{"id":2666,"date":"2014-12-10T13:44:46","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T18:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=2666"},"modified":"2014-12-10T13:44:46","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T18:44:46","slug":"jake-gyllenhaal-gets-boxing-shape-southpaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2014\/12\/10\/jake-gyllenhaal-gets-boxing-shape-southpaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Jake Gyllenhaal Gets into Boxing Shape for ‘Southpaw’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jake Gyllenhaal has found another interesting role to devour, as he\u2019s gotten into excellent boxing shape for\u00a0Southpaw<\/i>. He recently turned in arguably the best performance of his career as Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler<\/i><\/a>, where he dropped 25 pounds to play the nocturnal, psychopathic camera man. Of course, physical transformation isn\u2019t the whole she-bang, you actually have to act well too, and Gyllenhaal knocked that role out of the park.<\/p>\n

For his new role in the Antoine Fuqua vehicle, Gyllenhaal has gained 15 pounds of muscle to play Junior Middleweight Champion Billy \u201cThe Great\u201d Hope. There isn\u2019t much that\u2019s been revealed about the synopsis yet. We only know that Billy fights his way to be the top dog, yet finds his life falling apart on the way there.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that Gyllenhaal is a dedicated, talented actor. You can see that he had raw talent as early as his performance in the cult classic, Donnie Darko<\/i>. This may be one of those roles that will provide him with a canvas big enough to display his undeniable talents in a way that he\u2019ll be remembered in cinema forever. Word of mouth about his training says that he was fully focused to embody the role completely.<\/p>\n

Some are already comparing his dedication to that of Robert DeNiro, when he completely transformed himself into former Middleweight Champion Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese\u2019s Raging Bull<\/i>. DeNiro sparred hundreds of rounds at 14th Street Gym with La Motta himself for a solid year, and also entered three real Brooklyn boxing matches, coming up victorious in two of them. LaMotta\u00a0 went on to say that DeNiro was of professional standard. DeNiro went on to win\u00a0the Best Actor Oscar for his performance.<\/p>\n

Director Fuqua has released some information on how Gyllenhaal has prepared for the role in his interview with Deadline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so pumped, man,\u201d Fuqua said. \u201cJake is going to change how people see him. I had him training twice a day in the boxing ring, he did two-a-days seven days a week. I pretty much had him with me and my trainer every day. I took him to almost every fight. I had him train at Floyd Mayweather\u2019s gym in Vegas and we watched Floyd\u2019s fights, and the Manny Pacquiao fight. He trained in New York at Church Gym with real fighters. We literally turned him into a beast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gyllenhaal fell in love with the sport so much that he\u2019s claimed that he\u2019ll box for the rest of his life. Let\u2019s just hope he sticks to acting, and doesn\u2019t pull a Mickey Rourke. His natural intensity when he\u2019s acting definitely complements his physique, so we\u2019ll just have to wait and see the performance; however, it\u2019s more than likely he\u2019ll deliver, let\u2019s just hope the film keeps up with his pace.<\/p>\n