Acadian wrestler tackles Sherlock Holmes

A larger-than-life Acadian wrestler is about to grab some screen time alongside Robert Downey Jr. in the new movie Sherlock Holmes.

Robert Maillet stands a ceiling-scraping seven feet tall and wrestles under the name Kurrgan.

His first movie role was in the film 300 but he'sattracted even more attention with his performance as a villain in Sherlock Holmes because of a scene that went wrong.

While shooting last November, Maillet accidentally hit Downey.

"I knocked him down, but not knocked out he was still conscious, but barely," Maillet recalled in an interviewwith CBC News in Montreal.

"Basically, he zigged and I zagged, hit him in the mouth. It happened so fast, that even I didn't realize what happened, and he went down. Blood was coming out of his mouth."

Downey Jr. took it all in stride, buying him a bottle of champagne to show there were no hard feelings.

Maillet plays a villain "kind of like the Jaws character from James Bond," with his huge size and a silver tooth.

'Treated likea movie star'

Early in the shooting, director Guy Ritchie enlarged his role.

"At first I only had a couple of lines, but the day of filming, they found out that I spoke French, so Guy Ritchie had this idea to make me into a Frenchman, and I got more lines," he said.

Maillet lives in Ste. Marie-de-Kent, N.B., and works as a machine operator. He was trained as a wrestler by Bret Hart and Stephen Petitpas and made his debut in 1989.

"It's weird. I go from that to doing movies and being treated like a movie star," he said.

In 300, a film about the Spartan's war with the Persians, he played the Uber Immortal after being referred for the role by a wrestling contact.

He said he took to acting immediately.

"For me, it's not much of a stretch, it's all telling a story. Wrestling is theatre, physical theatre. You tell a story in a ring," Maillet said.

After Sherlock Holmes, which opens next week,Maillet has a role in The Big Bang, with Antonio Banderas and Sam Elliott.