At 6 feet, 3 inches and a hulking 290 pounds, Dave Bautista was once the most feared wrestler in the WWE. But that didn't stop 5-foot-3-inch Jodie Foster from cutting the actor down to size on the first day of their new thriller, Hotel Artemis (opening Friday). Bautista, 49, was already understandably nervous meeting two-time Oscar winner Foster, 55, for the film in which he plays a hospital caretaker named Everest (you know, like the mountain). Foster started right in with the verbal blows. "So, she's studying me and she says, 'You’re not nearly as big as I thought you’d be,' " Bautista tells USA TODAY. "I was dying inside, but trying not to show it. I gave a nervous laugh. But she didn’t laugh at all. I wasn’t sure if she was messing with me." The knocks continued as Foster started comparing Bautista with Liam Neeson, her co-star in the 1994 drama Nell. More:Jodie Foster's 'Black Mirror' episode casts a 'female eye' on futuristic sci-fi "So we're reading and she lays it on even thicker," says Bautista. "She was like, 'Liam Neeson is much bigger than you.' I was getting self-conscious, terrified that she might be second-guessing me for this (Everest) role. Like, is it too late to replace me?" To be fair, Neeson is slightly taller at 6 feet, 4 inches. But even Neeson wouldn't agree with any "much bigger" assessment, at least not to Bautista's face. Foster never let on that she was joking. It was only when Bautista confided to co-star Sterling K. Brown about the discussion that the laughing Brown assured him that Foster was just messing with his head. "That put me at ease. Jodie Foster was needling me," says Bautista. But Foster never let on — even when Bautista asked her about the comments after filming. "She said she had never thought twice about it. She did giggle about it, though," Bautista recalls. Then Foster told him: "But you know, Liam is much bigger than you."<doc-sep>Video: Jodie Foster, Dave Bautista and Drew Pearce on Hotel Artemis Hotel Artemis is a bombastic and thrilling debut from Iron-Man 3 writer Drew Pearce with a killer cast led by the legendary Jodie Foster. RELATED: Interviews with Hotel Artemis Cast: Boutella, Brown, Day and Henry Set in a not-so-distant future, Hotel Artemis is a member’s only emergency room by way of spa hotel for criminals needing some medical attention in riot-torn LA. Run by The Nurse (Jodie Foster) with the assistance of her orderly Everest (Dave Bautista), the duo help criminals like Nice (Sofia Boutella), Waikiki (Sterling K. Brown), Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry) and Acapulco (Charlie Day) get back to health at a price with a hefty set of rules. The night seems like any other at the hotel but with the impending arrival of the Wolf King (Jeff Goldblum), a series of events begins to unfold that might just push everyone behind the walls of the Artemis over the edge. Here are the second half of our interviews where we dive into the world of the film with stars Jodie Foster, Dave Bautista and director Drew Pearce. They discuss what it was like to work alongside an incredible ensemble and what they would keep from the cool futuristic tech seen in the film. Watch what they had to say in the video below! Hotel Artemis opens in theaters June 8th.<doc-sep>There are bad movies everywhere. And then there is 97 minutes of total garbage called Hotel Artemis. This shoddy, gross, cruel and nauseating freak show is the work of Drew Pearce, a writer of no discernible talent (Iron Men 3, Mission Impossible—Rogue Nation), making an atrocious directing debut. Moronic drivel that truly qualifies as the worst movie of the year, it sinks amateurish moviemaking aimed at audiences with no taste to an alarming new low. HOTEL ARTEMIS (0/4 stars) Directed by: Drew Pearce Written by: Drew Pearce Starring: Jodie Foster, Jeff Goldblum, Zachary Quinto, Dave Bautista, Sterling K. Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, Sofia Boutella Running time: 97 mins. A creepy combo of science fiction and bloody, slashing carnage, it’s set, for some unexplained reason, in 2028—on one busy night in a futuristic Los Angeles reduced to a pile of rubble and corpses, where the citizens are rioting and killing each other over the dwindling water supply. In a world of almost terminal darkness where a flashlight could lead to sudden death, the Hotel Artemis is a deserted building that serves as a Grand Guignol horror show. In this fetid, members-only stinkhole (numerous references are made to the way it smells), wounded outlaws come to be treated for knife slashings, gunshots and worse, in an emergency room for criminals run by an ancient hag called The Nurse, played by none other than—wait for it!—Jodie Foster. Disfigured with prosthetics, crone makeup and wrinkles for days, this resourceful, intelligent actress looks 104 years old and does everything in her power to avoid trashing her considerable talent in a role that can only be described as stupid and meaningless. Either she’s doing somebody a favor or she needed money badly. Whatever the reason for insulting her admirers, this junk movie isn’t worth it. Wielding hypodermic needles and barbaric instruments of torture, The Nurse administers triage to an assortment of deranged killers, bank robbers and gang members who have reduced the outside world to an abattoir of severed limbs and rotting bandages. Helicopters explode overhead, generators are noisily re-wired, the sky outside the windows looks like a lava flow in Guatemala, and the sound of machine guns make conversation an impossible task, but inside the Hotel Artemis, if you are a member of this private club, you can hide out for a while and get some medical treatment, as long as you’re not a cop or member of government authority—and they don’t run out of opiates. In a film of endless enigmas, the