“I did a bit of kickboxing in high school," Bleed For This star Miles Teller tells Empire, "but boxing is super hard, man. The work, the timing, the distance control. It’s all very exposing. It’s just you.” Luckily for Teller, a certain Martin Scorsese (executive producer on Bleed For This) delivered a letter of support prior to filming. “It was on his letterhead and typed on an old typewriter," Teller continues. "It said, ‘To play the part of Vinny you are going to have to show hard work and perseverance, and I know that you are the right guy for this job.’ For him to reach out to me was something.”
The film in question (and Empire’s gala film at this year’s BFI London Film Festival) tells the true-life tale of junior middleweight champion boxer Vinny Pazienza, whose career ended abruptly after breaking his neck in a car crash. However, Pazienza wasn’t going to let that stop him, retraining against all medical advice.
“It was by far the toughest thing I’ve ever done,” says Teller. “If I am super nervous about doing something, as I was with Vinny, I would rather me have the opportunity to mess it up than somebody else. I only had maybe a month with my boxing trainer. You don’t become a professional anything in a month if you’ve never done it before. It was a lot of trust and practice, motivated by fear.”
To read more from Teller, pick up the new issue of Empire, available at all good and evil newsagents from Thursday 29 September.
Bleed For This is released in cinemas on 2 December.