Nearly 25 years ago, Derek Mears was just a scrawny Californian high-schooler dreading a field trip to a nearby ComedySportz performance. Little did he know, that trip would begin his evolution into a monster.
All nerdy innocence at the time, the 17-year-old fell in love with the improv outfit and was talented enough to immediately land a gig with the group.
“I learned a lot about self-confidence. I got a lot more comfortable with the alopecia,” Mears said.
(For Mears, having alopecia means almost total hair loss over his body — though he’s recently been able to grow a goatee.)
He quickly moved to the Los Angeles branch of ComedySportz, eventually landing a gig in the Universal Studio live production “The Wild, Wild, Wild West Stunt Show.”
It was there that Mears stumbled across his fate, learning the tools of a stuntman’s trade while daily performing a mixture of comedic theater and feats of dusty desert derring-do for thousands of the theme park’s visitors.
“In high school I was a scrawny kid — couldn’t do a pull-up,” he said. “While working [at the stunt show], I realized that if I worked out, I could be a bad guy in TV and film.”
That was a eureka moment for the now-established baddie.
A late-bloomer, Mears now stands at 6 feet 5 inches tall with a build like Atlas’ — and he’s got a circle of friends to match.
There’s Tyler Mane, the most recent Michael Myers in the “Halloween” franchise, standing at 6 feet 9 inches; then there’s Danny Trejo, another rough-and- tough hot shot.
Mears parlayed his body type, acting skills and stunt abilities into over a decade’s worth of bit roles in TV and film, eventually showing up in movies like “The Hills Have Eyes II” “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” “Hatchet III” and “Predators.”
But that isn’t to say you’d recognize him — his roles frequently alter his appearance. In this year’s “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters,” Mears played the huge troll Edward. In “Predators,” he was one of the predators.
Then there’s the masked role he’s perhaps most known for: that of iconic, machete-wielding mass murderer Jason Voorhees in the 2009 reboot of “Friday the 13th.”
“The way you’re presenting your body, that’s your tool,” he said. “People don’t realize we’re human keyboards with range. If somebody were to hurt a family member in front of you or kick your dog — we all have that anger inside. It’s shared humanity.”
But he still goes back to ComedySportz, flicking the internal switch between actor psycho and real-life nice guy.
“I’ve trained myself to be in tune with my feelings,” he said. “I can go over and come back.”
After years of harrowing and hazardous work — he almost drowned in a water tank when participating in a music video shoot — Mears jokes that the most dangerous part of his life was being married and getting divorced.
Mears will be in town for the weekend after his guest spot at ComedySportz, appearing as a guest at this year’s Crypticon, the annual celebration of all things sci-fi and scary.
Who: Derek Mears
Where: ComedySportz, 3001 S. Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis
When: 8 p.m., Thursday
Cost: $14
