Actors have a variety of creative ways to “get into” their roles in the name of making their characters more believable. But it isn’t all accents and body language, sometimes they undergo incredible physical transformations in order to play a part convincingly.

From losing dozens of pounds to play someone marooned on a desert island to bulking up to become a superhero, actors put themselves through physical trials most of us wouldn’t even attempt (and, frankly, we’re not paid enough to try).

At the end of the day though, there’s no secret to changing one’s body other than food and activity levels – we kind of hoped there would be, but this is just good old-fashioned hard work.

Take a look at the transformations actors went through to play these 60 roles – and remember that these aren’t necessarily things you should try at home (at least not to lose lots of weight super-fast!)

1. Tom Hanks in Castaway

Tom Hanks went from 225 pounds to 170 when he starred as real-life marooned delivery man Chuck Noland, who was trapped on a desert island for 4 years with only a volleyball for company.

Castaway was actually filmed in two parts with a “gap year’ in the middle to accommodate Hanks’ extreme transformation which involved gaining 50 pounds just so he could lose it again. In the intervening year, Hanks lost 44 pounds and grew that scraggly beard.

Would he do it again? In a word: no.

“The hardest thing was the time; I wish I could have just taken a pill and lost all the weight but the reality was that I had to start in October knowing that we were going to go back in February. The idea of looking at four months of constant vigilance as far as what I ate, as well as two hours a day in the gym doing nothing but a monotonous kind of workout — that was formidable. You have to power yourself through it almost by some sort of meditation trickery. It’s not glamorous,” he said.

Hanks now has Type II diabetes (which made it all the more nerve-wracking when he was suffering from COVID-19 earlier this year). He has wondered aloud if his dramatic weight losses and gains for his roles in Castaway and Philadelphia might have contributed to his diagnosis.

2. Christian Bale in The Machinist

If you’ve ever had insomnia, you know how debilitating it can be. But for factory worker Trevor Resnik – played by Christian Bale in The Machinist – it brought him close to the edge both physically and mentally.

After an accident that injured a co-worker, he falls even deeper into the hole, becoming a mere shell of himself. Therefore, Bale had to follow suit.

Bale lost a total of 60 pounds for the role, reportedly going from around roughly 170 to 110 pounds!

In four months, Bale dropped the weight by cutting calories far beyond what would be reasonable for any healthy person. He reportedly lived on a diet of black coffee, one apple, and a tin of tuna per day – roughly 200 calories or less.

Do not try this at home!

3. Charlize Theron in Monster

It seems that every beautiful actress needs to have at least one “ugly” role under her belt to lend them some credibility, sadly.

For Charlize Theron, it was her 2003 turn in Monster, in which she played real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who had been executed the previous year for killing 6 men.

Theron transformed herself from a statuesque former ballerina-turned-Hollywood’s-most-glamorous-actress into an alcoholic prostitute with bad teeth and a potbelly.

She had to gain 30 pounds for the role, which she said was helped along by her potato chip obsession (and, we imagine, a bit more than that).

The rest was contacts, a pair of dentures, and some unfortunate hairstyling.

4. Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Natalie Portman may have met her husband on the set of Black Swan, but it wasn’t a time in her life when she was at her best.

Preparing her already petite frame for the film took both a physical and emotional toll.

In the year leading up to filming, she went through grueling ballet training sessions of up to 8 hours a day.

She ended up losing 20 pounds for the role with a punishing diet of little more than carrots and almonds to fuel her workouts.

“There were some nights that I thought I literally was going to die,” she recalled.

5. Daniel Radcliffe in The Jungle

Daniel Radcliffe played real-life Israeli adventurer, Yossi Ghinsberg, in the film The Jungle. Ghinsberg had been stranded in the Bolivian jungle for three weeks in 1981 and, as a result, Radcliffe had to look like it had been weeks since he’d eaten.

While Ghinsberg said he survived in the forest by eating fruit and bird eggs and lost 35 pounds, Radcliffe’s starvation lasted two weeks during which he ate only one chicken breast and one protein bar a day.

The actor admitted it was a very unsafe way to lose weight.

“I did not look like a well person!” he warned.

6. Matt Damon in Courage Under Fire

In 1995, Matt Damon played a war medic-turned-heroin addict in the movie Courage Under Fire alongside Denzel Washington.

