The actor ate nothing but grilled chicken, brown rice and steamed broccoli while working out six days a week. "It was brutal!" Michael B. Jordan says. "Half the time you're eating you're not even hungry. You don't even want to eat, you just know you have to put food in your body just to keep going. And you're pretty antisocial because that's your life. Your alarm goes off and you're shoving food in your face and then you have to hit the gym." But even as he transformed his physique and performed all of his fight scenes himself, he keeps things in perspective. "I'm an actor, I am not a boxer," he says. "Not at all! It was very humbling to get in the ring with a real boxer. We had all professional fighters in our film, and I believe that helped me a lot, because they were quick to point out anything that was inauthentic. The way we approached it was that every punch was a line. Every fight was its own scene."

Michael B. Jordan stars as the son of apollo creed

The film reunited Jordan with his Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler, who are already planning to work together again. "I really value the actor-director relationship," Jordan explains, "and we have a shorthand, a way of communicating on the set that makes things very comfortable. We push each other to be better." Of course, Creed brought additional pressures as the seventh film in the Rocky saga. But Jordan said that having Sylvester Stallone on the set as a costar made a huge difference. "Sly assured me that I didn't have to worry about competing with anything," Jordan says. "He'd say, 'You're Creed, and I'm here to support you.' When you have the man himself reminding you of that day in and day out, there is no pressure. The guy is incredible! He's been doing this for over 40 years, and he's really a solid, respectable guy."

Watch the trailer for Creed here: