Actors and actresses will go to some extreme lengths in order to play a demanding character. We’re taking a look at the stars who underwent the most outrageous and shocking transformations in order to play a role.
Christian Bale
Mr Bale is widely known as the king of metamorphosizing for specific roles. In The Machinist, the actor played the role of Trevor Reznik, a machinist with a severe case of insomnia. The character’s insomnia inspires some drastic weight-loss. Bale needed to look emaciated, the actor went on to lose 63 pounds. For almost four months prior to shooting the actor ate only one can of tuna fish and one apple per day.
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron is widely known as one of Hollywood’s most breathtaking beauties. She looked practically unrecognizable in the movie Monster in which she played infamous serial killer Aileen Wuornos. She not only gained an excessive amount of weight but underwent hours in the make up trailer. She wore rotting dentures, had her eyebrows partially shaved and bleached and thinned her golden locks. The transformation paid off – she won an Oscar for her dramatic portrayal as well as widespread critical praise.
Cameron Diaz
Cameron Diaz is undeniably gorgeous. She’s blonde, blue-eyed, bubbly and boasts those enviable long legs. For her role in Being John Malkovitch, Diaz went from desirable to dowdy. Diaz wore absolutely no makeup and wore a ridiculously frizzy wig. Her costuming for the role looked as if it was out of the 1800’s.
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey’s career has experienced its own transformation. From his time as a relatively B-list romantic comedy star, the actor has more recently become well-known for a string of celebrated, serious roles. In Dallas Buyer’s Club McConaughey plays a man riddled with AIDS. The actor shed a whopping 40 pounds for the role but gained himself an Oscar.
Natalie Portman
Ballet dancers are known for their strict diets and petite forms. When Natalie Portman took on the role of a professional ballerina in Black Swan, it was important she shed some pounds in order to look the part. The already slender actress lost 20 pounds for the role. The transformation was grueling, with the actress saying; “There were some nights that I thought I literally was going to die. It was the first time I understood how you could get so wrapped up in a role that it could sort of take you down.” The hard work paid off and Portman won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the disturbed leading character.
Jared Leto
In Dallas Buyer’s Club, singer and actor Jared Leto played the transgender AIDS sufferer Rayon. The actor reportedly ‘stopped eating’ in order to achieve the dramatic weight loss. Jared lost a reported 40 pounds for the role. Leto has since referred to his fasting for the role as a kind of meditation on becoming the transexual AIDS patient.
Rooney Mara
Rooney Mara’s physical transformation to play the demanding and dark role of Lisbeth Salander, in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, was nothing short of brutal. The once fresh-faced actress lost weight, partially shaved her head and had her eyebrows bleached. Mara also got over a dozen of real piercings for the role.
50 Cent
Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson shed some serious pounds in order to play the lead role in All Things Fall Apart. Usually recognized for his rapping talents, the now-actor lost 54 pounds to play a dying cancer patient. Unfortunately, his dramatic efforts didn’t pay off. The movie was met with a less than enthusiastic public and critical response.
Chris Pratt
Once known as the chubby and hilarious guy from Parks and Recreation, Chris Pratt underwent a major transformation to achieve his status as a leading man. Pratt lost 60 pounds, gained himself a serious set of abs and redefined himself as a bonafide megastar with his lead role in Guardians of the Galaxy. Needless to say, female fans were more than thrilled.
Zac Efron
There wasn’t a teenage girl who didn’t have a crush on Zac Efron in the early 2000’s. He was known as the innocent blue-eyed actor with a lean physique and impressive vocal range. Fast forward a couple of years and little Zac is all grown up. To play the lifeguard meathead in Baywatch, Zac bulked up to sport some bulging muscles.
Hillary Swank
Boy’s Don’t Cry followed the young woman Teena Brandon who posed as a boy named Brandon before being brutally murdered. The role was beautifully played by Hillary Swank who prepared for the role long before the cameras started rolling. The actress lost weight, cut her hair and adopted boyish mannerisms in the way she walked and talked. Swank has said she experienced firsthand how people responded with discomfort in the face of a gender confused body.
Renee Zellweger
Some roles are worth the extra effort. Renee Zellweger gained a substantial amount of weight (about 30 pounds) to play Bridget Jones. The character has become one of the actress’s most iconic roles. The lovable and voluptuous Bridget was adored by fans around the world. The usually petite actress would shed the weight only to gain it again for the movie’s sequel.
Anne Hathaway
Les Misérables was the 2012 musical drama that everyone was talking about. Anne Hathway won a Best Support Actress nomination for her role in the movie – and for good reason. The actress lived on a diet of lettuce and dried oatmeal paste in order to drop 25 pounds. She also shaved her head to play the downtrodden character.
JK Simmons
Fans were shocked to see JK Simmons recent transformation for his role in the Marvel superhero movie Justice League. The Oscar-winning actor hit the gym, picked up the weights, shed fat and gained an impressive amount of muscle. This body transformation is extra noteworthy – the actor is 61 years old!
Matt Damon
This Massachusetts-born actor underwent an extreme body transformation for his role in the 1996 film Courage Under Fire. Matt Damon lost a whopping 60 pounds in order to play an emaciated army medic. Damon ran about 13 miles a day and ate nothing but chicken breast for months. Damon was actually placed under medical supervision after the weight loss. Yikes.
