Hazing Week: The Most Hardcore On-Set Training For Movies

In order to properly portray soldiers, every cast member had to go through grueling Army training. Except for Matt Damon, of course. See, Steven Spielberg wanted to make sure that the soldiers' resentment about having to go back for Private Ryan was real, so he spared Matt the training so the others would grow to resent him. So maybe Matt really did get the short end of the stick?

Gerard Butler did not get his glorious Spartan physique without a lot of sweat and pain. He started training about four months before shooting, doing about four hours a day with two different trainers (one from the movie, and his own). According to Men's Fitness, the cast had to do a routine of "non-stop sets of pullups, deadlifts, pushups and clean-and-jerks, coupled with unorthodox training methods like Olympic-style ring work and flipping gigantic tires."

And because Gerard was playing King Leonidas, he had to put in even more training so that his body was an example of perfection to the others.

And all we had to do was sit back and enjoy. Not a bad trade-off at all!

Thought it was just war movies, huh? "Training" for Blair Witch's stars basically occurred while shooting: They received vague outlines of each scene and had no idea what scary stuff would be going down in the woods.

To make things worse--and to encourage the actors to fight with one another--the directors gave them less and less food with each day. They would send messages to the cast saying things like "Your safety is our concern. Your comfort is not."

Jake Gyllenhaal said that director Sam Mendes put the cast through six weeks of boot camp in only a week, but it's this detail that really sticks out to us:

"I mean, the first day was me getting my head slapped 100,000 times and getting it slammed into a chalkboard. That kind of gives you an idea."

Ouch!

Mila Kunis on her ballerina training and weight loss:

"It was the most intense training I've ever had in my life, and probably will have for anything. I lost 20 pounds, so I went down to 95 pounds. I weigh 117 usually, like today. I looked like Gollum [from The Lord of the Rings]."

We'd like to mock Sucker Punch since everyone hated, but honestly, we're no more fit than Vanessa Hudgens, so we probably would've had the same reaction she did when she was dropped into three hours of martial arts training:

“I remember that I was holding onto these rings and I let go by accident. The trainer was like, ‘Okay, we have to do it again.’ And I let go again. I started to cry. It was just the most frustrating feeling ever.” And she didn’t even have to go through the attitude-adjusting, “Pick it up. Put it on. Take it off. On the floor. Pick it up. Put it on.”

Having R. Lee Ermey yelling at you during the already hectic process of shooting? Yeah, that's hardcore.

I know--you think being locked up in a house with Ryan Gosling for weeks is heaven. Not when you have to live in close quarters and pretend to be a married couple with problems, and your director tells you to create home projects then tear them apart, or try to entice each other into sex. Playing house was never so stressful.