Actor and action star Frank Grillo recently turned 60, but he could convincingly pass for characters 20 years younger: square-jawed, 40-something Italian American dudes who might either kick your ass, charm you with their explosive gregariousness or possibly even bring you to tears — if ever given such an opportunity.
Over the course of his 30-plus years in the business, Grillo has appeared in more than 100 films or series, spanning soaps, police and military procedurals (The Shield, CSI, Prison Break, End of Watch, Homefront and Zero Dark Thirty), sports dramas (Warrior, Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend) and endless action flicks (The Grey, The Purge, Hounds of War). He’s also become a mainstay of some of the biggest, most watched tentpoles in the world, featured regularly in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe (as recurring character Brock Rumlow/Crossbones) and the latest DC Universe movies (as Rick Flag Sr. in James Gunn’s Superman and its upcoming sequel). He even co-starred in China’s highest-grossing action film ever, 2017’s Wolf Warrior 2, playing the colorful villain Big Daddy — helping the movie earn $874 million worldwide.
“I look at that, and it’s just crazy to me,” Grillo says. “Acting has given me and my kids a really great life. Considering where I came from, I look around and I can’t believe I got here.”
Among action film fans, Grillo’s fitness regimen is the stuff of legend. He’s been working out consistently since boyhood and exercises at least two and a half hours every day, combining boxing with heavy weightlifting. He eats just one meal a day, and the menu seldom varies: a large serving of grass-fed meat, vegetables, an avocado and a Japanese sweet potato. But he insists there is no “Grillo method” behind his vitality and entertainment industry longevity.
“It’s just grit, determination and keeping going,” he says.
Grillo currently has a solid stretch of high-profile work ahead of him. He’s about to begin production in Atlanta on a fourth season of the Paramount+ series Tulsa King, in which he co-stars opposite Sylvester Stallone, a childhood hero who has become a friend.
“It’s a fun show and such a trip to me that I’m in it,” Grillo says. “I grew up poor in the Bronx, the son of an Italian immigrant family in the 1970s. Sly was a god in my neighborhood. I do video calls with him now, and there are still moments where I’m like, ‘That’s fucking Rocky!’ ”
After Tulsa King, Grillo will head straight into production for 10 weeks in the U.K. and Georgia on James Gunn’s Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow.
“My character, Rick Flag Sr., is a big part of the sequel’s story, so I’m excited about it,” he says.
After decades of being driven by a working-class chip on his shoulder, Grillo says he’s attained a newfound equanimity about life and the ups and downs of being a jobbing actor. He credits the shift in his outlook to removing alcohol from his lifestyle — and the introduction of some occasional psychedelics.
“A couple of years ago, I gave up drinking. I wasn’t self-destructive, but I drank wine most nights and definitely had to sweat it out in the gym sometimes,” he explains. “Giving it up has really changed everything for me. I just feel clearer and more connected — with my work and myself. I’m more patient; I’m better with my kids.
“But what really blew my eyes open,” Grillo adds, was some late-life experimentation with psychedelics. “I did some mushrooms — microdosing and some heroes’ journeys,” he explains. “But the thing that really changed my outlook in a lasting way was smoking Bufo — toad venom.”
A natural psychedelic derived from the venom of the Colorado River toad, Bufo contains 5-MeO-DMT, one of the world’s most powerful psychoactive compounds, often described as the “god molecule” for its intense, short-lasting mystical experiences.
“Listen, I’m not one of those out-there California guys,” he says, laughing. “I’m really not, but this experience lasts about 15 minutes, and you come away from it knowing that there isn’t really a me and a you, or an us and a them — we’re all connected to everything.”
Grillo as Rick Flag Sr. in ‘Superman.’
He adds: “It’s given me an openness about acting and a sense of patience about my career. I really feel grounded and accepting in way that I didn’t for so much of my life.”
Grillo’s father was an Italian immigrant and his mother the daughter of immigrants. They had him when they were still teenagers, and the actor remembers constant fighting over money struggles throughout his childhood. The family eventually moved from the Bronx to Rockland County, New York, to achieve the dream of a life in the suburbs, but they lost their home to foreclosure after falling behind on payments.
“When I think back on that time, no wonder things were hard,” he says. “They were so young — literally kids — and had no advantages. It’s amazing I even survived! My home life was really chaotic.”
Grillo was small as a kid and frequently bullied — “I fucking hate bullies; I’m really against it” — but by around age 8, he discovered competitive wrestling, and his lifelong obsession with athletics, combat sports and physical training fell into place. Wrestling was followed by football, and an encounter with karate at a neighborhood mall — inspired by an early obsession with Bruce Lee — later led to competitive boxing, Brazilian jujitsu and other martial arts disciplines.
“The structure and camaraderie of sports gave me something I was missing — it was the first place I really felt safe and could thrive,” he says. “If it wasn’t for sports, I don’t know what would have happened to me — nothing good.”
After high school, Grillo studied finance and briefly worked on Wall Street. “When I was growing up, there was constant fighting about money. I realized right away I didn’t want a career where the only focus was money — it repulsed me,” he remembers.
