Whoa there! Jake Gyllenhaal looks nearly unrecognizable as boxing champion Billy “The Great” Hope in upcoming drama Southpaw. In a new trailer released by the studio, the Oscar nominee looks insanely ripped as he stars opposite Rachel McAdams in the emotionally charged flick.
The pugilist drama follows Gyllenhaal’s character as he attempts to regain his career, life, and custody of his daughter after the death of his wife, played by Amy Adams.
Taylor Swift and Reese Witherspoon’s ex-boyfriend didn’t just hit the gym and pack on the muscles, either — he actually took those hits in the ring.
“[Director Antoine Fuqua and I] discussed that there have been many boxing films done, and we wanted to make sure that we were shooting it in a way that was real,” Gyllenhaal explained to Us Weekly this past December. “In a way that felt authentic. We didn’t want close-ups and fake outs, we did medium shots and I was really fighting.”
“I knew that I had to train that way,” Gyllenhaal said. “Everything that I did before the film was about getting those fight sequences right, we shot all the boxing in the first two weeks. We tried to make it as close to the real thing as possible, obviously it wasn’t absolutely real, but it was as close as we could get.”
Watch the trailer, which also features a snippet of Eminem’s new track from the movie, above.
