Always greener: Central Coast resident Lou Ferrigno talks about his new movies, chess, and of course, The Incredible Hulk

Expiration dates. Stock prices. Autocorrect suggestions. Too many things warrant double-checking, but the fine print on the back of jerky packs wasn’t one of them for Lou Ferrigno until recently.

“I play a cannibalistic pig farmer who makes jerkies out of people,” Ferrigno said about his new role in an upcoming horror flick, The Hermit.

The Central Coast resident is no stranger to playing monsters—especially of the green-skinned variety—but filming a slasher was a whole new ballgame for the legendary bodybuilder and actor best known for bringing the Hulk to life in the late ’70s.

Set in a remote forest, The Hermit follows a few teenagers (including Malina Weissman of Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) who come across Ferrigno’s character while hiking off-trail. After stumbling upon his farm, “they get nosey, and then the trouble begins,” Ferrigno said.

“This is a very serious, notorious guy,” he continued. “It’s my first horror film. … It’s like Hannibal Lecter in the woods.”

With many projects Ferrigno works on, his go-to scene partner while memorizing lines happens to be his other half, Lisa Rivera. The only downside for Rivera when it comes to flipping through script pages with Ferrigno is it’s nearly impossible to go into a screening without knowing some major plot spoilers.

This won’t be the case when she sees The Hermit, however.

“I’d rather be surprised on this one,” said Rivera, who’s glad she didn’t practice any lines with Ferrigno this time around. “It’ll be good to see the whole thing.”

Filming on The Hermit—shot in parts of New York and California—wrapped up last fall, and it’s one of five upcoming movies with Ferrigno’s name attached to them. 

While playing out scenes and taking turns reading dialogue to one another, Rivera enjoys watching Ferrigno get into different characters depending on the project.

“We will go back and forth to work on a scene. … We’re like two kids having fun,” said Ferrigno, whose home in the Five Cities area has a game room where he and Rivera often play pool or chess when they’re not knee-deep in a script read-through.

“I’m trying to improve my chess game,” said Ferrigno, who finds himself playing more often lately after losing a recent match to an old friend—Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Arnold’s played chess for years. I play, … but I hadn’t for a long time,” Ferrigno said. “He’s an expert. … He wiped me out.”

The 1975 rivalry between Ferrigno and Schwarzenegger for the title of Mr. Olympia was famously documented in 1977’s Pumping Iron, a massive box office success that helped popularize bodybuilding and made household names out of its stars.

Within the same year as Pumping Iron’s release, Ferrigno was cast in The Incredible Hulk.

“The makeup was horrific,” Ferrigno recalled of the three-to-four-hour process that transformed him into Marvel’s iconic green giant with a temper problem. “It was very uncomfortable—so I played the character beautifully.”

During filming, Ferrigno’s makeup needed to be retouched constantly, which usually kept him from interacting with others between takes, he explained.

“Being in that makeup, I had to be isolated. … Because of the heat, I had to keep my temperature down,” said Ferrigno, who stayed inside an air-conditioned trailer when he wasn’t needed on camera. “I couldn’t socialize with the crew.”

His makeup application and removal (which alone took about an hour) made him both “the first one on the set, and the last one to leave,” Ferrigno added.

At the end of the day, when it was OK to remove the prosthetics and wash the green away, he said it felt “wonderful, the greatest feeling.”

For Ferrigno, getting to play the Hulk felt surreal because his comic book fandom was a big part of why he got into bodybuilding to begin with. He loved superheroes as a kid.

“I learned a lot from reading comics, like overcoming, for example, my speech and hearing issues,” said Ferrigno, who was bullied for wearing hearing aids and nicknamed “Deaf Louie” by other kids growing up.

Although he had a lot of superheroes to look up to, Ferrigno said he now hopes to be a figure he wished for in real life back then.

“When I was young, I never had somebody I’d look up to that had a hearing loss,” said Ferrigno, who’s met with deaf and hard of hearing children and adult fans at comic book conventions and other special events over the years.

In 2021, Ferrigno underwent surgery to receive a cochlear implant to improve his hearing in his left ear.

“I’ll never have perfect hearing. But I’m able to go from profound to moderate hearing loss,” he said. “Hearing aids magnify your hearing. But with the implant, there’s a huge change in clarity.”

One thing Ferrigno’s noticed since using the implant is he’s able to understand songs better. His dancing skills have also improved, but for different reasons.

“I’m teaching him the waltz, cha-cha, merengue,” said Rivera, who enjoys cutting a rug with Ferrigno around the house, and occasionally at the Madonna Inn.

Archery, hiking, wine tasting, and pursuing tiramisu are among the couple’s other favorite hobbies. They found one of their new favorite Central Coast takes on the Italian dessert at Mirazur in Los Osos.

“We’ve gone to almost every restaurant here. Some places, the tiramisu is fantastic. Other places, it’s OK,” Ferrigno said with a laugh.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Ferrigno said his career has taken him all over the world, but there’s still a lot of travel destinations left on his bucket list—which also includes overcoming a lifelong fear that he’s in the process of facing.

“There’s one thing I really can’t do. I can’t swim,” Ferrigno said. “If I could go back in time, I probably would have taken swimming classes. But you also have to remember back then I was very shy because of my hearing.”

Unable to wear hearing aids while swimming, Ferrigno was afraid of missing cues from swimming instructors, life guards, or others in the pool.

“I mean I’ve used the pool before, where I do the dog paddle,” he clarified. “But the deep end—that’s always been my fear.”

Ferrigno never left the shallow end, until he started dating Rivera about two years ago, and they started spending more time in the pool. She encouraged him to swim out of his comfort zone. The first step was simply teaching him how to float, she said.

“A lot of people can float, but he’s got a lot of muscle, so that sinks him,” Rivera said. “It isn’t second nature to him, because he didn’t swim when he was young.”

Ferrigno gradually got comfortable enough with the pool to regularly swim, and even try diving.

“Lisa convinced me to—I’ve never done this in my life—to go in the deep end of the pool and dive in. The first time I did it, it was like a breakthrough for me,” Ferrigno said. “You have to remember, I’m 73. I’ve had both knees replaced; both hips replaced. …I thought I was too late in the game.”

Dive into Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood’s inbox at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Jan 16-26, 2025.