So he soon headed west to California with uncertain ambitions, landing at Gold’s Gym in Los Angeles as a personal trainer. His early clients were nearly all gay men.
“We came from very different worlds, but these guys really supported me, and I recognized what badass people they were because of the struggles they faced and overcame during that era,” he says. “I say that they financed my start in acting.”
With his looks and working-man charisma, Grillo began landing commercial work and TV parts, eventually earning a regular gig back in New York on the daytime soap Guiding Light. He credits the show’s relentless pace with teaching him the discipline of being a working actor, if not the artistic range. Later returning to L.A., he hired an acting coach and declared to his family that he was going to become a serious actor.
“They found it hysterical, but it was important to me to make that declaration for my own sense of mission,” he says.
Brief TV parts followed — Gary David Goldberg’s short-lived Battery Park and Steven Bochco’s Blind Justice — but it wasn’t until he was 41 that he felt he finally made it onto Hollywood’s radar.
In 2008, he landed a supporting role in Gavin O’Connor’s Pride and Glory (opposite Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich). Though not a hit, the film was closely followed in the industry and helped Grillo get noticed. He also forged a bond with O’Connor, who later cast him in Warrior, the breakthrough MMA drama starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte.
Grillo in ‘The Purge,’ his first starring vehicle.
“Watching Nolte changed my whole idea of what acting could be,” Grillo says. “He carried around this big binder of notes and ideas for his character, and I was just like, ‘Wow, look how fucking deep that guy goes.’ ”
Grillo channeled some of that energy into his scene-stealing turn as MMA trainer Frank Campana, collaborating closely with O’Connor and improvising much of his dialogue in the ring.
“That was the one that really got me noticed, where I suddenly started getting calls from people like Ari Emanuel,” Grillo says.
He then began preparing for the distinctive character actor parts that followed — such as the cop in Jake Gyllenhaal’s End of Watch (2012), the plane crash survivor in Liam Neeson’s The Grey, or the Navy officer in Zero Dark Thirty — with the same all-consuming intensity that he brought to the gym, looking for ways to add dimension to archetypal tough guys.
Not long after, the opportunity came to audition for the Russo brothers’ early Marvel tentpole Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which would become one of the most critically and commercially successful non-Avengers, non-Iron Man titles in the franchise.
“I went into it thinking I would be auditioning in some small room, but I showed up and they had us do it on the soundstage, surrounded by these massive Marvel sets. I looked around, and there were a bunch of famous faces that I recognized going for the same part,” Grillo recalls.
“Getting that part made me globally recognizable in a way I never imagined,” he adds.
In recent years, Grillo’s action flick output has accelerated dramatically — AFM-geared titles like This Is the Night with Naomi Watts, Copshop with Gerard Butler, Ida Red with Melissa Leo, Stowaway with Ruby Rose, A Day to Die with Bruce Willis and many others — and Grillo is candid about the reasons: “I got divorced in 2020, and that’s expensive in California!
“I had to refill the coffers just to get by and keep my life on track,” he continues. “It set me back a bit in terms of what I was building as an actor, but I always appreciate the opportunity to be working.”
Despite how prolific he’s been in recent years, Grillo’s approach to his craft remains an open work in progress. He recently wrapped production on the sci-fi survival thriller Override opposite Borat 2 star Maria Bakalova. Grillo stars as an AI-generated “synthetic angel” who comes to the aid of a futuristic soldier (Bakalova) after she’s injured and left for dead. “It’s a really fun little film and a two-hander that allowed me to try new things,” Grillo says. “I’m very open and excited by young actors who really go for it, and Maria is an amazing talent. There were moments where I was watching what she was doing and thinking, ‘There’s a lot I can learn from this young woman.’ ”
In the wake of his Bufo-induced ego death, Grillo says he’s been refocusing on the things that matter — “my sons, working with great people, feeling good and enjoying the ride.”
“You look around, and it’s like the Talking Heads — ‘This is not my beautiful house’ — so I sold a big mansion I had in the Hollywood Hills,” he says. “I’ve been trying to let go of anything that’s weighing me down.”
He adds: “These days, I just want to spend all of the time I have left with my boys, who’ve become these grown-up dudes. When I’m gone, I hope they think, ‘Dad was an alright guy, you know, he really tried.’”
All three of Grillo’s sons — age 17 to 28 — have shown interest in the entertainment business.
“Now I’ve got these nepo babies!” he says, laughing, reflecting on his own decades-long climb through the business from a starting point of nothing. In 2023, Grillo starred in his oldest son, Remy Grillo’s, directorial debut, The Resurrection of Charles Manson.
“Some people told me I shouldn’t do it, but he committed to taking the work very seriously, and that’s my boy — are you fucking kidding me? Like I’m not going to do it?”
Given the way his kids have grown up on the sidelines of his film sets, Grillo likens their interest in entertainment to nothing more unusual than entering the family business: “It’s only natural that they might want to give it a try. Being somebody’s kid might help open the door, but if they don’t have talent or discipline — or at least something special — they’re not going to last more than a few seconds in this business. You’ve got to bring something, or no one’s going to give a shit who your dad was. I did it my way, and they’ll find theirs.”
Manfred Baumann
