Sydney Sweeney, Hilary Swank and More Fierce Actresses Dish on Playing Boxers on Screen

Ladies In The Ring! Actresses open up about what it’s like to lace up their gloves to play boxers on screen.

Sydney Sweeney – Christy

The actress is barely recognizable playing real-life boxer Christy Martin, now 52, in Christy. The film, out in September, chronicles Christy’s rise to the top (she was the first woman inducted into the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame), as well as the abuse she faced at home from her husband/manager — including his 2010 attempt on her life (he died in prison). To prep for the grueling role, Sydney, 27, worked out three times a day — “an hour of weight training in the morning, two to three hours of boxing during the day, and another hour of weight training” — and ate every 30 minutes just to keep the weight on. “Literally, a Chick-fil-A sandwich every hour and a milkshake,” she said in an interview with The Sunday Times. “It was amazing to feel like I was turning into someone else.”

Michelle Rodriguez – Girlfight

The Fast and Furious star was working as an extra when she went to a mass casting call to play NYC bruiser Diana Guzman in the 2000 film. “I remember just telling the producers, ‘Look, I never finished high school, I took my GED, I don’t have any experience in acting, but I grew up in Jersey City and I’m a pretty tough cookie,” the 47-year-old recalled in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, adding that director Karyn Kasuma had to fight producers to give her the part. “She said they were like, ‘Eh, let’s do an Alyssa Milano [type] because she’s good from TV. They were picking all these kind of girly-girls.”

Hilary Swank – Million Dollar Baby

Move over, Rocky! Sylvester Stallone’s prizefighter wasn’t the only one chugging raw eggs. “I started working out five hours a day — I had to eat 210 grams of protein a day,” Hilary, 51, speaking at the Loyola Marymount University School of Film & TV in 2014, she revealed of bulking up for her Oscar-winning role as an underdog boxer in the 2004 film, adding, “I had to eat 60 egg whites in a day and I couldn’t. So every morning I would drink them. I had to eat every hour and a half. So in the night, I had to wake up and drink protein shakes. I put on 23 pounds of muscle.”

Priyanka Chopra – Mary Kom

The 43-year-old was nervous about portraying the Indian Olympic boxer dubbed “Magnificent Mary” — who won eight world titles and a bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics in London before moving into politics — in the 2014 film. She later recounted receiving a phone call from Mary Kom, 42, after she’d watched a rough edit. “She started crying, and I started crying,” Priyanka recalled, adding that winning the boxer’s approval was “my biggest test.”