To prepare for the parts in which the character hit a low point (in more ways than one), Damon, dropped from 190 pounds to just 139 pounds in 90 days! He admits to eating nothing but chicken breast for weeks.

He also ran roughly 13 miles a day.

As expected, it took a huge toll on his body. He had to take medication for over a year after filming to repair the damage done to his adrenal glands from all the stress.

7. Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance in Nightcrawler might have earned him a Golden Globe Best Actor nomination, but playing an ambulance-chasing and ethically-challenged reporter took a toll on his mind and body.

Riding around with emergency-vehicle-chasing paparazzi before filming may have made him feel low, but it was the starvation diet he went on to play the role of Lou that really required some sacrifice.

Gyllenhaal admits to starving himself with a diet of kale and chewing gum to shrink down from 180 pounds to just 150. That also required him to run 15 miles home from the studio each night!

8. Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

It’s hard to think of Bridget Jones as “fat,” despite her internal monologue throughout the movie. But Renée Zellweger gained about 30 pounds for her roles in the original Bridget Jones’ Diary and the sequel The Edge of Reason.

In order to pack on the pounds, Zellweger said she simply stopped exercising and started eating burgers and other fatty foods with abandon. But it was actually hard to keep the weight on with her work schedule.

Zellweger has often been criticized for being too thin in real life, so it seems she just can’t win.

9. Chris Hemsworth in Thor

While some people accused Chris Hemsworth of using steroids to bulk up for his role as Thor in the Marvel films, he insists it was a strict regimen of weight-lifting, red meat, and protein powder – along with the help of trainer and former Navy SEAL Duffy Gaver.

The actor put on about 20 pounds of muscle for the role and his enviable body made “Chris Hemsworth Workout” a top suggestion when searching for the actor’s name on Google.

The workout is hardcore but nothing too fancy and you can find it here if you think you can commit to that much upper body work.

10. Demi Moore in G.I. Jane

Demi Moore did more than just shave her head for the film G.I. Jane.

She did rigorous cardio and muscle training beginning at 4 am each day to earn the physique of a Navy SEAL (though, at the time, women weren’t even allowed to try out for the elite military division).

Sadly, the actress already suffered from obsessive thoughts about her body before making the movie. Ironically, it was her need to gain muscle for G.I. Jane that finally made her stop starving herself.

11. Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club

In Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey was cast as Ron Woodroof, a Texas AIDS patient with 30 days to live.

To play the role of an emaciated and dying man, he lost nearly 47 pounds by drastically cutting calories and burning 1,800 calories a day through exercise.

He took some time to prepare for the role, meeting with a nutritionist, and setting a goal of losing 3.5 pounds per week.

But he also chewed a lot of ice and admits to becoming hyper and buzzing with energy, sleeping 3 fewer hours a night than usual.

12. Edward Norton in American History X

To play the white supremacist killer Derek Vinyard in American History X, Ed Norton knew he needed a mean exterior.

He ended up gaining 30 pounds of muscle for the role from a combination of strength-building exercises – like squats and presses – as well as lots of weightlifting. He also went on a high-protein diet which included 5 meals a day, PLUS protein shakes, to supplement his workouts.

He was reportedly asked by Arnold Schwartzenegger if he had been using steroids to gain that kind of muscle mass so quickly.

But the film changed him internally too, giving him some serious insight into the scourge of racism.

13. Christian Bale in American Hustle

In a 180 from his transformation in The Machinist, Christian Bale packed on the pounds to become almost unrecognizable for his role as Irving Rosenfeld in American Hustle.

He ended up gaining 43 pounds in time for filming.

“I ate lots of doughnuts, a whole lot of cheeseburgers, and whatever I could get my hands on. I literally ate anything that came my way,” Bale revealed to PEOPLE magazine. “I was about 185 and went up to 228.”

He even shaved his hairline back so his combover would have the right effect and slouched constantly to take inches off his height. That last maneuver left him with a herniated disc in his back!

14. Will Smith in Ali

Will Smith needed a solid year of training to get into shape to play Muhammad Ali in the 2001 film Ali, gaining 35 pounds of muscle on his lanky 195-pound, 6’2” frame.

What followed was a lot of endurance training, including running and weightlifting (he went from benching 175 pounds to 365!) and he even enlisted the help of Sugar Ray Leonard’s former trainer Darrell Foster.

