ABOVE: Watch Dominic Purcell on Global’s The Morning Show.
TORONTO — Dominic Purcell is in no hurry to return to Sudbury, Ont., where he made the boxing drama A Fighting Man last year.
“I’ve never experienced such cold,” the 44-year-old Prison Break star said Friday during an appearance on Global’s The Morning Show.
“I grew up in Australia so the coldest I’ve ever experienced is seven degrees, and when I got to Sudbury it was like minus 1,000 and I just didn’t understand how people can live in this place. It wasn’t pleasant.”
Purcell conceded there was one advantage to shooting the movie in Sudbury.
“It allowed me to focus because there’s not a whole lot of distraction there,” he said of the city located five hours north of Toronto.
Purcell plays boxer Sailor O’Connor in A Fighting Man, which also stars James Caan, Famke Janssen and Canadians like Kim Coates and Adam Beach.
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Purcell, an avid surfer and boxer in real life, prepared for the role by working out and filling up.
“I became a beast. I walk around at 190 lbs. For this movie I was 230 lbs. thereabouts and it was just a diet of seven dinners a day basically,” he explained.
His diet was heavy on salmon, rice, chips and candy.
“I didn’t want to look like that homogenized gym body. I wanted it to look like an old school country strong guy who doesn’t go to the gym — he’s just a naturally big dude.”
Purcell said so many movies are made about boxing because there is something special about the sport.
“You see these guys bashing the hell out of each other but there’s a real bond, a real kinship between them,” he said. “At the end of the fight they embrace. It’s a very personal experience.
“You have to be a fighter to understand that.”
A Fighting Man opens April 25 in selected Canadian cities.
BELOW: Watch the trailer for A Fighting Man.
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