Over the years, quite a few actors have permanently damaged their bodies while working on movies. Luckily, it sounds as though Jake Gyllenhaal didn’t deal with anything that couldn’t be resolved somewhat quickly, but one has to imagine he knew there was a chance of injury when signing on for “Road House.” He even had to watch out for potential injuries when he wasn’t actively filming something.
Gyllenhaal recently spoke on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” about working with co-star and MMA fighter Conor McGregor. One day, while the pair watched footage of one fight scene, McGregor was giving Gyllenhaal notes on how to make the fight look more realistic. As Gyllenhaal told it, “[McGregor] was talking to me really close, and he was like, ‘Yeah, that left hook looks good. But then when you do it like, boom!’ And he hit me by mistake.”
Gyllenhaal admitted that he got back at McGregor, though, when he (accidentally) slammed his face into a car door. As an actual MMA fighter, it sounds like that didn’t faze McGregor all that much. Gyllenhaal suffered for his art with “Road House” — but since the Rotten Tomatoes score for the remake has surpassed the original, it seems like it was worth it.
