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“The Revenant’s” Glen Ennis: What Part Did He Play in the Leonardo DiCaprio Film?

The Revenant stars Leonardo DiCaprio, and has earned him many accolades since it premiered on the big screen. Glen Ennis played a huge role in The Revenant, too. Who? Glen Ennis is a stuntman who play...
“The Revenant’s” Glen Ennis: What Part Did He Play in the Leonardo DiCaprio Film?
Written by Kimberly Ripley
  • The Revenant stars Leonardo DiCaprio, and has earned him many accolades since it premiered on the big screen.

    Glen Ennis played a huge role in The Revenant, too.

    Who?

    Glen Ennis is a stuntman who played the bear that attacked Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant. That’s right–that bear wasn’t real.

    “There was no bear ever on set,” Ennis, 51, said in a recent interview with Global News. “The closest a bear ever got to set [that we know of] was at the Calgary Zoo.”

    “In rehearsals, I would wear a blue suit with a bear head,” Glen Ennis explains. “Obviously that [suit] doesn’t make it into the film, and the CGI guys paint the bear in. Alejandro [González Iñárritu] was adamant that the blue bear moved just like a real bear would move, and it was essential that it had the same nuances that a bear would have. Even though it was a big Smurf bear, it still had to be as authentic as possible.”

    Ennis studied many bear videos online in order to make the attack on Leonardo DiCaprio appear real.

    “It was his stunt double who rehearsed most of the time, but he stepped in and rehearsed a bit because there were so many parts to this big sequence that had to be learned,” Ennis says. “You couldn’t chew it in pieces, it had to be shot all at once. Leo was around somewhat, but a lot of my work was with the stunt double until we started shooting.”

    Glen Annis wound up spending a lot of time up close and personal with The Revenant star’s derriere.

    “That’s the funniest thing – if you notice the bear head in the picture, they wanted the bear mouth to be right on his lower back,” he explains. “I was supposed to grab his jacket with my hand to make it look like the bear’s jaws were pulling it. In order to have the bear’s jaw in the small of his back, basically my face was in his butt.”

    “My face was in Leo’s butt for a fair bit of time. I can see how that’s someone’s fantasy, but it wasn’t mine!” Ennis adds.

    Did you know the bear in The Revenant wasn’t real? Glenn Ennis says he had no idea the bear attack would be such a huge part of the film.

    “When I was doing it, I had no idea that the bear scene was going to be such an integral part of it,” he shares with Global News. “It was hard, sweaty work for me. And now that it’s turned into what it’s turned into, I’m incredibly proud of the work. I’m a small part–obviously the geniuses who made it look as good as they did with the CGI deserve credit–but it’s still pretty cool to be a part of it.”

    If you’ve seen The Revenant, you certainly realize Glen Ennis’s part was anything but small.

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