Laurence Fishburne has plenty of sore memories from his time in “ The Matrix .”

“We were essentially the first Western actors to work in the Hong Kong style,” he says of himself and co-stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss. “And so [martial arts choreographer] Yuen Woo-ping was very concerned that we weren’t going to be able to [pull it off]. So he trained us really hard—training us like professional athletes. And it was in the middle of that training I realized why they pay professional athletes so much money: Because professional athletes are always in pain. Not in pain sometimes—like when you go to the gym and then you’re sore for a day. They’re in pain All. The. Time.”

The grueling effort clearly paid off, visible not only in the film’s now-iconic fight sequences but also in the

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