Jake Gyllenhaal beaten by teens for End of Watch preparation
Actor Jake Gyllenhaal received a daily beating from teenagers in martial arts training while preparing for new film End Of Watch.
The Brokeback Mountain hunk had to undergo a gruelling exercise regime to bulk up for movie, in which he and co-star Michael Pena play cops who become targets for gangsters after confiscating money and guns from a notorious cartel during a routine traffic stop.
Gyllenhaal spent months hitting the gym to get in shape, but he was
still no match for the youngsters he had to go up against while at
a Kenpo karate school in Los Angeles.
He says, "Five days a week we would go to Echo Park to this dojo
run by the best friend of David Ayer, the writer/director, and
Michael and I would fight these 14 to 20-year-old kids. I don't
even have a fight scene in the movie but the director wanted me to
get into that attitude of what it was like to get beaten up or get
into a fight.
"We simulated that every morning so I was constantly sore and in
pain getting hit in the face and body. So, for five months before I
started shooting, I had the c**p beat out of me."
The fight training wasn't the only part of the movie preparation
that hurt - the actor recently revealed he was zapped by a stun gun
as part of a painful bonding experience with the rest of the
cast.
He and Pena also spent five months on the mean streets of Los
Angeles with police partners and the sheriff's department, working
a 12-hour night shift three times a week to get into character as
crack cops.
He tells WENN, "It took a while to create that trust but by the
time it came to make the movie in 22 days for $7 million we had
enough training. It was an intense process because we had little
resources and little time but we had so much experience in training
for five months that making the movie paled in comparison to
that.
"The experience on the street in the south end of Los Angeles with
the police officers that do this job every day of their lives was
incredibly intense and it changed my life and put everything into
perspective."