Foster got him into shape with a daily 3-mile run, hours of boxing practice, and a high-protein, low-carb diet. The result was a 10-pound weight loss before he started beefing up again, peaking at 224 pounds.

It did earn him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor though!

15. Matthew McConaughey in Gold

Matthew McConaughey put on 47 pounds to play the character of Kenny Wells in the film Gold. And gaining weight was easier than he thought.

“Cheeseburgers and beer will do the trick,” he said. “I wouldn’t even take the stairs to the second floor, that would be too much exercise”.

His kids enjoyed the transformation because it meant there was more junk food around for them too.

“I was Captain Fun—that was my nickname around the house, because I was saying ‘yes’ to everything,” the actor told E! News.

16. 50 Cent in All Things Fall Apart

It was probably a real bummer that Rapper 50 Cent’s passion project went straight to video after he not only wrote, produced, financed, and starred in All Things Fall Apart but also lost 60 pounds for the role.

Weighing just 160 pounds at his most gaunt, he admits he was constantly starving while playing the Heisman-hopeful football star named Deon, who slowly succumbs to cancer.

According to the Associated Press, 50 Cent dropped from “214 pounds to 160 in nine weeks after liquid dieting and running on a treadmill three hours a day.”

It wasn’t his first liquid diet though – when he was shot in the jaw in 2000, he dropped down to 157 pounds since he couldn’t eat solid food.

17. Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild

If you’re going to play someone who starved to death, chances are you’re going to have to do some starving yourself.

Emile Hirsch, who played Chris McCandless in the movie adaptation of Into the Wild weighed 156 pounds when he got the part.

“…I weighed 130 pounds throughout most of the film, so I lost the 26 pounds to get in shape for the film. And then I went down to 115 pounds for the weight loss in the Alaska segment. So it was like two stages of weight loss. So it was a lot of running and being very hungry and dreaming of candy all the time,” he said.

While he said he’s normally not a candy lover, his hunger made him fantasize about Take 5 candy bars.

18. Ryan Reynolds in Blade: Trinity

Ryan Reynolds was already pretty buff before starring in Blade: Trinity, but the role required even more muscle.

In just 3 months, the 6’2” actor gained 25 more pounds of muscle mass by working out 6 days a week and eating a 3,200-calorie diet! He did the same thing to play Green Lantern and Deadpool as well.

It’s a good thing the actor is no stranger to fitness since the movie did pretty poorly and was widely panned for everything except Reynolds’ ample abs.

19. George Clooney in Syriana

George Clooney might have won a Best Actor Academy Award for his role in the 2005 film Syriana, but it’s not an experience he’d like to replicate. In fact, it nearly killed him.

A stunt gone wrong gave him a spinal injury and excruciating headaches that left him contemplating suicide.

“I was at a point where I thought, ‘I can’t exist like this. I can’t actually live,'” the actor told Rolling Stone.

Gaining a bit of weight wasn’t so hard after all that.

Clooney shaved back his hairline to age himself as well – though he was certainly feeling old throughout filming.

20. Kit Harington in Pompeii

As John Snow, Kit Harrington was often covered in layers of fur cloaks to stay warm as the King of the North.

But when he took on the role of the gladiator Milo in the 2014 film Pompeii, he needed to gain some serious muscle mass. He started his training regimen 5 weeks before filming and then got toned during his 4 weeks on set.

Unfortunately, his very strict diet and obsession with achieving a certain look led to serious anxiety about his appearance and he developed body dysmorphia.

After becoming exhausted both physically and emotionally, he cut back on his 3x/day, 6 days/week training regimen.

21. Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket

Vincent D’Onofrio is no stranger to transformations, but packing on 70 pounds to play a chubby and increasingly demented Marine recruit in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is still quite a feat.

”It changed my life,” he said. ”Women didn`t look at me; most of the time I was looking at their backs as they were running away. People used to say things to me twice, because they thought I was stupid.”

It was tough for the 6’3” tall actor to get through the movie’s boot camp scenes at 280 pounds as well and a knee injury he suffered on set required surgical reconstruction!

A year later he was back to his normal weight, thanks to running 6 miles a day.

22. Ben Kingsley in Gandhi

It’s no surprise that you’re going to have to do a lot of fasting if you’re going to play Mahatma Gandhi. But Ben Kingsley had very little time to be intimidated since filming started in India less than 3 months after he accepted the job.