Chris Hemsworth
Playing a god might sound like a lot of pressure, but this Hemsworth brother certainly stepped up to the challenge. Hemsworth has had to transform his body to play the mighty god Thor multiple times, and it isn’t always easy to do it. The actor reportedly eats every two hours in order make sure every calorie is transformed into muscle. Of course, his strict diet has been paired with hours upon hours in the gym.
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks is a dedicated actor. His role in Castaway proved just how far the actor was willing to go to make his performance believable. To make himself an average, out-of-shape man, Hanks didn’t exercise and allowed himself to gain some weight. Production was then halted for a year so the leading man had time to shed 50 pounds and grow out his facial hair. The result made him look like he had in fact spent a few months on a deserted island.
Matthew Fox
The actor has always been lean but Matthew Fox went the extra mile in order to play the role of ripped serial killer Alex Cross. For five months Fox worked out daily with a trainer, pairing his extreme gym regiment with a strict high-protein diet. Fox actually trained with the same trainer Daniel Craig used for the Bond movies and ultimately lost 40 pounds.
Christian Bale
Yet another one of Bale’s crazy transformations make the list! This time, the actor gained a bunch of weight for his role in American Hustle. The actor reportedly binged on junk food in order to get super chubby. Surprisingly, the actor was never expressly asked to gain the weight. “Everyone’s kind of gone, ‘Well, we can do it with a bunch of makeup and some prosthetics’ And then they discover I’m really doing it myself and they go, ‘Really? Are you O.K. doing that?” the actor said in a recent magazine interview.
Bradley Cooper
Bradley Cooper has always been undoubtedly handsome. But this star took his hunky physique to a whole other level for his role in American Sniper. He bulked up to play 230-pound navy seal, Chris Kyle. “I had to get to the point where I believed I was him,” Cooper told Men’s Health magazine. “At 185 pounds, it would’ve been a joke. His size was such a part of who he was.”
James McAvoy
Fans were shocked and delighted to catch a glimpse of a more muscular James McAvoy cruising around the streets of New York City. The actor has undergone an incredible transformation for a new movie role in the film Split. The actor reportedly consumed 6000 calories a day in order to bulk up and achieve his new hunky look.
Alicia Vikander
Alicia Vikander has recently landed the iconic role of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. In order to portray the tough and super-fit video game heroine, the actress spent an impressive amount of time in the gym. Ultimately, under the watchful eyes of a celebrity trainer, the actress added 12 pounds of muscle to her petite frame. We can’t wait to see the movie!
Jonah Hill
Audiences have come to know and love Jonah Hill as the chubby, adorable funnyman with a great sense of humor. Alas, it is no more. Hill decided to shed some weight for his role opposite hunky Channing Tatum in the comedy sequel 22 Jump Street. The actor has yet to look back. He is now virtually unrecognizable, sporting a much, much leaner frame.
Jared Leto
Once again, this chameleon-like actor makes the list. After his extreme weight loss for his role in Dallas Buyer’s Club, Leto rolled on to the other side of the spectrum and gained 67 pounds for his role in Chapter 27 as John Lennon’s assassin. The actor ate some pretty atrocious meals in order to fatten up. He reportedly consumed microwaved pints of ice cream, mixed with olive oil and soy sauce, daily.
Tom Cruise
We know that this transformation is owed to some brilliant prosthetics and makeup art, but it’s simply too good to be left off of our list of crazy celeb transformations. In 2008’s Tropic Thunder, Tom Cruise played Les Grossman, the balding movie executive with a beer gut and a potty mouth. We’re used to seeing svelte Mr Cruise playing some ladies man in a suit, so this was a hilarious departure from his usual roles.
Hugh Jackman
Anyone who gets told they’re playing a hero with superhuman strength might just feel some pressure to make sure they’re in top physical condition. When Hugh Jackman landed the role of Wolverine he certainly took his workout plan seriously. The actor trained for months in order to get absolutely ripped for the latest installment of the X-men franchise. Just a small reminder; the actor is 48 years old.
Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy has lost and gained a few pounds for movie parts before but for his role as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, the actor really pulled out all the stops. Hardy worked out four times a day and packed in the calories. The process was pretty grueling for Hardy, he remarks; “I haven’t damaged my body, but I’m certainly a bit achier than I used to be! I certainly have joints that click that probably shouldn’t click, you know what I mean?”
Robert De Niro
De Niro is one of Hollywood’s most revered actors. He was one of the first to undergo a serious body transformation for a movie role. The actor piled on 60 pounds in order to play boxer Jake La Motta in the 1980’s classic film, Raging Bull. After many a meal and lots of junk food, De Niro looked like a true heavyweight. Since then, A-listers have followed in his footsteps.
Gwyneth Paltrow
This is another transformation that was all due to some time spent in the makeup trailer but its simply too good to leave out. Gwyneth Paltrow is known for her blonde locks and slender frame so fans were shocked to see her portrayal of a morbidly obese woman in the movie Shallow Hal. Paltrow donned a fat suit and a triple chin for the role.
Jake Gyllenhaal
This actor is known for his good looks and slender physique but Jake Gyllenhaal went to some extreme lengths to accurately portray a boxer in the movie Southpaw. Jake got absolutely ripped for the role, spending many hours in the gym and cutting down on fat and sugar. It paid off, fans and critics were impressed.
