Joseph Gordon-Levitt did pilot training to prepare for 7500

Joseph Gordon-Levitt took part in pilot training to prepare for his role in plane hijacking thriller.

In new Amazon Prime Video movie 7500, the (500) Days of Summer actor stars as Tobias Ellis, a first officer who has to fend off hijackers and take back control of his plane during a flight from Paris to Berlin.

To bring accuracy to the role, Joseph underwent plenty of pilot research and sought the advice of his co-star Carlo Kitzlinger, who used to be a pilot.

“I wanted all the technical pilot stuff to be accurate. I did a fair amount of training. I used flight simulators. I watched a lot of dry videos of pilots doing their jobs,” he told Variety. “We had a number of technical consultants, but the most important player in that regard was Carlo, the actor playing the captain… He was the one teaching me. He was the one drilling me. That allowed us to get way into the details, because little things make a difference, like would a pilot rest his foot on this thing here.”

The claustrophobic thriller, which takes place almost entirely in the plane’s cockpit, marks Joseph’s acting comeback after a three-year hiatus and he admitted it was one of the “most challenging” jobs he’s ever done.

When asked if he was tempted to return with an easier project, he replied, “It was the opposite. I’ve been acting a long time. I started when I was six and I was 37 when we shot this. The break that I took was the longest break from acting that I’ve ever taken, so I wanted the return to be something special.”

7500 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.