Fighting With My Family star Jack Lowden says professional wrestlers work a lot harder than actors

There are plenty of similarities between acting and professional wrestling. Now one of the stars of new wrestling-themed comedy Fighting With My Family says when it comes to workload, it’s a knockout win for the lords of the ring.

Jack Lowden agrees there are plenty of similarities between the worlds of acting and professional wrestling.

Certainly the glitzy, over-the-top action of WWE is as much about theatre as it is about sport, which is perhaps why it has thrown up so many actors, from Hulk Hogan to Jesse Ventura and John Cena, to the towering presence that is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Lowden, who stars alongside Johnson in the new wrestling-themed comedy Fighting With My Family, says both professions share the aspects of “singing for your supper” and winning over an audience but freely admits: “They work a hell of a lot harder than we do”.

“I feel like there is a lot more commitment involved in the wrestling world or something like dance, just because of the sheer physical toll it takes on your body because they are athletes,” Lowden says. “Whereas acting you can do it until the day you drop and come into it very late as well.”

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Jack Lowden (left) stars as Zak Knight and Florence Pugh (right) stars as Paige in Fighting With My Family.

Fighting With My Family, directed by co-creator of The Office, Stephen Merchant, is based on the real life story of the Bevis family, who ran a low-rent wrestling outfit in the UK city of Norwich.

Lowden, best known for his roles in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and this year’s historical drama Mary Queen of Scots, plays Zak Bevis, who wrestled as Zak Zodiac and dreamt of hitting the big time in the US as part of the WWE.

His dreams are shattered as those of his sister, Paige, (Florence Pugh) are realised, leaving him embittered and jealous of her success.

It’s the kind of underdog tale that’s irresistible to Hollywood, which is why Lowden, who knows next to nothing about WWE, let alone the existence of small-fry local wrestling competitions, was intrigued.

He met the family and visited one of the events still promoted by Zak, as well as a variety of “amateur and semi-pro wrestlers who tour week-in, week-out all through the year for not a great amount of money, but they just love wrestling so much”.

“The story is just incredible,” he says.

“A film about a family of wrestlers from the east of England. It sounds so bizarre and then having it told by Stephen Merchant, who is a comic genius, it was just a no-brainer really.

“And the part itself of Zak — he’s such an amazing bloke and the trajectory journey that he had in the film and has had in life is amazing.”

Meeting wrestlers who largely do it for the love of the sport was something that rang true with the 28-year-old England-born, Scotland-raised Lowden.

He began his career in amateur operatics and dramatics before moving on to a successful career on stage and TV and film but still recalls those early days when there was nothing on the line but the joy of acting, with a great deal of fondness.

Lowden, left, with his FWMF co-stars Nick Frost and Florence Pugh and director and writer Stephen Merchant. Picture: AAP

“Obviously when you get into the professional side of it, it’s not as much fun because there is a lot more pressure on it,” he says.

“It’s your job all of a sudden and it’s not about just pissing about on stage.”

He says the amateur scene in which he first honed his craft also provided a nurturing environment for him to chase his acting dreams, and also taught him to appreciate his good fortune at having achieved some of them.

He says there are plenty of actors whose skills far outshine their professional counterparts and that success can come down to luck and being in the right place at the right time.

“It never really occurred to me that it would be stupid idea to do this as a profession,” he says.

“I was always encouraged, I was never told ‘oh no, you can’t do that’. Loads of actors have stories of being told that it’s a stupid idea but I was lucky in that case. I was surrounded by people who were butchers and teachers and firemen and they would give their right arm to do it.”

The real life Zak is 185cm tall, with a billed fighting weight of 87kg, meaning that Lowden had to stack on about 10kg in six weeks, which he did with a punishing regimen of Cross Fit training, five meals a day, a lot of hard work and a lot of pain.

While he says it’s the fittest he’s ever been, he admits that he hasn’t been able to keep it up, although it has fundamentally changed his approach to hitting the gym.

Lowden with Zak, the real life person he plays in Fighting With My Family. Picture: Getty

“When you thought you were training hard before, you really weren’t,” he says with a chuckle.

“I would come out every day on my hands and knees and it’s in me now that whenever I do get off my backside to go to the gym, I try to go a lot harder than I would have done before this film.”

He was helped in his fitness quest by Johnson, who executive produced the film and also steered both Lowden and Pugh through the strange, and highly technical world of wrestling.

“He is a presence,” agrees Lowdon of the man who was the highest paid actor of 2018, with an eye-watering $175 million.

“Anyone who is called The Rock has to have the presence to match it and he certainly does.

“Like Florence has said he is a very smooth, shiny man — he is incredibly healthy looking, he literally glows when he walks in, and is obviously in peak condition.

“Before he even opens his mouth he is very hard to ignore. But he is a lovely bloke and I don’t think anyone works harder than the Rock in this industry, so he is amazing.”

Fighting With My Family opens Thursday.