The film follows Gandhi from 1893 to his assassination in 1948 at age 79, so aging the actor was part of the transformation.

He prepared his body for the “awesome responsibility” of playing the legendary peace activist by learning to meditate, studying yoga, and maintaining a vegetarian diet, in the end losing 20 pounds.

23. Matt Damon in The Informant

Matt Damon wasn’t exactly living up to his 2007 title of “Sexiest Man Alive” two years later when he starred in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant to play Mark Whitacre.

He packed on 20 pounds to play the character that he said was meant to be “doughy,” not “fat.”

How did he do it? By letting himself indulge in whatever junk food he wanted.

“At my age, all I had to do to gain weight was eat the way I did when I was in college and the weight went on instantly,” he said.

The actor simply stopped working out, ate burgers, and drank beer.

24. Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Rooney Mara agreed to become emaciated, pale, pierced (in the lip, brow, nose, and nipples), temporarily tattooed. as well as cut off a foot of her gorgeous, long locks all to star as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

She went from girl-next-door to the girl no one wanted to make eye contact with on the streets in Stockholm where they filmed.

Mara has been tight-lipped about how much weight she lost or how, but her character appears gaunt throughout the film.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the physical change that scared her most, but having to ride a motorcycle during filming!

25. Ewan McGregor in Fargo

Ewan McGregor is virtually unrecognizable in the movie Fargo.

He did add some padding and prosthetics, but in the famous bathtub scene, he genuinely needed to have the weight on his body in order to appear properly “bulky.”

The actor went from 45 years old and fit as a fiddle to simply letting himself go, binging on carbs whenever possible.

“It’s quite nice when you’re ordering—you can order whatever you like. But the truth is I would go to bed every night not feeling very great. I’m a small guy. I’m not really used to carrying weight. It doesn’t make you feel great. I like to feel fit and healthy. But it was effective. It worked,” he told Vanity Fair.

On the bright side, it gave him an excuse to order French fries at every meal for 3 straight months.

26. Colin Farrell in The Lobster

In the truly odd movie The Lobster, Colin Farrell plays a man who must find love in 45 days or else be turned into an animal of his choice (guess what his choice was!).

He gained 45 pounds to play the role in just 8 weeks!

How’d he do it? The same way you or I would. He sat around and ate all day.

Feasting on pizza, burgers, and ice cream, he even told The Hollywood Reporter that he would drink melted ice cream and eat 2 slices of chocolate cake for breakfast, which he called “not that fun.”

He wasn’t happy at all with the way he looked after filming and set about losing the extra pounds immediately (which we imagine couldn’t have been too hard if you just need to stop pounding Haagen Daas every day).

27. Mila Kunis in Black Swan

Like Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis basically became a full-time ballerina in the months leading up to her role in Black Swan.

But the exercise wasn’t enough to slim her down to a dancer’s weight, so she also found a way to lose an extra 20 pounds in 5 months from her already slim frame.

A low-carb, high-protein diet did the trick and she hired a catering service to deliver salads each day. Her calorie intake was just 1200, which is extremely low considering the fact that she was dancing for hours a day.

She called her resulting 95-pound figure “gross,” pointing out that all you could see was bone and that her body had lost its shape entirely.

Still, she admitted that it was the right look for the role.

28. Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow

Jennifer Lawrence has always been a fan of keeping it real when it comes to her body. But when she accepted the role of a Russian ballerina in the 2018 film Red Sparrow she needed to look the part.

Not only did she work with a ballet coach 3 hours a day for 3 months, but she did have to diet as well. Lawrence joked that the weeks of filming were the first time she’d ever been “really hungry and disciplined.”

According to Elle, “the director allowed her to film the dancing scenes first so she could stop dieting and go back to eating regularly for the rest of the filming.”

29. Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe gained 63 pounds to play CIA vet Ed Hoffman in the 2008 film Body of Lies. And by the end of filming, he weighed 257 pounds!

He packed on the weight by being sedentary and just “decided to eat whatever he wanted,” the latter of which he called “a pleasure.”

But, with the birth of his two kids, he had to leave one element of weight gain out of his diet – drinking.

“There are a whole lot of things I don’t do anymore because it affects my level of patience. I don’t want to be in that place where I’m exasperated with these beautiful children,” he said.

