We all have heard tales of actors going above and beyond to reach a certain level of perfection for their roles.

But have you ever heard of an actor training for five years in the professional boxing ring to film the perfect shot? Well, most probably not, but that’s Mark Wahlberg for you. And it wasn’t just time that he spent but also millions of dollars.

Mark Wahlberg Trained Better Than Pro Fighters
If the word perfection was personified, Mark Wahlberg would certainly be the one. His level of perfection and years worth of training led him to even leave pro fighters behind. After the shoots, while Wahlberg would be up and running the pro fighters wouldn’t even get out of their beds.

Mark Wahlberg’s Rigorous Shooting Schedule For The Fighter

Mark Wahlberg in a still from The Fighter

The $129 Million movie, The Fighter follows the life of legendary boxer Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg. Also being the producer of the movie, Wahlberg was invested in the movie for years, already spending years on training to perfect the legendary fights of Ward. He explained how everyone thought it was impossible to film the movie’s three crucial fight scenes within the first three days of shooting and production, which was an idea he was firm upon.

“Everyone thought [that] was impossible. But [I had] years of training and preparation, and I basically convinced everyone that the way to do it is to just film it like they film any fight on HBO.”

However, even with the opposition he met, he was successful in following the idea he was dead set on from the start. But what was astonishing was that none of the pro fighters could keep up with the 12-hour continuous shoots.
“We did each fight 12 hours a day and thankfully I was in the condition I was because even the pro fighters that we had were not used to that. If you got a 12-round fight with a minute in between rounds, that’s not a long time. And you got eight weeks, 12 weeks of training camp, but you’re not doing it for 12 hours a day. And the next day they couldn’t get out of bed.” 
This fact hardly comes with any surprise given that Wahlberg spent 5 years and millions of dollars preparing for the role.

The Fighter was Mark Wahlberg’s Passion Project

Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale for The Fighter
The dedication and time spent on just one role by Mark Wahlberg clearly show The Fighter was a passion project of his. This fact was confirmed by his co-star in the movie Christian Bale, who explained,

“Everybody was into it, and that all starts from Mark, who’s been wanting to make this, been his passion project for years. Five years the guy’s been in the ring training. Sounds crazy but he got it done.”

So dedicated to making this film stand out from the rest, he ended up spending $500,000 million in just training, an amount more than what he actually earned. His hard work finally paid off and the movie even exceeded his expectations when it became as big as it is now.