7 actors on the shocking toll losing weight for roles took on their bodies and minds
Hugh Jackman at the 2024 US Open, and a behind-the-scenes photo of him shirtless as Wolverine.
One of the talking points around huge comic book movies and Oscar-baiting dramas is often around how much weight an actor has gained or lost to bring their character to life.
Many stars see it as a dedication to their craft, that they feel like they have to physically look a certain way to embody a character or a person to the best of their ability.
However, it can be extremely difficult to achieve specific weight gain and loss at either end of the spectrum, and a number of stars like Hugh Jackman, Cillian Murphy, and Paul Rudd have opened up about what it’s like putting the work in for the big screen.
Getting in shape to play Wolverine was a full-time job for Hugh Jackman.
Hugh Jackman at the 2024 US Open, and a behind-the-scenes photo of him shirtless as Wolverine.
On September 5, Hugh Jackman posted an audio clip on Instagram thanking his team for helping him get into shape for “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which features a shirtless scene for the 56-year-old.
“I’ve had a lot of people who talk to me and ask me questions about how I got into shape. What I did, what I ate, how I trained, how hard is it at your age? Just wanted to take a second and say, yeah I had to turn up, I had to do those deadlifts, I had to eat those meals but I had an incredible team who helped me,” he said.
“There’s no hope in hell I would have gotten there without them.”
He also touched on what went into filming his shirtless scene, saying: “On the day, because I was grumpy, I was not having water the night before, I was eating tilapia and beans for days and how to make that day work best for me, everyone on set was just making it easy.”
He previously told fans that he was eating 8,000 calories a day to bulk up for the film.
Paul Rudd said his diet while preparing for the “Ant-Man” movies was “horrible.”
Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang in the “Ant-Man” movies.
Paul Rudd went on such a restrictive diet while preparing to play Ant-Man that sparkling water was considered a reward, he said.
“That’s how horrible that diet was. I was like, ‘Ugh alright. I’m going to have some sparkling water now. I’ve earned it,'” Rudd said on the “Off Menu” podcast.
Rudd struggled with comparing himself to other Marvel actors such as “Thor” star Chris Hemsworth.
“I think I worked out harder than anyone, I would eat better than everyone, and I looked worse than all of them,” Rudd said. “I had to work out all the time, eat perfectly, just to look kind of bad. Not even great.”
Cillian Murphy ate as little as he could to lose weight for “Oppenheimer.”
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in “Oppenheimer.”
Cillian Murphy won’t say how much weight he lost to play the lead in the highly anticipated movie “Oppenheimer,” but he did test himself to see how little he could eat.
“You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it,” he told The Guardian.
Murphy’s co-stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt said that the lead would never join them for cast dinners while shooting, because he wasn’t eating dinner — he ate “one almond most nights or a little slice of apple,” Blunt told Entertainment Tonight.
Severely low-calorie diets are not recommended. They can be dangerous and are not a healthy or sustainably way to lose weight, experts say.
Kumail Nanjiani said that losing weight for “Eternals” made his relationship with food worse.
Kumail Nanjiani with wife Emily Gordon in October 2018 and at the end of 2019.
In 2019, Nanjiani lost weight for his role in Marvel’s “Eternals” by cutting out carbs.
“You work out every day and you sort of learn to enjoy it, but the diet is the hardest thing,” Nanjiani said. “I have not had pizza or a donut in over a year. I’ve had no refined sugar in a year, I’ve had almost no carbs at all.”
But the process worsened his already negative body image and relationship with food.
“I’ve always had a weird relationship with food. I’ve always had guilt or regret associated with it. I’ve always used food as a punishment or as a reward,” he told NPR.
“I didn’t really start thinking about it or trying to come to terms with it until after I was done with ‘Eternals,’ because doing ‘Eternals’ brought a lot of those issues up to the surface. I realized after that that I thought about food in a specific kind of way that I needed to explore and revisit.”
Afterwards he forced himself to eat “unhealthy amounts of unhealthy food” to help him change his mindset, he said.
Zac Efron said getting shredded for “Baywatch” damaged both his mental and physical health.
Zac Efron in “Baywatch.”
The 2017 movie “Baywatch” saw Zac Efron getting impossibly ripped by eating only “organic protein and leafy greens” and working out intensely, possibly overtraining, for months, he said.
“That Baywatch look, I don’t know if that’s really attainable,” he told Men’s Health. “There’s just too little water in the skin. Like, it’s fake; it looks CGI’d. And that required Lasix, powerful diuretics, to achieve. So I don’t need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3% body fat.”
Efron said he will never get back to such a lean physique because the side effects were so bad.
“I started to develop insomnia, and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time,” he said. “Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time recentering.”
Channing Tatum nearly didn’t do a third “Magic Mike” movie because getting so lean requires “starving himself.”
Speaking to Kelly Clarkson in 2022, Channing Tatum said he was reluctant to make a third “Magic Mike” movie because getting into shape for the role is so tough.
“It’s hard to look like that,” he said. “Even if you do work out, to be that kind of in shape is not natural. That’s not even healthy. You have to starve yourself. I don’t think when you’re that lean, it’s actually healthy… I don’t know how people who work a 9 to 5 actually stay in shape because it’s my full-time job, and I can barely do it.”
Brendan Fraser was so “starved of carbohydrates” while filming “George of the Jungle” that his brain “was misfiring.”
Brendan Fraser and Leslie Mann in “George of the Jungle” (1997).
Brendan Fraser said he was so starved of carbohydrates for his eponymous role in “George of the Jungle” in 1997 that he forgot his bank PIN.
“I was waxed. Starved of carbohydrates,” he said. “I would drive home after work and stop to get something to eat. I needed some cash one day, and I went to the ATM, and I couldn’t remember my PIN number because my brain was misfiring. Banging on the thing. I didn’t eat that night.”
Carbohydrates are essential for brain function, and brain fog can be a result of not consuming enough, dietitian Nichola Ludlam-Raine previously told B-17.