30. Emma Stone in Battle of the Sexes

To transform her lithe figure into the athletic build of legendary tennis star Billie Jean King in Battle of the Sexes, Emma Stone limited her diet to protein shakes and worked out with a personal trainer.

In the end, she gained 15 pounds of muscle by transitioning her workout routine from cardio to weights.

The protein shakes allowed her the calories to transform rather than whittle down and her trainer told POPSUGAR that they were key since it was tough for her to fit that many extra meals into her diet to get the calories she needed.

31. Cate Blanchett in I’m Not There

Cate Blanchett’s transformation into a mid-1960s incarnation of Bob Dylan for the 2007 film I’m Not There involved some weight loss and gender-bending.

“Dylan was quite spiderlike,” she told The Guardian, explaining that she “lost an awful lot of weight” for the role.

As for the sleep-deprived, amphetamine-popping look, Blanchett said drugs were out of the question but a lack of rest was no problem.

“I’m always without sleep. I’ve got two kids. I understand sleep deprivation on a profound level,” she joked.

32. Zac Efron in Baywatch

We all know a Baywatch body doesn’t come without a lot of work, even if you’re young.

So when Zac Efron signed on for the 2016 film, he worked out 5 times a week and managed to get down to 5% body fat (which is not recommended, by the way) in just 12 weeks.

In the end, he put on 10 pounds of pure muscle with weights and circuit training as well as a strict diet.

“When I shot Baywatch, I didn’t have a carb for, like, six months,” he told Men’s Health. “I almost lost my mind.”

33. Marlon Brando in The Godfather

Marlon Brando’s weight yo-yoed throughout his life, perhaps as the result of an eating disorder.

There are many reports of his binge-eating escapades in the 50s and 60s and there are rumors of him eating entire chickens, bags of Whoppers, containers of peanut butter, and cartons of ice cream in a sitting. When he starred in Apocalypse Now, his character had to be shot mostly in shadow because the actor was pushing 300 pounds and simply couldn’t lose weight.

He managed to slim down a bit for the 1972 film The Godfather to impress director Francis Ford Coppola. And he even had a mouthpiece made and stuffed his cheeks with cotton to make his face look bigger and angrier.

34. Tom Hanks in Philadelphia

Castaway and Philadelphia both required Hanks to lose a significant amount of weight, something he thinks may have caused his Type II diabetes later in life.

The role of HIV+ lawyer Andrew Beckett in Jonathan Demme’s 1993 film won him a Best Actor Academy Award but required a 26-pound weight loss.

Hanks’ transformation in the film was so iconic that Matthew McConaughey asked him for advice before he started filming Dallas Buyers Club.

Philadelphia was filmed chronologically – which is rare – to accommodate the actor’s dramatic weight loss, which was aided by lots of exercise and slashing calories.

35. Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby

Hilary Swank is still a fitness buff to this day, but her role as Maggie Fitzgerald in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby required 5-hour-a-day workouts combined with a very high-protein diet.

“I had to eat 210 grams of protein a day,” she recalled. “The thing was, I needed nine hours of sleep a night because your muscles have to be able to rest in order to build or you actually reverse yourself. So, I slept nine hours a night, but I had to wake up in the night and drink protein shakes because I couldn’t go that long without eating.”

Despite the hardships, she reached her told of adding 20 pounds of muscle in just 90 days, also earning her second Academy Award for the role.

36. Gerard Butler in 300

The entire cast of 300 had to train like crazy to get into Spartan shape for filming.

But Gerard Butler, who played Leonidas I, undertook 4 months of training, working out 6 hours a day to prepare for his ab-ridden role.

Alas, a lot of Butler’s buffness was painted on or otherwise stylized.

Trainer Mark Twight said Butler was not mentally equipped with the discipline to get shredded.

An unnamed actor on the set of 300 also told Rolling Stone:

“Gerry goes straight for the cream puffs, man. He works out hard, then he likes to drink beer. He’ll get big, but he’ll never get ripped.”

37. Nicole Kidman in The Hours

It wasn’t so much a body transformation as a facial one for Nicole Kidman when she played novelist Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Her makeup alone took three hours a day and involved a very obvious prosthetic nose as well as changing the shape of her eyes.

While she wasn’t required to exercise or diet to fit Woolf’s image, Kidman did begin smoking roll-your-own cigarettes and learned to write with her right hand (she’s naturally a lefty).

