Stars Who Went To Extreme Lengths For A Role

Margaret Cho

In the mid 1990s, comedian Margaret Cho starred in a sitcom called All-American Girl, which was based on her life and stand-up routine. It was one of the first American network television shows to feature an all-Asian cast, but despite the show's groundbreaking turn, it wasn't the best time for Cho. "The network required her to lose weight to play herself, and she did30 pounds in two weeksand ultimately suffered kidney failure," reported the Los Angeles Times. "I was starving," she said.

In subsequent years, Cho fought back, not just for herself, but for other female celebrities who face similar scrutiny. In 2012, she lashed out at designer Karl Lagerfeld, who referred to singer Adele as "a little bit fat." She posted a video about the issue on her blog (via The Huffington Post): "I am anorexic and bulimic, and I think these diseases are just as deadly as AIDS or cancer," she said. "It's a disease that's spread by casual ignorance and casual crueltySo many girls have been told, myself included, 'you would be so pretty if you lost weight.' I am sick of people casually saying things like that." According to The Huffington Post, Lagerfeld apologized for his comment; Cho suggested he "design a new line for full-figured women instead of simply issuing an apology."

Jason Segel

While we often hear about actresses being pressured to lose weight for the cameras, it happens to men too. Appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman, Segal said he needed to lose 35 pounds to star alongside Emily Blunt in The Five-Year Engagement (2012). According to Segel, the studio president told him he needed to shed the pounds for it to be "conceivable that Emily Blunt would ever choose [him] to be her husband."

Matt Damon

When Matt Damon signed on for The Informant!, he literally bit off more than he could chew. The movie told the true story of Mark Whitacre, a whistleblower with some secrets of his own. While Whitacre was informing the FBI about his boss' price-fixing schemes, he was at the same time embezzling millions of dollars from the company. Whitacre is portrayed as a man who is both a dope and intelligent. To achieve the proper look, Damon gained 30 lbs. He did so the old fashioned way, by eating a lot of junk food. He specifically name-dropped Doritos, McDonald's, and beer while doing press for the movie. Once filming was wrapped, Damon struggled to take the weight off, because apparently even actors are still human. He eventually took up boxing to get back into the classic Matt Damon body shape. It would've been fine if he kept the weight on; Matt Damon is super likable no matter how big his belly is.

Amy Schumer

Comedienne Amy Schumer got the shock of a lifetime when movie executives behind her debut film Trainwreck (2015) told her she had to lose weight. She revealed on Live! with Kelly and Michael that after the film got green-lit, Schumer met with execs who basically told her, in her words, "maybe skip a meal." They also hired a celebrity trainer who put her on a strict diet and exercise regimen and looked at her "how you would look at a burn victim," she said. Schumer kept her spirits up and said she proudly lost a whoppingthree pounds! The movie was a hit, so it's safe to say Schumer got the last laugh on that one.

Jared Leto

In order to properly portray Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon, Jared Leto gained 67 lbs. The film, Chapter 27, tells the story of a man slowly going insane, who ultimately makes a horrifying decision. Leto, a naturally slim person, went to extensive lengths to gain the weight. He did the obvious stuff like eating a lot pizza, ice cream, and other forms of junk food. A normal person would stop there, because getting fluffy isn't really a complicated thing to do. Leto, however, told Starpulse magazine that he would microwave pints of ice cream and drink them. Not only that, he would add olive oil and soy sauce. To be honest, it seems like he was overcomplicating the whole process. He put on so much weight that he developed gout and had to start taking a medicine for his high cholesterol. The worst part is that Chapter 27 was panned by critics and was a box office dud. It turns out that this whole thing was a real waste of soy sauce.

Carrie Fisher

Things are rough even for actresses in a galaxy far, far away, or at least that's what Carrie Fisher says. According to a 2015 cover story for Good Housekeeping, Fisher said the only way she was allowed to reprise her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) was if she dropped an absurd amount of weight. According to Fisher, 'They don't want to hire all of meonly about three-quarters!"

"Nothing changes," she said, "I'm in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say get younger, because that's how easy it is." There was no mention as to who "they" were.

