At his lowest point, Billy humbles himself and asks the owner of a skid-row gym (Forest Whitaker) for help getting back on top and gets the sort of gruff life lessons ripped from the Burgess Meredith playbook.
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“In that ring there’s inherent tension, there’s no real escape and within there you are tested and tried and the metaphors inside of it are universal”, he said. I think telling stories, and all different stories, is what makes acting so great.
“As soon as Oona walked into the door to do the reading… who she was and just her essence, I fell in love with her”, Gyllenhaal says.
Gyllenhaal, Eminem and Miguel Gomez posed for photographers with their fists up, while co-star 50 Cent didn’t appear to be distracted by his recent financial problems after filing for bankruptcy earlier this month. “I didn’t know how to box when I started”.
He later opened up about his friendship and admiration for the film’s director, Antoine Fuqua, who voluntarily trained alongside Gyllenhaal every morning and pushed his body to get into professional fighting shaped.
“I try not to take for granted the opportunities I’m given”.
“From the minute I saw this script, I really felt like this movie had the potential to be something special”, Eminem said at the event. “When you’re hot, everybody’s there, and then the second you lose a fight it’s like everybody goes away”. And we went to our respective, you know, rooms before the fight.
Martin Scorsese’s brutal, black-and-white look at the life of former middleweight champ Jake LaMotta is likely the greatest boxing movie ever, even if it’s also the most depressing.
The main role was originally planned for hip-hop star Eminem, who was the executive producer of the film’s soundtrack. “I had five months to learn, and I know that it takes me a long time to learn a skill, and also to come across like I’ve been doing it since I was 6 years old”.
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Gyllenhaal’s mom sent him the court’s written decision. He was very thin and limp as he just done his film Nightcrawler – in which he played scavenging Louis Bloom who found a career as a nocturnal journalist/cameraman.