In the end, Kidman was all-too-ready for a transformation since filming coincided with her very public divorce from Tom Cruise.

38. Mark Wahlberg in The Gambler

Mark Wahlberg managed to lose 60 pounds this his role as a literature professor with a gambling addiction in the 2014 drama The Gambler.

“I went from 197 to — the lightest I’d ever been in a movie was in Boogie Nights, I was 138 — so I wanted to beat that,” US Weekly reported from a post-screening interview. “I beat it by a pound, so 137. I was losing weight while we were shooting the movie too so continuity kind of went out of the window.”

His 3-hour-a-day workouts combined with an almond milk diet were the secrets to his weight loss, which he called a miserable experience since he enjoys food so much.

They had to apply extra makeup to his lips on set because they began turning blue due to lack of nutrition!

39. Daniel Radcliffe in The Cripple of Inishmaan

No longer our beloved Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe took on a series of strange roles after his turn as the boy wizard. One of those was in the stage production of The Cripple of Inishmaan.

The 2014 Broadway role required him to play a malnourished and disabled young man, but the main difference was the theatrical limp he perfected for the part.

It was nothing like the sacrifice he made to star in The Jungle, but as we’ve seen with others, contorting your body night after night can have some serious side effects.

40. Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin

Steve Carell might not have had to undergo a painful transformation before filming The 40 Year Old Virgin, but the scene in which he gets his body waxed in the 2005 film is absolutely real!

Those were real screams of agony on his part – and the bald patches left over were his to deal with as well.

We’re not sure we’d do the same in the name of authenticity, but now we understand why that scene makes us cringe-laugh!

41. Beyoncé in Dreamgirls

Beyoncé has a body to die for but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have some work to do before filming the 2006 musical Dreamgirls in order to pull off the role of a Diana Ross-looking character.

The producers told Queen Bey that if she wanted the role she would have to slim down – so she ended up losing 20 pounds prior to filming.

A strict juice fast – aka the famous Master Cleanse/Lemonade Diet – was her “diet” of choice in order to lose 20 pounds in just 2 weeks.

But no one recommends giving up solid food for 10 days as the diet requires.

And we can just tell you right now that the water/cayenne pepper/pure maple syrup/fresh-squeezed lemon juice is as gross as it sounds.

42. Jennifer Hudson in Winnie Mandela

Beyonce’s co-star in Dreamgirls had her own transformation to go through when she signed on to play Winnie Mandela in the movie of the same name.

The former American Idol finalist went on an extreme diet from Weight Watchers, after which she became a spokesperson for the company. Hudson actually lost so much weight that she had to gain back a few pounds before filming!

Of course, dieting was only half the battle – she also worked out with a personal trainer.

43. Jason Segel in The Five-year Engagement

In order to play someone an audience would believe actress Emily Blunt would be attracted to, leading man Jason Segel had to drop 35 pounds for his role in The Five-year Engagement.

But the ask was controversial, with outlets bemoaning that he was “forced” to lose the weight.

The actor worked out on set and dieted to drop the pounds but he also joked to David Letterman:

“What they didn’t anticipate is that I’m very clever, Dave. I play a chef in the movie so there are a lot of scenes where I had to eat. So, I would pay my co-stars nominal amounts of money to mess up their lines during the scenes so I would get to keep eating.”

Ironically, the screenplay for the film was co-written by Segel himself!

44. Shailene Woodley in Adrift

Shailene Woodley did something no one should do to lose weight – she restricted her diet to 350 calories a day (and sometimes less) for weeks in order to play a woman lost at sea in the 2018 film, Adrift.

“For the last two weeks I had a can of salmon, some steamed broccoli and two egg yolks every day — 350 calories,” Woodley told The Times of her very resstrictive diet. “It was f—— miserable.”

She also spent much of the filming seasick.

45. Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club

Jared Leto might not register on your radar as one of Hollywood’s great chameleons, but if you think about roles from The Joker to Chapter 27, it’s hard to believe the leading men are the same person.

In Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto actually played Rayon – a transgender woman with HIV – and the weight loss transformation he underwent was extreme.

He shrank down to just 114 pounds!

Only he can decide if it was all worth it after winning an Oscar, a Golden Globe Award, and a SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor.

46. Jared Leto in Chapter 27

Now for the other end of the spectrum.

