Jake Gyllenhaal is the star of the new film Southpaw. He plays boxer Billy Hope whose life gets turned upside down when his wife (Rachel McAdams) is killed in a tragic accident and he loses his daughter to child protection services. Hope turns to trainer Tick Willis (Forest Whitaker) to help him get his life back on track.
In order to get in shape for the role, Gyllenhaal says he did two sets of 1,000 pushups every day, a five-mile run and “intensive boxing practice.” He told The Independent: “I decided to train twice a day so it would give me an advantage, and it would seem like 10 months of training. It’s difficult for me to use words like hard or miserable when I’m talking about a movie where really I feel grateful for the opportunity.” Southpaw is in theaters now.
