But people often said that he perspired heavily, the physical effort of doing this was enormously difficult; he did develop very powerful upper body and shoulders. There's a story about Jack Dempsey, the boxer, saying that he'd never seen more developed shoulders than in FDR. With crutches, it's really all about hands, it's all about weight on hands. You know, very obvious things to people who've had these challenges, but to people coming to the process of playing someone, getting that kind of thing right seemed to be fundamentally important.
Other people who consulted on the film, also showed me how people without use of their legs swim, and what it does to their legs, and how they float, and how they manage, and which is the most comfortable position to swim in. All of this is tailored to the individual sort of constraints of whatever physical damage has been done by the polio. So it was pretty challenging, physically.
