Keith Jardine beat Forrest Griffin and Chuck Liddell in the UFC Octagon and now he’s looking to stun cinema audiences with Kill Me Again, his first full-feature directorial debut. But while he may be retired from MMA, the man they called “The Dean of Mean” still uses the lessons he learned as an athlete to ace his movie career.
“As a fighter, unless you win, you learn how to fail: how to get off the mat and fight again, and acting is the same way,” explains Jardine, who retired with a 17-11-0 record in MMA. “I won more than I lost in fighting, and in acting, believe me, I’ve failed way more than I’ve succeeded.”
No doubt, in the ultra-competitive world of showbiz, Jardine has learned that he must bank on himself just as he did as an athlete. “You gotta get up off that mat after that failed audition. They didn’t like you, whatever, you take it as a failure. You lost. You didn’t get it. You’re trying to pay your rent, and you didn’t get that job, you know? If you don’t get out of bed and make things happen, nothing’s happening. So that fighter’s mindset helped me a lot, and just the work ethic. I just put the hours in every day, regardless of how I’m feeling.”
Fortunately, things are definitely happening as a result of Jadine’s warrior-like work ethic. His first forays on-screen included a role opposite Jason Statham in Crank 2: High Voltage and credits in Breaking Bad and John Wick. Now, he’s building a solid reputation behind the camera, too. In 2023, Jardine won an independent Short Award for his crime story, El Paso:1155, and now he’s taking on his first full feature as a director.
Kill Me Again follows Charlie (played by Brendan Fehr), a serial killer who becomes trapped in his own nightmare. It’s a psychological horror that has many twists and turns, and was also written by Jardine, who’s love of stories from different genres influenced the plot. “It’s The Batman’s, the blockbusters, and all that action of the 80s,” recalls the renaissance man.
“I was in high school in the early 90s and my friend made me watch Clerks (1994) One of the best movies I saw.” Jardine tells M&F that he also draws from movies like The Big Lebowski. “I remember just laughing out loud throughout the theater,” he recalls. Jardine also has a fond place for Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, a movie he watched with his dad. “This relates to Kill Me Again a lot, because there’s a lot of big twists at the end, and there’s a lot of little Easter eggs in there,” he teases.
How Keith Jardine stays fit for making films
“Every morning, I work out, eat my huge breakfast, and the rest of the day seems to fall in line after that,” says the man who reached the semi-finals of The Ultimate Fighter, Season 2 back in 2005.
Jardine still sets his alarm for 5am and either hits the gym or takes his dogs out for a sprint. The huge breakfast that Jardine speaks of includes six eggs, along with tortillas. “I try to start off good with really clean food,” he says. “I got these tortillas that are only plantain and baking soda basically as the ingredients. So, I like to make those and eat them with my eggs and some avocado. I don’t really worry about the calories in the morning. I just try to try to feel good and then, depending on how intense my workout was, I’ll have two more meals in the day. One big one, one small one, and I’ll do my best not to snack… because I’m a hell of a snacker!”
Jardine, who was also a personal trainer at one time, says that being fit isn’t about having the perfect workout. “Just go have fun,” he encourages. “Just go move some weight around and learn how to be make your body capable. It shouldn’t be something you dread. If you go to the gym and you only touch the leg press machine, and do four sets and go home, that’s a success!” You can’t take the fight out of this filmmaker, however. “Every day, I try to get to a point where I lose my breath,” says Jardine. “That means I do max pull ups, or I sprint up a hill or I do some power cleans. You know, if I do that once a day, I feel I’ve done a lot.”
Keith Jardine’s Kill Me Again will be released in theaters and VOD platforms such as Prime Video and Apple TV+ on August 8.
