10 Actors Who Took A Ridiculously Long Time To Prepare For Iconic Roles

2. Mark Wahlberg - The Fighter

Time Spent Preparing: Four years The film was eventually shot in just over a month, but for Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter had been around for much longer. Evidently, this was a major passion project for the star (he waived his salary to make it and shopped the story around to directors like Darren Aronofsky and Martin Scorsese), which is why he stuck with it for four years in all before filming began. As actors like Matt Damon and Brad Pitt came and went, Wahlberg stood firm - he began training to play real-life boxer Micky Ward, a hero of Wahlberg's, in 2005. He hired a trainer, had a boxing ring built in his house and even had professional assistance from Manny Pacquiao; later, Wahlberg admitted that he made six movies in the time in which he was also "secretly preparing for The Fighter", training for three hours each day to get into the correct shape. Luckily for him, Wahlberg finally got to shooting in 2009, after years of production delays, with director David O Russell at the helm. (During filming, Wahlberg's commitment only continued: he had the real Ward on-set at all times so he could accurately mimic him and refused a stunt double for the boxing scenes.)