Some directors gravitate to the tried-and-true when seeking actors for roles, while others enjoy exploring the edges of an actor’s range. Ben Younger falls in the latter category.
For his first-ever feature, 2000’s “Boiler Room,” (nominated for an Independent Spirit Award) he cast action star Vin Diesel as a suited-up stock trader. He made Uma Thurman his lead in the 2005 romantic comedy “Prime” almost immediately after “Kill Bill.” Now, his third and most successful film to date has a similar casting scope.
Younger admits he wasn’t a huge boxing fan before he took on “Bleed for This,” which opened in theaters Nov. 18, but the true story of Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza, a Providence, Rhode Island, boxer who suffered a broken neck at the height of his career and went on to fight again, was reason enough to jump on board. And under Younger’s direction, Miles Teller, known best for his portrayal of an obsessed jazz drummer in “Whiplash,” transforms into the prize-winning fighter.
Front and center alongside Teller is Aaron Eckhart, who is rendered unrecognizable as boxing trainer Kevin Rooney. The actor put on 40 pounds to play Mike Tyson’s trainer, later Pazienza’s, and shaved his head to appear balding. After gaining weight for two previous roles, Eckhart initially wanted to wear a fat suit to get Rooney’s appearance, but Younger convinced him to go for the real deal. “A fat suit is not the Aaron Eckhart way,” Younger says.
READ: “Aaron Eckhart on How Doubt Can Fuel Your Acting Career”
Filling out his core cast are supporting players Katey Sagal, a scene-stealer as the introverted Pazienza matriarch, and Irish actor Ciarán Hinds (“Game of Thrones”) playing a New York Italian-American.
“My schtick is I like picking actors who are not underappreciated, but who are known for other roles and styles. And they become unrecognizable,” explains Younger. “I think I did that with a lot of cast members...because that’s what every actor wants, what every director wants; we don’t want to be known for one thing. We want to keep expanding and keep changing.”
That desire aligns well with a story about rising to the challenge of change, and the team behind “Bleed for This” succeeds both on the page (Younger also penned the screenplay) and on screen. The physical transformations the actors underwent amounted to a modicum of the work they would eventually do for their roles. Eckhart went full method for Rooney, rarely breaking his meticulously researched nasally voice and mannerisms during production, while Teller met with Pazienza and trained for months to achieve the boxer’s physique, accent, and eccentricities.
But Younger says the bulk of the interactions between his actors were built organically, in front of the camera. The director doesn’t hold rehearsals in hopes of keeping the material raw. “If I had twice the money, I still wouldn’t do rehearsals,” he says.
The approach worked well for scripted material but proved more of a challenge for the director when it came to the fights. “The reality was production caught up with us and there were other things that were more important,” Younger recalls about the crunch to nail down choreography. “We didn’t have time to rehearse.”
While scheduling allowed the [Roger] Mayweather fight to be tightly arranged, the Roberto Duran fight happened more on the fly. The morning of the shoot, fight and stunt coordinator Darrell Foster was “knocked the fuck out” during a sequence. “He’d got the numbers wrong—one is jab, two is uppercut, three is body, and four is roundhouse,” Younger explains. “You have to know the numbers and know them fast so you can get through the sequence, or the next thing you know…”
Working with professional boxers and first-time actors was also trying for Younger. One fighter showed up to set with a black eye after promising he wouldn’t fight in the six weeks before production. They had to do a reverse makeup job, caking it on at the start and removing it as the fight went on to make it work. “I had no energy to even be upset,” Younger says with a laugh.
It seems the exhausting dedication paid off. Younger is closer to Oscar recognition than ever before.
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