‘The Fire Inside’ Star Ryan Destiny Says Playing Boxer Claressa Shields Changed Her ‘For the Better’
Ryan Destiny said her role playing iconic female boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields in “The Fire Inside” helped her develop a new level of trust in herself as an actress.
“I think I found a lot of trust in myself. Obviously, a lot of different levels of discipline that I don’t think I’ve had to use before,” Destiny told TheWrap. “I knew that this film would challenge me in a way that scared me, but I used that fear to my advantage in a lot of ways. I just wanted it so bad, and I knew that I could execute it, and I knew that it would be something that was so different than what anyone’s ever seen me in. Other people couldn’t see it, but I could see it in myself.”
She added that “the entire journey itself has just put a lot more confidence in myself, a lot more reassurance that I’ve given myself, and just trusting that instinct as a performer and as a person. I think it’s just changed me completely for the better as an artist, so it’s just a real blessing.”
Destiny stars as Shields, who is widely recognized as one of the greatest female boxers of all time. The film charts Shields’ rise to stardom, starting off as a young, ambitious girl with aspirations to be a fighter to her becoming the youngest woman to ever box in the Olympics at age 17 to her leading advocacy efforts for gender equality and equal pay for female athletes.
Destiny, who previously starred Lee Daniels’ musical drama “Star” as Alexandria Crane and in “Grown-ish” as Jillion, shared that she feels “The Fire Inside” has provided her with a “new beginning” in her career.
“I’m someone who didn’t really want to be put in a box and didn’t really like the limitations other people would put on me, so I guess this part of my life, this kind of new beginning has been just really, really special, and something that I don’t take for granted. I think that’s just been my journey completely since I was even younger, I have to make sure that I do understand of that this position is not something that is necessarily common,” Destiny said. “And I think that, because I keep reminding myself of that, it kind of lights this new spirit in me every time that I’m down or I’m not feeling like I’m where I should be, or people don’t see me the way I want to be seen, all of those things. I think it’s a constant reminder of why I started [acting] in the first place, and just the pure love for it. So I think it’s a little mixture of that and me also wanting to prove myself to myself and continuously push myself in ways that help me grow. It’s a combination of those things and loving this world that I’m in, and trying to remember why I started in the first place.”
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