James Cameron‘s Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the greatest films ever made. It’s perfection. It’s hard to pinpoint any single thing that could have been changed to make it better, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to think about what could have been done differently. Imagine if rock legend Billy Idol played the T-1000 instead of Robert Patrick? That was a real thing, Patrick reveals, explaining that Idol was actually Cameron’s first choice for the role. In fact, he says he was already cast!

“Billy Idol was set to do the role of the T-1000, as I understand,” Patrick told Heat Vision. “I can tell you that I saw Billy’s image when I went to Stan Winston after I got the role. Unfortunately, he got into a motorcycle accident and busted up his leg, so he wasn’t able to physically do what the role demanded.”

After Idol was out, word got around that director James Cameron was looking for a villain for his follow-up to the popular 1984 film The Terminator.

“My agent sold me to the T2 casting director (Mali Finn) as a cross between David Bowie and James Dean,” Patrick said, laughing, “So, I was trying to create an intense presence while I was sitting with Mali. I had this intense stare, which she liked.”

After working with the casting crew on some movements, which Patrick described as “insect-like,” he got a call from Cameron to come in and do a screen test. The rest is history.

“It was just one of those moments when everything came together at the right time,” Patrick said.

The rest was history. The 1991 film that also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Edward Furlong went on to gross over $500 million worldwide, which adjusted is over $1 billion.