AceShowbiz - Mark Wahlberg refused to give up his boxing training for "The Fighter" after the project stalled in 2006 because he was determined to stay in shape for when the biopic began shooting. The actor plays retired boxer Mickey Ward in the biopic, which is set to hit screens next month - and Wahlberg admits the project has been a long time in the making.

He originally began training for the film in 2006, but when the movie was pushed back the star decided to persevere with honing his boxing skills, rather than let his hard work go to waste. Wahlberg tells The Hollywood Reporter, "We thought we had a movie which was a go in '06 and so we started training for the movie and that fell apart and it was like, 'I've done all this training!' "

"It's not like riding a bike where you can just stop for a while and pick up where you left off, you lose everything. So I said if I'm gonna do this it's better to stay in shape than to have to get in shape again, so every film I did before shooting 'The Fighter', I would bring my boxing trainers and we would continue to train, two to three hours a day. At some point I was training up to 10 hours a day for the film."