A new challenger is stepping into the ring, and it’s none other than Sydney Sweeney. The Anyone but You star will play boxer Christy Martin in the forthcoming biopic Christy, where she not only fights for victory, but also fights for her life.
“I think I’ve found my thing,” says Sweeney in the trailer. “I know most people go their entire lives, and they don’t even know what their thing is.” But the dream soon turns into a nightmare, as the voiceover warns:
“You’re the world champion right now. You think you’re what makes the world turn, but one day you’re going to wake up and realise that it turns without you.”
Based on true events, Christy chronicles the titular Martin’s rise to becoming America’s most well-known female boxer in the 1990s, and later her husband’s attempt to murder her in 2010 — also shown in the video, in which Ben Foster (Hell or High Water), who portrays the latter, tells Sweeney, “If you leave me, I’ll kill you.”
David Michôd directed the biopic, serving as co-writer alongside Mirrah Foulkes. Other notable cast members include Katy O’Brien (Loves Lies Bleeding), Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie), Ethan Embry (Blindspotting), Chad L. Coleman (The Expanse), Valyn Hall (The Righteous Gemstones), and Tony Cavalero (The Righteous Gemstones).
The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Sweeney revealed that she worked with a boxing coach for several months to prepare for the role. “I trained two to three times a day, every day, and then while I was filming, I trained as well,” she said.
“I had a nutritionist work with me as well as a weight trainer and a boxing trainer. We upped my calorie intake, and I started taking a lot of protein shakes and supplements and eating everything. I ate a lot of Smuckers, a lot of PB and J sandwiches, milkshakes, kind of just constantly always eating because we were so active. I was constantly burning it all off at the same time. So keeping it all up was quite a challenge,” the actress told Variety in a separate interview during the event.
Christy punches its way to theatres on 7 November.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Ting Wei
