Awards season is already well under way in Hollywood with the Golden Globes already out of the way.
One of the big winners was Sylvester Stallone who got Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his role in the critically-acclaimed seventh instalment in the Rocky series, Creed.
It's already grossed almost $120 million at the world box office and tonight on Off The Ball, one of its stars joined Joe Molloy.
Tony Bellew, who plays British boxer 'Pretty' Ricky Conlan in the film, is a successful boxer in his own right and happens to be the current EBU and former WBO International Cruiserweight champion.
This being his first feature film, the Liverpudlian told Joe that he had trouble believing that the offer to do the film was not a prank of some sort.
"At first I thought it was the lads at the football club on the wind-up - mainly [Everton midfielder] Leon Osman to be honest - and it worked out that it wasn't a wind-up and someone really wanted me to be in a Rocky Balboa movie. It was hard to take in but ultimately I got there in the end," Bellew admitted.
Filming for Creed actually began in Bellew's home city of Liverpool this time last year and he had a role in the script when it came to portraying his character as an authentic Scouser.
"We first did what was on the script," he said of the read-through of the script in Philadelphia.
"[Director] Ryan [Coogler] was very helpful. Without Ryan, I couldn't have made this movie because it was down to Ryan for the fact that he pulled me to one side and said 'Tony, I want this guy to be from Liverpool, I want it to be authentic and I want it to be how you would see it if you were in this guy's position'. So then we went over the script and all my parts and we basically re-wrote the whole of my talking and what I would say because there's so many different things a Scouser would say and an American guy would say."
Bellew still "can't get his head" round the fact that he is working with the Sylvester Stallone and in a Rocky film to boot.
"It just doesn't sound real. I'm waiting for someone to wake me up," he admitted, also detailing how the Hollywood action movie star "is a historian when it comes to boxing" and has a "vast knowledge" of the boxers of old.
And as a boxer at the cutting edge of the sport, Bellew believes the fight scenes in the movie are faithful to what the real-life experience is like in the ring.
"I feel the boxing scenes were the closest thing you could get to real. You've got professional fighters in this movie so it's not a case of two actors pretending to be a boxer," he said, while also discussing whether he plans to try his hand at more acting roles in the future.
Listen to the full interview on the Off The Ball highlights podcast.
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