Liev Schreiber, a Ray Donovan star, plays now another interesting role, the prototype of Rocky Balboa. Liev’s character Chuck Wepner, the real heavyweight boxer, fought Muhammad Ali in 1975.
The boxer Chuck Wepner was a real legend of the boxing world, in 1975, the heavyweight boxer was locally famous in his home state of New Jersey, known as “the Bayonne Bleeder.”
The 1976 film Rocky was based on the story of Chuck, the spawned six sequels made Sylvester Stallone a Hollywood A-lister and very rich person. Even after such large scaled success, people don’t know that Rocky Balboa’s character was based on the story of a real person: Chuck Wepner.
Now, Wepner gets the star treatment as the subject of the new biopic Chuck, starring actor Liev Schreiber in the title role.
Liev Schreiber about masculinity, Ray Donovan, and old school boxers
Liev likes his character ray Donovan because of its ability to act and react without many words. Ray as a character is the alpha, dominant, strong, protector, loyal. But the world has changed so much since that kind of Hemingway-ish model of what a man is.
According to Schreiber, people have these sort of antiquated ideas of masculinity. And I think that Ann Biderman (Ray Donovan’s character creator) did a really great job of articulating that.
‘That part of what we love about Ray as a character are these arcane notions of what it is to be a man — that have to do with being the breadwinner,’
Liev said.
Liev added that he is not really a huge sports fan, but for some reason boxing stuck with him. The Ray Donovan star was very surprised with Chuck Wepner’s story – earlier, the actor hasn’t heard of this legendary boxer.
