Edgar Ramírez and Usher Raymond are set to go head to head as they take on the roles of boxing icons Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard in Hands of Stone.
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Usher posted a pic of Bey and Jay to his Snapchat, applying a Hands of Stone filter and adding text captioning the snap, “familia”.
“The story of Roberto Duran is the story of everyone who has ever struggled to become someone and then suddenly is under the pressure of being somebody”, the multilingual Venezuelan actor (“Joy”, “Point Break”) said.
“For me, the key to understanding this guy was a physical transformation”, he told the Boston Herald. But Ramirez makes you believe he could have said it-that even a man who would come to be known as one of the greatest boxers of all time could have, in a crucial instant, faced down his own unnamable vulnerabilities and thought, Enough. “I prepared like a boxer”.
“The whole process”, Ramirez, 39, added, “was probably a year”. Duran, now 65, denies ever having said, “No mas” that night.
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And working so closely with Duran was an eye-opening experience for Edgar: “Roberto embodies the spirit of Panama”. How closely does the film follow the book? And I wanted to capture that. “I wanted it to be as authentic as possible to offer some hope”.