Leto piled on 67 pounds to play John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, in Chapter 27.

In addition to altering his body, he changed his voice and mannerisms as well.

But the really strange part is Hollywood Reporter’s claim that Leto gained weight “through a diet heavy with microwaved pints of ice cream mixed with olive oil and soy sauce.”

Then again, that could be why he got gout during filming and his parting gift was a prescription for Lipitor!

47. Tom Hardy in Bronson

Tom Hardy had just 5 weeks to get ready to play prisoner and fighter Charles Bronson, a role for which he gained 40 pounds of muscle in just weeks.

By eating a high protein diet and training with an ex-Marine, he aligned his calorie intake with his muscle goals, putting on about 7 pounds a week.

He didn’t shy away from indulgences either. Haagen-Dazs, pizza, and Coca-Cola were on the menu for dessert.

Bronson wrote in his diaries that at first he wasn’t impressed with Hardy in the role, but after his physical transformation he changed his mind, writing:

“He has put on one and a half stone of muscles for the movie,” he wrote in January 2008. “He looks awesome and I’m so f—— proud of him. You wouldn’t want to meet him down a dark alley at 3am. Tom looks more like me than I look like me.”

48. Matthew Fox in Alex Cross

Matthew Fox will always be the guy from “Lost” to us, but for those who have seen the film Alex Cross, they’ll recall him as the psychotic serial killer “Picasso.”

To look appropriately deranged, he spent 5 months losing weight, even disturbing his family with his physique. They begged to feed him.

“It was a lot of work. It required about five months of not eating the things that I like to eat, not having a glass of wine with dinner, a lot of time in the gym and just real commitment to it and not cheating,” he told Collider.

49. J.K. Simmons in Justice League

Getting ripped for his role as the Justice League’s Commissioner Gordon was seriously hard work for J.K. Simmons. But the outcome made us do a double-take!

He credits ex-Marine and elite personal trainer Aaron Williamson for being able to gain so much muscle. But even Williamson was bowled over by the actor’s commitment:

“Every time we train together I forget he’s 61 years old. So much respect for this guy,” he said in an Instagram photo posted from the gym.

50. Chris Hemsworth in In the Heart of the Sea

After bulking up for his role in Thor, Chris Hemsworth had to lose 30 pounds to play the role of a starving first mate Owen Chase lost at sea after his ship is crushed by the legendary whale Moby Dick.

He consumed a mere 500-700 calories a day while filming In the Heart of the Sea – and the starvation diets of the cast took their toll on everyone mentally as well as physically. And they all thought about food non-stop.

The best they could say is that at least they were all together in their suffering for the weeks it took to film.

51. Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy

If you think of the show “Parks and Recreation: when you see Chris Pratt, just wait until you see him as the Marvel superhero Star-Lord!

As one of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Pratt had to drop 60 pounds to be believable. But he also had to bulk up on muscle, so a serious lifestyle change was in order.

He worked out 3-4 hours a day for about 6 months and hired a former Navy SEAL as his trainer as well as a nutritionist.

The amount of muscle-building exercise required a diet of roughly 4,000 calories a day of mostly protein and LOTS of water.

After all that work, he insists he’s staying ripped for life.

52. Jonah Hill in War Dogs

Jonah Hill had already lost some serious weight before being asked to put in 40 pounds in 2016 for the role of arms dealer Efraim Diveroli in War Dogs.

The weight gain made him feel like a kid again – but in a bad way.

The good news is that not only was he great in the film but fans were inspired by his willingness to lose the pudge all over again.

Of his original weight loss, he told ABC News back in 2011:

“I wish there was some crazy thing that I did, like a pill or a genie or something, but I went to see a nutritionist, and he told me what to eat and to change my habits and stuff. I found that Japanese food was very helpful to me.”

53. Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables

Anne Hathaway lost 25 pounds before gaining a Golden Globe, an Academy, a SAG, and a BAFTA for her role as Fantine, in Les Misérables.

Already quite thin, she wasted away while dropping the weight and her long, luscious mane, which she shaved off for the role.

Acknowledging that the weight loss was unhealthy and made her unwell, in 2012, she told Vogue that she lived on nothing but a tiny portion of dried oatmeal paste each day.

“I was in such a state of deprivation—physical and emotional. When I got home, I couldn’t react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed…. It took me weeks till I felt like myself again,” she said of the experience.

