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Sydney Sweeney ended up black and blue after sparring for new 'knockout' film role

The Hollywood star, 28, plays boxing legend Christy Martin in the film. The experience left her nursing a real life black eye and concussion

[Sydney Sweeney arrives at the 16th Governors Awards]

Sydney Sweeney arrives at the 16th Governors Awards(Image: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Sydney Sweeney says her new boxing movie was such a knockout she got concussion during filming.

The 28-year-old actress plays boxing legend Christy Martin in the recently released biopic.

Sydney said she wanted to get involved as much as possible in sparring for the film, called Christy. The experience left her nursing a real life black eye and concussion - while others had broken noses.

Speaking on the Front Row podcast Sweeney said she piled on two-and-a-half stone in order to portray the boxing hall of famer. And much of the on-screen brawling was authentic.

[The actress in character]

The actress in character(Image: sydney_sweeney/Instagram)

She said: It was very real. One of my big things, because I came from a combat background I was like, I want to fight.

And I know that its a little complicated and tricky when youre doing a movie and its not real. But one of my least favourite things in films is when you have these choppy fight scenes because theyre having to edit around the fake hits and theyre putting in stunt doubles and it just feels not connected.

And so much of Christys story is happening within the ring. Like so much of her emotional outlet is in these fights and she comes to life during these fights. And I was like, I dont want to have to cut away.

I dont want you to be on the back of my head. And every single girl that I fought, we would talk immensely and they were so game.

They were the strongest, most incredible women Ive ever worked with. I had concussions. So we actually hit each other. We were making full-blown contact.

There were some broken noses. Every single fight in the movie is the actual fights from Christys real life.

[Sydney Sweeney arrives at the AFI Fest premiere of "Christy" ]

Sydney Sweeney arrives at the AFI Fest premiere of "Christy" (Image: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Sydney said she underwent three months of intense training to prepare for the role of Christy, 57, who boxed for 23 years, won the WBC female super welterweight title in 2009 and fought on the undercard of Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield.

Nicknamed The Coal Miners Daughter she was the first female fighter elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020.

Sydney said she trained like a real boxer for the role and changed her fighting style during the film to reflect Christys age. I had about three months to prepare and I worked with a weight trainer and a boxing coach and they worked with me on nutrition training, the actress said.

I worked with them every single day, morning and night, and I put on 35lbs. Its such a long span of time so shes going to move differently from when she first started versus towards the end of the film because when shes older, her body is sore, shes had injuries.

So it was kind of navigating the way that she was going to start and how her body was going to age and how physically and mentally draining it was as she went on.

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