14 DAY TRIAL // Late last week, the first official photo from Jake Gyllenhaal’s new movie, “Southpaw,” was released, showing the actor had undergone yet another drastic physical transformation, gaining a lot of muscle mass after he had initially lost a lot of weight for the role in “Nightcrawler.”
“Southpaw” is directed by Antoine Fuqua, who revealed to the media on the occasion of the release of the first still that Gyllenhaal trained and lived like a boxer for many months, in preparation for the role.
Yes, it was a “full-on commitment,” Jake himself tells Extra in a new interview, included in the video below.
Getting that ripped was no walk in the park
Extra caught up with Gyllenhaal at the Gotham Awards, and predictably asked him about the photo that got even his loyal fans do a double check: how could he go from his frail, emaciated frame in “Nightcrawler” to looking like a beast?
The answer is that it was no walk in the park. Fuqua had previously hinted that Gyllenhaal was spending so much time at the gym and working on learning what it’s like to be a boxer that he even split with his girlfriend, model Alyssa Miller, to be able to focus more on his work.
He doesn’t say anything about that, but he confirms Fuqua’s words that he trained like a real fighter: workouts were two times a day, many hours on end. The physical aspect of it was just a part of getting into character, because Gyllenhaal also had to work hard to get into a boxer’s state of mind.
For the role, he packed 15 pounds (6.8 kg) of “pure muscle,” but do keep in mind that for his previous movie, he had lost 25 pounds (11.3 kg) by starving himself.
Useful skills
Jake admits that he doesn’t box that much but insists that the skills he picked up during training will be of use to him in the future. It’s all about the state of mind – and he can use that now that he’s gearing up for a stint on Broadway.
“As you learn the skills, that stuff just happens in your mind and in your body,” he says. He may have stopped training like a fighter right now, but the mindset he got in because of it will stay with him.
For the record, to avoid all misunderstandings, Jake explains that they shot all the fight scenes first, in a few weeks’ time. He trained for them for 5 months in a row, after which he could become a bit more lax on the daily routine, because the director had already gotten the most important shots.
Still, an amazing achievement
One of the ways in which actors show dedication to a role / character is by the way in which they’re willing to lose themselves in it. Jake Gyllenhaal has done that many a time, but most impressively with the 2 movies mentioned here.
If you’re a fan of his work, for instance, you know that he took parkour lessons and bulked up considerably for “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” but that got him nowhere on the awards circuit because “serious” organizations like the Academy would never give the time of day to a movie based on a videogame. Plus, the project was more on the fun side of filmmaking.
Things stand differently with “Nightcrawler” and “Southpaw.” For the former, Jake is already getting plenty of Oscar buzz, but the latter won’t be out in theaters until next year, so we’ll be hearing more about this during next year’s awards season.
Not few are those who believe Gyllenhaal is a shoe-in for Best Actor with “Nightcrawler” – at least a nomination, if not actually a win.
