Grillo’s career heating up with rush of roles
Frank Grillo is known for his lean physicality and intense performances, like the ex-con he plays in Friday’s dark, violent, revengefueled “Into the Ashes.”
Only now the NYC native finds himself rivaling Samuel L. Jackson as the busiest guy in showbiz with more than a half-dozen current credits.
Last spring he reprised his bad guy in an “Avengers: Endgame” cameo. In addition to “Ashes,” he stars in Netflix’s just-premiered “Point Blank,” which he also produced.
Due in October: “Black and Blue,” a bad cop/good cop thriller in which he teams with Naomie Harris (“Bond 25”). That’s just the start.
“Success for me was elusive,” acknowledged Grillo, 54, who made his film debut in the little-seen 1993 “Deadly Rivals.”
“It’s come late — and at a period when most actors’ lives are in a bit of a descent. Now, after being kept on the bench, I don’t know when it’s going to end so I just appreciate every day.”
In “Point Blank,” he’s a nice crook who targets only bad guys, but in “Ashes” his just-out-of-prison Sloan is murderously, unrelentingly dangerous.
“In Sloan’s world, if you have no honor among thieves, you have no value. A guy he trusted left him for dead. His one mission in life when he gets out is to get this guy. There’s nothing else.
“It’s a bit of a cat-andmouse film,” Grillo added, “and it’s unapologetic in its pursuit of violence, which I like. Getting to play that is kind of fun. In real life, there are consequences.”
Are there emotional consequences being this brutal on set?
“I try not to get too friendly. You don’t want to go too far from where he is spiritually and psychologically,” he said. “It’s a parody of who I am; there is a part of my sociopathic (tendencies).”
Does that go for when he comes home?
“I have three sons, 12, 15 and 21. Around my kids I’m a marshmallow and,” he jokes, “the mommy is the psychopath.”
Grillo’s career burst is productive but hardly glamorous. He’s rarely not on some distant location.
“I’m a disciplined guy. I need to have the stamina and look a certain way to pull this off. I travel with a trainer, I train every day. It’s part of who I am,” he revealed.
As for any party hearty times in this booming career, “I’ve done all that in my life enough for 10 people.”