biggest mystery of all is what Jodie Foster is doing in it. The idiotic screenplay insists a world revolution is in progress with the poor declaring war on the rich. There are good guys and bad guys, but nobody bothers to explain who is who, what is what, or why. The Nurse, hooked on pain killers and whiskey, greets a rogue’s gallery of creeps from Central Casting including “The Wolf King” (a.k.a. Niagara), a master fiend who rules L.A. (a silly performance by a miscast Jeff Goldblum); a band of thugs led by his menacing son (a one-dimensional Zachary Quinto); a Neanderthal health-care professional named after Mt. Everest (Dave Bautista); a bank robber named Waikiki (Sterling K. Brown) and his drug-addicted kid brother Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry); a scumbag businessman named Acapulco; and Nice, (referring to the town in the South of France, not a pleasing personality trait) a karate-chopping lady assassin in a red evening dress (played by the dreadful Sofia Boutella, who can barely speak a word of intelligible English). The rest of the cast performs with such a uniformly sluggish ineptitude that it is an act of generosity not to mention their names. Drew Pearce’s direction is a real slog. His alleged script, which borrows and steals from every action cliche imaginable, makes so little sense it might as well be written in Swahili. A subplot about a diamond hidden in a fountain pen is so lame it must be a joke. Like everything else, it backfires. I laughed more at the sight of Foster escaping to her sordid room for endless replays of The Mama & The Papas singing “California Dreamin'” But the biggest laugh in the movie is the only real laugh in Hotel Artemis, when she gets so tired of the mayhem and shootouts and falling cadavers that she sighs a big one and threatens to put up a “No Vacancy” sign. It’s too late. Everyone else has already checked out early.<doc-sep>There’s a lot of genre flourish packed into a relatively tidy running time in “Hotel Artemis,” the directorial feature debut from the screenwriter Drew Pearce. Extrapolating from a droll “hotel for criminals only” concept recently seen in a sequence from 2014’s “John Wick,” this movie makes the locale a combination hotel/hospital, sets the story a decade in the future, adds appropriately advanced technology, and surrounds it with a rioting Los Angeles populace up in arms over the privatization of water. Presiding over the facilities is a quiet, sad, hard-drinking older woman played by Jodie Foster — “older woman,” good grief! — who answers to The Nurse, and her bruiser orderly, nicknamed Everest and played by Dave Bautista in his most credible screen turn yet.<doc-sep>
When Dave Bautista heard he would share the screen with Jodie Foster in Hotel Artemis, the former WWE star kind of flipped out. Being cast alongside the two-time Oscar winner in the futuristic drama (in theaters Friday) was a reflection of the respect that Bautista is earning onscreen. "It's just the kind of validation I was looking for," he says. "I've been trying to prove myself as an actor." That point has already been proven. Bautista, 49, a six-time WWE world champion, is now rocking the screen. Here's how: We prayed for him to fight off Ryan Gosling in 'Blade Runner 2049' Bautista's bioengineered Sapper Morton faced off against Ryan Gosling's Officer K in the jaw-dropping opening sequence of October's Blade Runner 2049. Somehow, Bautista made you root for his doomed replicant from the moment he calmly, and with resignation, folded his glasses to begin their battle. More:Jodie Foster slams Dave Bautista: 'Liam Neeson is much bigger than you' Also:Why John Cena and The Rock make a case for extra movie muscle Sure, the fight looked painfully bruising for Gosling, with Bautista subtly using his past fight training: "I’ve made a career out of not hurting people with professional wrestling." But it was next-level stuff the way he carried his Sapper Morton with unspoken but profound sadness, giving the scene a haunting resonance and marking a career turning point. "Even for a small part, that has really opened doors for me," he says. "After that, people really started seeing me as a character actor." He owns Drax's sublime comedic timing in 'Guardians' Bautista's Drax the Destroyer is the perfect complement to the misfit group comedy of the Guardians of the Galaxy crew. He's all shirtless power warrior, blurting inconceivably ridiculous statements with utter conviction. From 2014's Guardians to last year's Guardians 2 and now Avengers: Infinity War, Bautista has played the multihued straight man flawlessly. He never breaks or winks at the audience, but his Drax does give that boisterous off-kilter laugh at all the perfectly wrong moments. Bautista, who will return for Guardians 3 (2020), just doesn't overthink the part. "Now it’s a part of me. I am Drax, and Drax is me," he says. He gave James Bond a worthy 'Spectre' baddie Bautista's Mr. Hinx was the consummate old-school villain and henchman, giving Daniel Craig's James Bond, and a train car, a solid thrashing in 2015's Spectre. Best of all, Mr. Hinx's screen demise was left open-ended. He could have survived. We strongly endorse a Hinx return in the 25th Bond movie (2019), Craig's last time in the role. "We had great nostalgic chemistry, like throwback Bond," says Bautista. "I am really praying they bring me back." He holds his own with Jodie Foster Bautista goes toe-to-toe with Foster, made up to portray a 70-year-old nurse proprietor in Hotel Artemis. His orderly Everest faithfully assists The Nurse in running a secret hospital for criminals. "At first, I was nervous and intimidated," says Bautista, who acknowledges that Foster trolled him a bit in the beginning. "But I'm like that on every job, and I never let fear stop me."