Actors can get paid millions and millions of dollars for their work, others just a very small fraction of that amount, but all of them are obviously dedicated to their art. Some are willing to take their own bodies and push them to their absolute limit for a role, whether that he losing or gaining weight, adding mass, or becoming fitter than they have ever been before. Take Tom Cruise, a screen icon in his mid-fifties willing to jump out of, and hang onto sides of movie planes, speed across busy Paris streets on a motorcycle without protection, and fly a helicopter through mountain terrain for a part – this was all in the last Mission: Impossible movie alone.
There are actors who don’t take physical risk in terms of stunt work, but are more than willing to transform their bodies for a specific part. There are many examples of this, but here are three extreme cases seen on cinema screens in recent years. Nick Mitchell a body transformation expert has worked with many actors and knows incredible results are possible but they require major lifestyle changes, discipline and sacrifice.
Christian Bale
Christian Bale is very well known for his incredible acting, but he’s also been documented to reduce or increase his body weight. Take the 2006 movie The Machinist, a film which really shows off Bale’s commitment to a role. Reportedly just eating an apple a day, Bale lost a huge 63 pounds for the role of Trevor Reznik in the film. His skeletal appearance on-screen was shocking to see, but the most impressive fact is what he did after filming was completed. In just a matter of months, Bale bulked himself up, adding on pure muscle mass and body-weight to play the role of Bruce Wayne/ Batman in British director Christopher Nolan’s DC reinvention Batman Begins. He played the Dark Knight in two more movies and will soon be seen playing the role of Dick Cheney in Backseat, a role he piled on the pounds once more for.
Jared Leto
He has been acting in movies for decades and has even concurred the music world with his band 30 Second To Mars, but Jared Leto once added on nearly 70 pounds for a role in a movie about the man who killed ex-Beatle John Lennon in Chapter 27. The film wasn’t a huge hit, but Leto’s dedication to the part can’t be overlooked. In order to gain the weight needed, Leto feasted on high-calorie foods, including tubs and tubs of ice-cream to reach his target weight. The image of him in that movie is at the polar opposite to how we saw him in the more recent Dallas Buyer’s Club where he is seen massively under-wright as the character Rayon, a role which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Matthew McConaughey
Star of Interstellar and the upcoming White Boy Rickl, Matthew McConaughey has also used his body appearance to bring weight to a performance over the years. The Oscar-winner managed to bulk up and pack on pure muscle in the film which kicked off his so-called McConaisance in 2012, the Steven Soderbergh-directed Magic Mike, where he played a Florida strip-club owner who didn’t like to wear an awful lot – much to his audiences’ delight. Just a couple of years later he scored his Oscar as a massively underweight HIV-sufferer in the superb drama Dallas Buyers Club, and was then seen as the much heavier Kenny Wells in Gold. His muscular physique can also be seen in his break-out 1990s role, the John Grisham adaptation A Time To Kill, and his many romantic comedies that followed with him as the dashing leading man.
