First time I met Conor he headbutts me.. it was nerve-wracking
Actor Gyllenhaal on filming movie remake with UFC star
JAKE Gyllenhaal has told of the “nerve-wracking” moment he first came face-to-face with Conor Mcgregor in a scene in which the UFC star headbutts him in their new movie.
The US actor, 43, revealed he swapped acting tips for fighting lessons with the Dubliner as their new movie Road House, a remake of the 1989 Patrick Swayze flick, is released on Prime Video.
Gyllenhaal – known for roles in Brokeback Mountain, Nightcrawler and Spider-man: Far From Home – plays EX-UFC fighter Dalton who now brawls in backstreet fighting rings.
In the movie his character is spotted by the owner of a roadhouse bar in the Florida Keys who’s looking for a tough guy to help clean up her bar from the nightly brawls and violence.
With Mcgregor, 35, playing the villainous, flamboyant, and often hilarious Knox, Gyllenhaal had to prepare himself to take on the professional mixed martial artist and boxer on screen.
“The most nerve wracking [ fight] was the first one, because I actually hadn’t met him fully in person,” Gyllenhaal says.
“We had talked on Facetime, but we’d never really been in person, and we didn’t practise that fight together – we did it all separately and then we came together to do it.
“I remember being face-to-face with him at the very first moment where he headbutts me – I thought to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing?’
RESPECTFUL
“But he was very respectful through the process, and taught me a lot about fighting, taught me a lot about how to grapple and what to do, and always was commenting on my style and helping me.”
Road House marks Mcgregor’s first film acting role, and Gyllenhaal adds that he helped the MMA star with his acting techniques. “He asked me about my advice in acting and things like that, so it was a really nice exchange,” says the star, who notes that while he’d not acted in a film before, Mcgregor was already experienced in performance.
“I think fighters are performers in that way,” he says.
“There’s something natural about what they do before the fight, in presentation and performance, and then after, and even sometimes during.
“The final fight is intense,” he continues, referring to the climactic brawl between Dalton and Knox.
“And that last bit of the final fight, Doug and I came up with, sort of in the moment, we had wanted to figure out a way in which you could do the final piece in an original way.
“It was so cool.”
Road House, from The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman, comes to Prime Video tomorrow.
I remember being face to face with him and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ JAKE GYLLENHAAL
ON MEETING CONOR