TORONTO, ONT – A few hours before the film about his life, “Unstoppable,” was to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Anthony Robles, sitting alongside the actor who plays him, Jharrel Jerome, was remembering the moment he won the NCAA wrestling national title.
He had done something that was, by any measure, extraordinary. Robles was born without his right leg. Through grit and determination, Robles had risen to be the best 125-pound wrestler in the country. But the last thing on his mind at that moment was Hollywood.
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“I was sitting there showering off after the match,” Robles says. “I was excited and then I was like, ‘I gotta find a job. I gotta start getting my resume together.' I never got into any of this for the attention.”
“Unstoppable,” which premiered Friday night in Toronto, was one of the most-anticipated premieres of the festival partly because of outside drama. The film is produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and co-stars Jennifer Lopez as Robles’ mom, Judy. But if all the talk going in was about who would turn up between Affleck and Lopez (Lopez did), the talk after the movie belonged to Robles and Jerome.
The film, directed by the Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg (“Argo,” “Heat”) and which Amazon MGM will release in December, is in many ways a conventional sports drama, with an uplifting message and terrific supporting performances from Lopez, Don Cheadle, Michael Peña and Bobby Cannavale. But it also, rather than building toward one big challenge, takes a more naturalistic path. Robles, as played by Jerome, doesn’t face a hurdle or two. He faces continual adversity, at home and on the mat.
“That’s honestly how I felt going through my life,” says Robles, who redshirted as a freshman at Arizona State University. “I was constantly fighting something, whether it was on the mat against a flesh-and-blood opponent or it was in my family or the world. There was always something I was fighting against. All those things, that frustration got channeled inside me. But wrestling was my outlet.”
While many real-life stories include some involvement from the subject, “Unstoppable” went several steps further. Robles, a producer on the film, also serves as Jerome’s stunt double. For the wrestling scenes, Jerome and Robles, both in costume, would take turns performing the moves on the mat. Goldenberg would later mix the two together, using visual effects to remove Jerome’s leg.
“I signed on to the movie and then I was like: How am I going to do the wrestling?” says Goldenberg. “I watched so many hours of him wrestling. I thought, there’s no way I can do this without him doubling himself. He moves in a way that I just thought no one could ever master.”
Jerome, the talented 26-year-old actor of “Moonlight” and “I’m a Virgo,” first met Robles in 2020. Robles wanted to meet in a gym.
“You can imagine how I feel. I’m barely in the gym and this is the guy I gotta play. I think it was a test,” says Jerome, laughing. “I remember the pressure of meeting him was so intense for me. But once you get to meet him and know him, all that pressure goes out the window.”
After the two had gotten started, the pandemic shut down development on the film, and “Unstoppable” didn’t reassemble until several years later. But that also gave Jerome and Robles more time to get to know each other.
“Missing my leg, he’d see how I interact with people,” says Robles. “People would just look at me because I’m a little bit different, how that motivated me. That was something that I couldn’t really explain with words. Him just seeing it and being around it, he could feel it after a while.”
Jerome trained intensely not just as a wrestler but to match Robles’ poise. After training with Robles, he would work with a movement coach to capture how Robles, who uses crutches to get around, walked and carried himself. When it came time to wrestle in the film, Jerome says they were like a tag team.
“As an actor, you always have somebody walking around who looks like you, your body double or stunt double,” says Jerome. “But I have the guy I’m playing, so it was a weird mind bend for me.”
Robles, 36, who’s married and has a young son, now coaches wrestling at his old high school in Mesa, Arizona. But stepping back on the mat, in gymnasiums decorated to look just like those he experienced his greatest triumphs in, was surreal.
“I got the butterfly feelings like I was really wrestling,” Robles says. “That for me was fun, being able to train for something again.”
Robles’ high school coach taught him, as a wrestler, to focus on his strengths and camouflage his weaknesses. On that mat, that meant dropping to his knee to wrestle from a neutral position, allowing him to use his hands to move around. His upper body strength is extreme, as is his grip strength from always being on crutches. “It’s kind of like I’m working out 24/7,” he says.
But much of “Unstoppable” focuses on Robles’ relationship with his mother. Robles' strength, he says, comes from family and faith.
“My mom has always been my hero from day one. Being born missing my leg, immediately everyone thinks about what I’m not going to be able to accomplish in my life or how this is going to hold me back,” Robles says. “I was blessed to have a mom who chose not to have that mentality, and not allow me to have that mentality growing up. She called it a challenge. She said: You don’t let your challenge become an excuse.”
Now, Robles looks at “Unstoppable” as part of his legacy. He'll show it to his son when he's a little older.
“Going through this whole process of filming this movie, meeting Jharrel and talking about things, I kind of feel like I’m at the point now where I’m done fighting,” Robles says. “I’m just blessed to be on the journey.”