Noel Clarke has told how he gave up pizzas and took up fight training to perform the stunts in new sci-fi thriller The Anomaly.

The British actor directs and stars in the film as Ryan, a former soldier who is taken captive and wakes up in the back of a van, only to realise he has just minutes to work out how he got there and how to escape before he loses consciousness again.

Noel - who also appears naked in the film - confessed: "I like to think I'm in half decent shape, but only half decent!

"So I definitely got off the pizzas for a while. I'm a big pizza fan, but I had to stop the pizzas for a couple of months and train quite a bit. I did fight training and made sure I was in some sort of decent shape.

"And yeah - you see me mostly naked in the film, but I don't see it as me, because it was in the script."

The movie sees him do battle against Vampire Diaries star Ian Somerhalder and Luke Hemsworth, the older brother of action stars Liam and Chris, and Noel admitted they did end up getting hurt for real.

He explained: "We shot the fights in one move. The thing with Matrix is they cut the camera, so it can look as smooth as you want, but your eye's playing tricks on you, because there's a cut.

"On 95 per cent of our fights we don't cut the camera. So the hits have to touch, if you make a mistake you have to go right back to the beginning again. It was really annoying and frustrating and you're getting hurt.

"We were getting hurt - there was a medic on set and we were getting bruises and we were getting punched in the mouth."

:: The Anomaly is in cinemas now.