Billy Idol says that he lost out on a key role in James Cameron's hugely successful Terminator film franchise due to the injuries he received in a horrific motorbike accident in 1990.
The former Generation X frontman-turned- platinum punk solo artist was set to land the role of the shapeshifting android killing machine T-1000 in the sequel to James Cameron's hugely successful 1984 sci-fi thriller The Terminator, which turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into an acting superstar, after topping US box office charts. According to stunt coordinator Joel Kramer, Idol was James Cameron's "first pick" to play the killing machine, but Idol admits that he wouldn't have been up to the physical demands of the role, in the wake of the Hollywood motorbike crash he suffered on February 6, 1990, which doctors initially feared would necessitate amputating his right leg. Robert Patrick, brother of Filter frontman Richard Patrick, was subsequently cast in the movie, but admitted in 2017, “I can tell you that I saw Billy’s image when I went to Stan Winston after I got the role."
"I did do an audition for it," Idol tells Q online, "but I'd had a really bad motorcycle accident. James Cameron always shoots the reading or the audition, whatever you want to call it. So they actually shot it, I've actually seen it, where at one point he says, 'The T-1000 lives!' [Laughs.] I had the police helmet on and the shades.
"But the trouble was, I had to be able to run. You know, there's one point where the T-1000 runs after the car, you know that whole bit. Well, I had to be able to run, and I had a terrible limp from the motorcycle accident, so I couldn't do the movie. It was such a drag. Stan Winston's special effects department, they had drawings of me as the T-1000. But in the end, Robert Patrick brought a cold veneer that I could never have brought to it. He brought a cold veneer that was really robotic. So the right man got the job!"
Some good did come from the accident, however, as it inspired the song Bitter Taste on Idol's 2022 EP The Roadside.
"It’s me reflecting back on this accident," he told Classic Rock last year. Was it something terrible, or was it something really good, where I took stock of everything and started to realise that I had to take control of myself in terms of the drug addiction?
"And I did start, but I didn’t really start to gradually pull back until '93 or '94. It took me a long time to come to terms with the drug addiction, to get it under control and get a sense of discipline, because there was no real control. Nowadays, I’ve taken back control and I’m much happier because I’m back to being me."
