Weeks out from the release of his major feature film debut, Conor McGregor has said that the experience of filming a major role in the upcoming remake of the 1980s cult classic ‘Road House’ was a beneficial one.

On March 21, ‘Road House’ will be released online via the Amazon Prime platform in which McGregor plays the antagonist Knox to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Elwood Dalton — a former UFC fighter who begins a job working security at a roadhouse bar in the Florida Keys. For McGregor, it represents his first major role in a massive Hollywood production but as he told Total Film in a recent interview, this was far from the first time he has been asked to make a leap to the silver screen.

“I had turned down a good few roles in my time on the climb,” McGregor told the magazine. “I’ve had directors show up at fight camp, really beautiful directors doing really top-end movies… And over and over, they’d come to me, and I always turned them down… I’d leave people a little high and dry. I probably have a few enemies out there that I don’t really know of because I had said, ‘I might do it.'”

But this project, McGregor says, was too enticing to turn down. The film, directed by Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow, The Bourne Identity), is a reimagined chapter of the 1989 classic starring the late Patrick Swayze and if the trailer is anything to go by, McGregor’s unique brand of intensity will bring a new edge to the franchise.

“I was just in awe of it all, to be honest with you, the whole process,” McGregor added of the filming process.

“I didn’t know how I was going to take to it,” he continued. “I didn’t know whether I was going to like it, to be honest. I’m a fighting man – that’s my bread and butter. It’s where I come from… I’m not an actor, but I’m show business. That was my vibe to it. I felt that. I enjoyed every second of it.”