Shirtless in Hollywood: The Battle for Hollywood

About this book

Matthias Hues' unfiltered memoir of clawing his way from a German bodybuilder with a thick accent and pidgin English in Venice Beach to a 70-plus-credit action icon — the deals, the danger, and the glitter and sleaze of Hollywood along the way.

Shirtless in Hollywood: The Battle for Hollywood is Matthias Hues' first-hand account of his more than thirty-year run as one of action cinema's most memorable screen villains, from his screen debut in No Retreat, No Surrender 2 through headlining roles in Age of Treason and Digital Man, and squaring off on screen against Dolph Lundgren in I Come in Peace, Billy Blanks in Talons of the Eagle, and Bolo Yeung in TC-2000. Before any of that, Hues left Germany for Los Angeles speaking pidgin English with a heavy German accent, trained at Gold's Gym Venice, and worked the Sunset Strip's Tropicana scene while chasing a shot at the movie business — determined to shed the accent so completely he'd never be typecast as the German villain, to the point that Germans back home simply assumed he was American. The book pulls back the curtain on what that chase actually looked like: the deal-makers, the socialite parties, the high-stakes gambling, and the hustlers and con artists who came with the territory — told, in Hues' own words, as "a first-hand look into my Hollywood world of glitter, power, fame, and fortune."

What it is

A working actor's real account of building a 30-plus-year career as Hollywood's go-to villain — from a German bodybuilder who arrived with pidgin English and a thick accent to the man who traded blows on screen with Dolph Lundgren, Billy Blanks, and Bolo Yeung, determined to sound so American that Germans back home simply assumed he was.

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Kindle, Paperback

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