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Half blind
- In 1803, Belcher lost sight in one eye when he was struck by the ball in a game of racquets. Half blind, Belcher avoided defending his title for two years, fighting exhibition bouts only.
www.ibhof.com/pages/about/inductees/pioneer/belcher.html
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Jem was partially blind at the age of 22 and dead by the age of 30. The film stars Matt Hookings as Jem Belcher, Ray Winstone as his trainer Bill Warr and Russell Crowe as Jem's boozy grandfather Jack Slack.
- How Did You and Russell Crowe Bond?
- Why Do You Think The Bond Happened So quickly?
- Can You Talk About Your Connections to This Story That Led to The Movie?
- Why Was It Important to Watch 160 Boxing Films?
- What Did You Discover?
- What Was One Boxing Movie That Stood out?
- How Does It Feel to Have Your Movie Compared to Rocky?
- Talk About The Naysayers and Why You Weren’T Daunted by them.
- Have You Had A Change of Heart About Boxing?
- Do You Find That People Are Saying That They’Re Inspired by The Film?
Matt Hookings: We bonded really quickly. Look, it wasn’t easy getting Russell to sign on. It took a year back and forth with his manager and team, negotiations, and things changing. We did this amid the world of COVID and him coming to the U.K., and then we were supposed to go to Australia. Just all these things kept changing. We ended up doing par...
Matt Hookings:I think the respect was immediately there. I think he already knew a bit of what I’d gone through. I remember the first time we met in Malta, at 5 a.m., we didn’t even say each other’s name, we just shook hands and said, “Let’s do this.” The respect and the professionalism were immediately there and he taught me so much. His presence ...
Matt Hookings: It’s been 10 years—actually 12 years if I go back to the first email when the process started. It’s been a bit of a crazy journey. I was actually working on a Russell Crowe film and someone thought they recognized me and thought I was my dad, David Pearce, because we look like twins. Sadly, my dad passed away in 2000 when I was 11. T...
Matt Hookings: I just wanted to see everything. One of the first films I saw was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 boxing film called The Ring. I wanted to see what everyone had done right and what everyone had done wrong. I wanted to see how many boxing films actually had fights and how many films were driven by the character and the story. Also, I wanted t...
Matt Hookings: The thing I found was that in a lot of these other films, they were doing it for someone or something. Rocky was doing it for Adrian, and someone else was doing it for their aunty or their dog or whatever else. So I tapped into that kind of inner almost genetics with Jem to show that actually it was channeled through him. It was alwa...
Matt Hookings: I loved Somebody Up There Likes Me with Paul Newman in the 50s, and that is essentially Rocky. He plays a boxer called Rocky, he talks very similar to Sylvester Stallone, and yet 20 or 30 years later Rocky came out. So there were just so many things I wanted to put in my brain in that sense, and I wanted to see how all the fights wer...
Matt Hookings: It was always going to come up and it was always part of the journey for me because Rockyand Sylvester Stallone were used as, “Okay, if he could do it then, I could do it now.” I wasn’t just walking in the room saying, “I’m going to play Jem Belcher,” and that’s it. It was a slightly different approach. I’m happy with it being relate...
Matt Hookings:Yeah, I was speaking on a podcast the other day, and someone said, “How many times did people say no?” And I said, “All the time. Not one person said yes. Not one person said, ‘Go ahead, do it.’ It was no, no, no, no, for many years.” But I suppose all of that depends on what type of personality you have. I am the guy who says, “I’m n...
Matt Hookings: Yes. I’m in love with the sport now, I love the training. I think it saved me in many ways, as I said. It really gives you discipline and makes you mentally fit. I think without boxing I wouldn’t have been able to fight this. It kept me going and I still train now quite actively. It’s become extremely important to me. Related: Mike T...
Matt Hookings: Absolutely. I think the main thing I keep getting, which is really nice, is that they can just feel the heart of the story and the character. And I think that bleeds from my own life and my own issues and things that were going on during the film. Obviously, in certain scenes where I need to play a certain part in that scene, you can...
Aug 4, 2022 · The 32-year-old from Newport, south Wales is sitting in a rental car in Malta, talking via Zoom, and although his natural ebullience shines through, it’s undercut by evident exhaustion.
Portrait of Jem Belcher, circa 1800. James Belcher, also known as Jem Belcher (15 April 1781 – 30 July 1811), was an English bare-knuckle prize-fighter and Champion of All England 1800–1805.
Jul 7, 2022 · The actor got to reading, and after going through the story on dad, he discovered Jem Belcher. “I got hooked straight away,” he said. “The youngest ever champion at 19, blind by the time he ...
Jul 19, 2022 · The real-life story of Jem Belcher, who became, at age 19, the youngest-ever prizefighting Champion of England – a record that’s never yet been broken – would make a powerful and gripping movie. Regrettably, this isn’t quite it. The film’s deficiencies may be at least partly due to its troubled genesis.
