Retired Jay Hieron on acting: Getting beat up is good thing – unlike in MMA

Jay Hieron might be retired from MMA, but he’s still fighting.

The 37-year-old veteran is fully invested in an acting and stuntman career that frequently has him trading blows on camera. Only these days, he’s trying to lose.

“It’s crazy to me how life goes in circles,” Hieron told MMAjunkie Radio. “I’ve been training so long to win fights, and most of the stuff I get now, I’m losing. So it’s like I’m trying to get used to losing now.

“But it’s cool. It’s acting. I’ve had some people come up to me and say, ‘You get beat up all the time?’ Yeah, it’s acting. If it looks like I’m getting beat up? Thank you. I’m doing good. Hopefully I start winning fights. Maybe one day, I’ll play a good guy.”

Until that day comes, Hieron, who recently announced his MMA retirement, is more than happy to take any job that forwards his career. He’ll gladly throttle a car or get set on fire, and if the money’s right, he’ll deal with spiders.

“I’ll do fire any day over spiders,” he said with a laugh.

The point, he said, is that he’s moved ahead and made a choice to live life on his own terms rather than at the whim of promoters. Although acting offers even less security than the fight game, he is free to take any job offered to him.

While still an active fighter, he frequently had to turn down acting roles in order to not disrupt his training camps. In the past two years, he said the offers got so frequent that he made a decision to step away from his decade-long fighting career.

Hieron announced his retirement this past week with a 23-7 record and stints in nearly every promotion of note in MMA: UFC, Bellator MMA, Strikeforce, Affliction, WEC and IFL. By hanging up his gloves now, he said, he has a chance to make an impact in another industry.

“I started seeing that if you’re not accessible, they’re not going to call you,” Hieron said of his acting gigs. “So that was a big reason. I’m still healthy. I’ve still got a noodle up in my head; I can still think. I can still read lines or whatever I’ve got to do. I weighed all the options, and that was definitely part of it.”

The transition hasn’t always been smooth sailing, however. Hieron said he’s still learning the life of an actor, and it’s not as easy as its made out to be. A short-notice audition taught him that lesson.

“A friend was having a party, and I’d promised I’d go,” he said. “So I was reading my lines in the club, trying to remember them. I don’t want to just read it off paper, because then you get in there and your voice is cracking. So I’m reading them out loud, and people are looking at me like, ‘Yo, what did you say to me. This guy is f–king nuts.’

“So I’m up all night, and I go in, and I get stuck right away. I ask them if I can do it again, and that’s the worst thing you can do. They don’t have time for that. That right there, I probably lost it. I did it again, and I stuttered again. I finally got through it, but it was horrible.”

For the jobs he has booked, however, he’s seen the benefits of success in the form of residual checks that show up in his mailbox long after shoots. His IMDB profile lists jobs on several major TV shows and films such as “The Amazing Spiderman 2? and a remake of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

“It’s not a fight check, but it’s like a snowball,” he said. “I keep adding to it, and it keeps growing.”

And he’s met plenty of people who recognize him from his days in the cage. He recently worked with veteran actor Jim Caviezel (who played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ”), who asked for workout tips. But Hieron said he doesn’t hustle while he’s on set, and he gives stars their space.

“Some of them want to stay in character because they’re working,” he said. “Let them engage in conversations, if they even want to. In between takes, if they want to do their own thing and stay in character, I leave them alone. We can talk fighting if they want. I go off the energy they give me.”

While repeatedly falling down can take its toll on the body, Hieron said it’s a lot better than staying in the fight game too long and taking unnecessary damage.

“I was blessed to go after it,” he said. “I’ve made a lot of sacrifices to move forward in this career, and it’s starting to pay off. I’m comfortable.”

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