Kevin Gage is the actor who plays Gabriel Rorke in Activision’s new Call of Duty: Ghosts video game. Without giving away any spoilers, Rorke is the main antagonist in the new Campaign mode, and he’s a pretty mean villain. But in real life, the 56 year-old Hollywood actor, who’s starred in movies like Heat, Con Air and G.I. Jane, is pretty nice. He even lets his six-year-old son play Call of Duty with him. Gage talks about working on the new Infinity Ward game in this exclusive interview.
Have you seen your in-game character?
I believe so. When I was doing the game, characters weren’t complete, so I didn’t see myself until the end. I believe they said that was what the character was going to look like. It looked a lot like me. Then from the teasers, I’ve seen a character that looks like myself, but I haven’t seen his name anywhere on there.
What was this process like for you between the motion capture and the voice acting?
It was a fairly simple process for me, because they hired me for a couple of reasons. I guess they liked my voice. It had a military kind of cadence that they saw in GI Jane, a movie I did a while back. I had the ability to go through this kind of normal good guy military delivery to this evil kind of delivery. They liked the fact that I could go from one end of the spectrum to the other, because my character turns evil towards the end. I never received a script, and they’re pretty secretive about what they do. But from what I’ve been told, I think I’m a good guy at some point and then I go bad.
What games do you like to play?
I’m not a big gamer by any means. I like Tiger Woods Golf, but I’ve played that so much that I don’t play it anymore. I do enjoy the driving games, Ridge Racer and some of the things like that. I like Grand Theft Auto, obviously. I play around with that. I played Call of Duty in 2005. I played it from beginning to end, and it took me three months, and I turned into one of those guys that’s 12 to 15 hours a day screaming at the TV until I finished it on all of the levels from easy to difficult. Since then, I have not had the time to play video games. I had my first child six years ago, and he can’t wait for this to come out. He’s been playing Call of Duty Black Ops 2, and I will be playing Ghosts with him.
He must be pretty good that he’s six and able to play a shooter.
Those little people just amaze me. They are so underrated regarding everything from their minds to their physical abilities. There are no words to express my feelings regarding children. If I would have known the love and the fascination that came along with raising a child, I would have done this a long time ago.
What was it like when you got the call to be in Call of Duty: Ghosts?
Honestly, I didn’t know that it was Call of Duty. I was finishing a film here in LA, and the next morning was on a plane to Washington to start another. My agent called and asked me if I would be interested in auditioning for a video game, and I told him I couldn’t. They didn’t say it was Call of Duty when I asked, it was a different name. All of the video games when they’re casting use code names. I could not do the audition, and then they called my agent when I finished the film in Washington. They told me they’d pay me for the day to do some voice over stuff, and after that, they would consider whether they were going to hire me for the main character or not. I believe it was after that point that I realized it was Call of Duty, and I really kept my fingers crossed because I was a huge fan of the game. I’d never done a video game before or motion capture, and I was really looking forward to the process, especially being Call of Duty, which has the largest audience on the planet.
The game makes a billion dollars every year when it comes out.
Yeah, dude. I should have been paid so much more. [Laughs] But they paid me just fine, and I was very grateful for the opportunity. I hope I am included in the next one. It was a lot of fun. They’re wonderful people over there at Activision, Infinity Ward; all those guys. I just had a blast. They were top notch people.
