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ITINERARY It's not every day that a movie star calls you from his New Orleans rooftop between laying new shingles because the old ones were damaged in a recent rainstorm. But Anthony Mackie is not your typical movie star. A chameleon who effortlessly transitions between acclaimed theater work (he's an August Wilson regular on Broadway) and stellar turns in films like The Hurt Locker and this month's thriller, Man on a Ledge, the 32-year-old remains as down-to-earth and humble as ever. He chatted with American Way about his upbringing, his new role and his Brooklyn bar. AMERICAN WAY: Is it true that reading Shakespeare is what turned you on to acting? ANTHONY MACKIE: When I was growing up in New Orleans, Shakespeare wasn't a part of the school curriculum, but I found it anyway and it totally turned me on. I wouldn't be who I am today with- out the arts. All that said, whatever education I didn't get in school, I got on Bourbon Street. [Laughs] AW: Were you looking for trouble as a kid? AM: I wasn't looking for trouble, but trouble always seemed to find me. I've been fortunate in my old age to recognize trouble early on, whereas when I was a kid, trouble just looked like fun. I was fortunate; I grew up with both of my parents and five brothers and sisters. There was always someone looking to correct me. AW: In Man on a Ledge, you play the opposite side of trouble — you're a cop. AM: And it's the first movie I get to play a married guy. That's hard, man. AW: You also own and operate NoBar in Brooklyn. What's the key to running a good watering hole? AM: Growing up in New Orleans, you get a doctorate in good times, so NoBar is all about customer service and making sure people want to come back. A lot of joints in New York are looking for home runs — get a guy on a $600 bottle and send him on his way. I don't care about the bottle; I want the guy coming in every day because he feels the love. There's nothing better than a nice beverage and a pretty girl. [Laughs] That's the title of my memoir, by the way. "You're called into a situation as a cop. As a soldier, you land in situations." —ANTHONY MACKIE on the difference between playing a soldier and a police officer 16 JANUARY 15, 2012 AA.COM/AMERICANWAY Hard-Bodied Hollywood If GINA CARANO , the star of Steven Soderbergh's new bone- crunching, adrenalized action flick, Haywire, doesn't ring a bell, consider a different kind of ring — the fist-throwing kind. Carano, an American Gladiators veteran and a mixed martial arts expert, is venturing full-throttle into the world of film, but she's certainly not the first body slammer to make the transition. Here's a roundup of other mat masters who have delivered clotheslines, avalanches and stingers to the multiplex. —J.R. DWAYNE "THE ROCK" JOHNSON As Arnold Schwar- zenegger was to pumping iron, Johnson is to pro wrestling, combining all of his chest-pumping panache with a natural charm, self-deprecating humor and an almost unerring eye for on-screen material (The Game Plan, Fast Five). "ROWDY" RODDY PIPER A B-movie god, Piper took his combat chops to the big screen in one of cinema's longest bouts of fisticuffs in John Carpenter's They Live. HULK HOGAN "The ultimate male versus the ultimate meatball," is the fight Hogan's Thunderlips flamboyantly promises fans in Rocky III. The Hulk also locked audiences into Mr. Nanny and Santa with Muscles. "STONE COLD" STEVE AUSTIN Go figure: The tough guy with an attitude problem in the wrestling ring has excelled at playing a tough guy with an attitude problem in films like The Longest Yard and The Expendables. ANDRÉ THE GIANT This mountain of a man — known as "the Eighth Wonder of the World" — lent skyscrapers of sweetness to The Princess Bride and played Bigfoot in TV's The Six Million Dollar Man. JESSE "THE BODY" VENTURA Ventura cobbled to- gether a formidable, uh, body of on-screen work in the 1980s and '90s — The Running Man, Predator, Batman & Robin — before ditching it all for politics in Minnesota. MYLES ARONOWITZ; HARD-BODIED HOLLYWOOD: CLAUDETTE BARIUS; EVERETT COLLECTION (6)

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