Get schooled by Jake Gyllenhaal

After the knockout one-two of Nightcrawler and Prisoners , Jake Gyllenhaal is the man of the moment–and now he’s taken on his biggest challenge yet– going from sappy actor to plausible (and terrifying) boxing champ for new drama Southpaw . And because he trained like a warrior for it, we met him to learn a few lessons in getting fight-ready…

Train hard (to avoid looking like an idiot)

“When I read the story of Southpaw, I loved it. So when it came to boxing, I really wanted to learn how to do it properly because I was scared I’d look like a fool.”

Read FHM India in the digital libraryEvery issue, every shoot, on TCG Media.

Protect your body

“We shot all the fights in the first two weeks of the film, and we ended up deciding whatever happened, happened. I got hit a lot, much more in the body. You think you can defend yourself more easily there, but I really did not enjoy the body shots.”

Watch this video

“I was really inspired by the 2002 Micky Gatti vs Arturo Ward fight. I think there’s a sort of brutality and a sense of will in that fight that remains unmatched in a lot of ways. It’s so brutal.”

Get angry

“I was moved to do Southpaw by the idea of a man having to face his own anger, where his anger has destroyed his life. He has to learn how to fight with anger, but without hatred.”

Use your head

“There’s this idea that there’s some sort of aggressive approach to the physicality of boxing. You can only do as much as your mind will tell you. If you’re not in a certain physical shape, you can’t pull off the things your mind is telling you it wants you to do, so I trained for five hours a day.”

Chill out

“When we wrapped, I started on another film that didn’t require me to head to the gym at 5am. You go that hard for that amount of time, your body does need rest. It’s not a normal way of living. You’ve got to let it go–you’ve got to live life.”

From the October 2015 issue of FHM India.