myself into something 100% and make it the most important thing.” Ronda Rousey