54. Ryan Gosling (almost in The Lovely Bones)

To play the grieving dad Jack Salmon in The Lovely Bones, Ryan Gosling gained nearly 60 pounds by chugging melted Haagen-Daas.

However, there’s quite a bit of controversy surrounding the project because the actor claimed that the role was ultimately recast – with Mark Wahlberg – because director Peter Jackson found Gosling “too fat.”

But the production company claims it was Gosling who says he wasn’t right for the role because he was too young.

Either way, he gained all that weight only to never play the role due to “creative differences.”

55. Michael Fassbender in Hunger

Michael Fassbender signed on to play Bobby Sands, the man who led the second Provisional Irish Republican Army on their hunger strike in 1981.

That meant Fassbender literally had to waste away during filming for Hunger (Sands died after 66 days without food).

After 10 weeks of a 900-calorie diet and lots of aerobic exercise, the already slim Fassbender lost a whopping 42 pounds.

At his lightest – a mere 127 pounds – the actor called the experience “a psychological prison.” He also reports that he lost his libido as a result of the starvation diet.

56. Bradley Cooper in American Sniper,

Bradley Cooper normally weighs about 185 pounds, but in order to play the role of a Navy SEAL in Clint Eastwood’s 2014 film American Sniper, he had to bulk up to 225 pounds in just 10 weeks!

Using a personal trainer, he engaged in a rigorous fitness routine and ate more than 5,000 calories a day to build muscle mass and gain weight while doing the least amount of damage to his body.

That meant roughly 5 meals a day, energy bars in between, and post-workout protein drinks.

On the bright side, he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

57. Robert De Niro in Raging Bull

Robert De Niro is known as a method actor, but his classic role in the 1980 film Raging Bull required him to not only change body shape but age himself since it followed the life of an Italian boxer over the course of several decades.

At the time, the 60 pounds he added to his frame were the most any actor had ever put on for a role. But that was AFTER getting into fighting shape to play the young boxer.

He won an Academy Award for it all and is famous for packing on the pounds toward the end of the film the glam-but-old-fashioned way – flying to Italy and gorging on a bunch of pasta!

58. Chris Evans in Captain America: The First Avenger

Chris Evans goes from slim to stud in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger – but his on-screen moments as Steve Rogers are actually a technological innovation that allowed his head to be placed on a smaller person’s body.

That’s partly because beefing up for the role took a lot of work. Three months of grilled turkey and protein shakes and grueling workouts are what it takes to create a superhero’s body, in case you were wondering.

No superpowers involved here – just lots of weightlifting.

59. Taylor Lautner in Twilight: New Moon

When someone starts acting as a teen, it can feel a little weird to take a close look at their muscle-laden body (or at least it should). But in Twilight: New Moon, Taylor Lautner’s abs were on full display when he became a muscular werewolf.

The actor gained 30 pounds of muscle to land the coveted role which meant hitting the gym 7 days a week for hours.

His main problem was finding a way to consume enough calories to bulk up.

“I was in the gym five days a week, two hours a day. At one point, I was going seven days straight. I had put on a lot of weight, and then I started losing it drastically, so I was worried. It turned out I was overworking myself,” he said. “My trainer told me that I couldn’t break a sweat, because I was burning more calories than I was putting on.”

60. Hugh Jackman in Les Misérables

Hugh Jackman knows what it’s like to work for that werewolf bod. But in his turn as Jean Valjean in the film version of Les Misérables, we went in the opposite direction, basically starving himself.

In the opening scene, he’s still a prisoner performing hard labor. He even gave up water in the hours leading up to filming, which made him sick and brought him to the edge of a breakdown.

Even director Tom Hopper considered intervening:

“I was worried,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is probably the kind of thing I should discourage.’ I said, ‘Have a sip of water.’ But he was very determined. He’d obviously consulted doctors, but I do remember he eventually got very cold, really cold.”

Don’t try this at home!

Well, we were hoping there would be some magical way to lose lots of weight in a short period of time without a crushing 7-hour-a-day routine or strange liquid diet. But apparently there’s not.

And the work these actors have done to gain weight is just as impressive – imagine having to lose it again after you’ve indulged in burgers and ice cream for weeks!

Acting seems like a much less glamorous job now!

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H/t: Bored Panda, Daily Choices