Leguizamo Climbs Into Ring of Opportunity

In the 1947 boxing classic “Body and Soul,” John Garfield played a poor Jewish boy from the mean streets of New York who loses sight of his roots when he becomes a famous boxer. And in the pugilistic melodrama “Undefeated,” which premieres Saturday on HBO, John Leguizamo portrays a poor Puerto Rican from the mean streets of New York who loses sight of his roots when he becomes a famous boxer. Both men become involved with the mob, fall for the wrong type of women, abandon their friends, hurt an opponent in the ring and are asked to throw the big fight.

Any resemblance between the two films is strictly intentional.

“I felt [‘Body and Soul’] spoke of what is going on today -- people trying to get out of the ghetto and moving up,” says Leguizamo, who also makes his directorial debut with “Undefeated.” Leguizamo collaborated on the story with writer Frank Pugliese, who wrote the drama that also stars Clifton Collins Jr., Robert Forster and boxer Michael Olajide.

Boxing is something that Leguizamo says he has “always dug.”

“I have been boxing for a long time, but I was never really good at it,” he says.

For the film, though, Leguizamo says he tried to be as serious as possible. He based his character’s style on junior-welterweight champion Arturo “Thunder” Gatti and trained for five months at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn Heights before he started shooting the film. “Then we choreographed about three months before we filmed the movie,” says the actor, whose father is Puerto Rican and mother hails from Colombia, where he was born 39 years ago.

“I only fought with real boxers, and we did about six hours a day to get it in shape. I wanted [the matches] choreographed and so tight that when we got on the set, there was no wasted time. Everything was real.”

“We blueprinted every fight,” says Leguizamo, whose relationship with HBO includes the TV versions of his one-man shows, “Freak” and “Sexaholic: A Love Story.”

Shooting the boxing scenes was difficult, he says.

“The big fight in the movie, it has 50 punches per round and we had four rounds. It was a 50-punch combination we had to memorize. I got hit a lot. “We didn’t have a big, big budget. It was only like a $7 1/2-million movie. ‘Ali’ had two weeks to do each fight. We had a day. It was always a challenge.”

During his 18-year film career, Leguizamo has worked with such directors as Brian De Palma (“Casualties of War”), Spike Lee (“Summer of Sam”) and Baz Luhrmann (“Romeo + Juliet,” “Moulin Rouge!”). Leguizamo says he learned how to direct by observing them.

“Great actors always told me, ‘Watch the director at all times -- don’t go back running to your trailer and hanging out and drink and goof and find the groupies. Stay on the set and watch.’ And I did.”

Leguizamo and Enrique Chediak, the film’s executive producer and director of photography, created a meticulous shot list.

“We went over and over them and watched movies that we liked for certain shots. We would spend lots of hours going over scenes, and I would act out the parts and he would videotape them. One of the hardest things for Leguizamo to do as a director was to say “cut.” “Some directors are really cool and they let you keep going because you never know what comes out. So yelling ‘cut’ was kind of hard. And when I had to do the boxing sequences, because I was in them and I was exhausted, sometimes I had to say to the other actors, ‘Look guys, every man for himself because I can’t do any more.’ ”

“Undefeated” will be shown at 8 p.m. Saturday on HBO. The network has rated it TV-MA (may not be suitable for children younger than 17).