Bat Out of Hell Star Andrew Polec on Meeting Meat Loaf, His Signature Hair & How a Bike Crash Changed Everything

Andrew Polec just won't quit. After playing the role of Strat in Bat Out of Hell in the West End and on tour, he has officially brought the Jim Steinman-Meat Loaf musical to New York City. "It's a dream come true and wildly, wildly amazing," Polec told Ryan Lee Gilbert in a recent episode of Broadway.com's #LiveAtFive. "I came into this really ignorant. Like, oh yeah you do a workshop and of course we'll find a theater right away and everything will be coming up roses. Then there was silence and I thought I did something wrong. Then I did The Fantasticks for ten months, which was wonderful and it a 180-degree turn of a character."

Bat Out of Hell is a unique theatrical experience that Polec believes combines some of the best music into one night. "It is an absolutely crazy, operatic, rock-and-roll love story," he said. "It's almost as if Peter Pan and Romeo and Juliet got together and had this rock-and-roll love child and that's what has been birthed on stage. It's a beautiful birth. Jim Steinman has had this idea for forty-plus years and he sent all the music to the J.M. Barrie estate. The lawyer looked at the script and was like, 'I really love it, but you lost me at this part where there are nuns flying on motorcycles.' It's been a labor of love and to see it culminate finally in this version is absolutely amazing."

For Polec, one of the most nerve-wracking moments has been meeting Meat Loaf himself. "Meat Loaf is thrilled [with the show]," he said. "He came to the Wednesday matinee and asked to see it again that evening. I called him Mr. Loaf but he said he prefers to just go by Meat. They warned me that he's a really cool guy and he's either going to like you right away, or, maybe, he won't. I needed to absolutely make sure that he likes me. As soon as I got into the car with him I was like, 'You are such a big inspiration in my life. You're my rock-and-roll hero.' He put up his hand, as if to calm me down, and said, 'I'm just a regular, ordinary guy who loves performing these songs and giving them as gifts to the audience.' He's even cooler than I thought."

After playing the role of Strat for so long, it can be difficult to know where the character ends and Polec begins, especially because of his signature hairstyle. "When you've lived with a character for a while, you seem to start to mix together," he said. "One thing leads to another and all of a sudden they put all of these hair products in front of you and you want to use all of them and see what happens. A lot of love and magic goes into it. I can't live without this look now."

For someone who has spent a majority of his professional career commanding a stage, it's surprising to learn that musical theater wasn't Polec's passion growing up. "I played lacrosse and hoped I would get a scholarship," he said. "All that changed one summer when I was riding a bicycle down a hill really fast. I saw a car at the end of a blind turn, hit the brakes, and just went flying and blacked out. After being in the head-trauma unit for five days, the doctors said I couldn't do contact sports anymore. Seeing that I was down, my parents pushed me into other areas of interest. One day my dad played me 'Paradise' by the Dashboard Light and that's all it took. That's the dose of medicine that will carry you all the way through doing this kind of musical."

Catch Polec in Bat Out of Hell, playing New York City Center.

Watch the full #LiveAtFive episode below!