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Will Patton never expected he'd be wallowing in oil again.
As a 19-year-old vagabond cruising the country and picking up odd jobs along the way, the fledgling actor wound up in New Orleans scooping petroleum out of the Mississippi River. Saturation in goo was the order of the day.
Now here he was, a quarter-century later, shooting the film "Armageddon" on a Los Angeles sound stage - awash in the viscous stuff.
"In the story, Earth is threatened by this asteroid. I'm one of a team of demolition experts who lands in this huge pit on the asteroid - me and Bruce Willis and Steve Buscemi. Steve has a line in there where he says, 'This is like Dr. Seuss' worst nightmare.' Which is what the set looks like.
"We're lugging this heavy equipment around wearing these heavy space suits. And I'm covered in oil again. You know, it does bring back memories."
After studying at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and just before leaving for New York in 1975, the Charleston-born Patton, son of Laura M. Logan of Mount Pleasant, found himself in the Big Easy, broke and in need of an infusion of cash.
"I went to work mopping oil out of the Mississippi and made enough to go to New York on a train," recalls Patton, who stars opposite Kevin Costner in the Christmas Day release of "The Postman." "I remember that all my clothes were covered in oil. No matter how much I washed them this kind of gray sheen would remain."
On "Armageddon," he invited it.
"I told the director, Michael Bay ("The Rock"), that this was the first time in a film I haven't been as interested in the dialogue sequences. I said, 'Why don't you just put me into as much of the action as you can because that's where it seems to be at on this movie. Blow that fire over my head and let me fall down in the hole and get that oil sprayed all over me.'
"That's the fun of this movie. I think I've been sort of half stunt man half actor lately."
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