Christian Bale

Christian Bale loves pushing his body to the limit for his roles. When he did The Machinist, he dropped 60 pounds and looked like a human skeleton. He followed that by packing on the muscle for Batman Begins. For his role in American Hustle, Bale gained 43 pounds and gave himself a comb-over. He's not actually bald, so he purposely shaved parts of his head to help sell his aged hairstyle. He basically transformed himself from a handsome Hollywood star into a sleazy car salesman. He has an amazing body, and it seems like he can transform himself at will. If he ever quits acting, at least we know he can be a dietitian.

Nia Vardalos

Nia Vardalos was pressured to lose weight to portray herself in her own creation: the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). Among the many changes studio execs wanted to make to the film, which was based on her one-woman show, was the size of Vardalos herself.

In 2009, Vardalos wrote a piece for CNN called "What's the big fat deal?" She said, "It's just weight. Just 40 pounds of fat now gone from my body, but wow, it's pretty much all I get asked about. In the last year, I got to star in a movie, wrote and directed my next one, and adopted a three year old from American Foster Care. But guess what I'm askedhow did I lose the weight?"

Vardalos managed to retain creative control over her project, maintain her self respect, and establishing a healthy career on her own terms. "Studio executives and movie reviewers let me know I had a confidence in my looks that was not shared by them," she said. "In other words: they labeled me with words like, overweight, unattractive, unappealing. Hey, just say fat. I love the word fat. I used it in the title. It's actually not a naughty word. We give it a power it actually doesn't have. So, you're fat. Big deal."

Chris Noth

Chris Noth, also known as Mr. Big from the Sex and the City franchise, got an earful from the film's director about his belly. Noth told The Huffington Post that before shooting the first movie, director "Michael Patrick King came up to me and said, 'Listen, dude, we're not calling you Mr. Big because of the size of your stomach, so go lose that before we start shooting,'" A tad harsh, but Noth said he went ahead and lost the weight. If his diet made him miserable, it didn't show on camera.

Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron is a stunningly beautiful actress. When she was cast to play Aileen Wuornos, however, she had to change up her look. The movie, Monster, told the story about Wuornos' murdering spree between 1989 and 1990. While working as a prostitute, Wuornos kills a man in self defense. Unfortunately, this flips a switch inside of her, and unable to escape life as a prostitute, she begins killing many of her would-be customers across Florida. Theron was literally unrecognizable in the role, for which she gained 30 lbs and also shaved her eyebrows. Theron gained the weight by eating donuts and potato chips, which is a pretty good recipe for weight gain. It's also the exact opposite way that someone is turned into a serial killer. Nobody eats a bunch of delicious junk food and then decides they need to murder people. If that was the case, society would collapse every Halloween.

Hayley Atwell

Agent Carter star Hayley Atwell had to deal with weight-loss demands while filming Brideshead Revisited in 2008. Luckily, she had co-star Emma Thompson to come to her defense. According to First Post (via New York magazine), the issue came to a head at Thompson's house during dinner. In Atwell's words, "I went round to Emma's one night and she was getting very angry that I wasn't eating all the food she was giving me. I told her why and she hit the roof." First Post reported that "Thompson was so outraged that she called the producers the next day and threatened to resign from the film if they forced Atwell to lose weight. Faced with Thompsona two-times Oscar winneron the warpath, Miramax Films swiftly relented."

Way to go, Thompson! We'd like to see them try that with Atwell now that again she's the butt-kicking Agent Peggy Carter.

Rob McElhenney

It can be hard to keep a comedy feeling fresh after several seasons, but Rob McElhenney came up with a unique solution. For the seventh season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the actor purposely gained 50 lbs. A lot of comedies will have actors donning fat suits for an episode or two to get some cheap laughs out of it, but that wasn't the motivation behind this. McElhenney stated that inspiration for the "fat Mac" story arc was that it was the opposite of what happens on sitcoms. Typically, as sitcoms go on through the years, the stars get more successful and budgets increase, which leads to better-looking actors. Since It's Always Sunny is supposed to be a deconstruction of typical sitcoms, it made sense for Mac to get big. It was also perfect for the character, who is self obsessed and vain, but also very stupid. Mac didn't see himself as getting fat, but merely bulking up so that he could turn the added weight into muscle. McElhenney lost the weight after a season (remember, that's 50 lbs), but Fat Mac will live in our hearts forever.

Judy Garland

Judy Garland was essentially starved by studio executives during her legendary role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). According to The Telegraph, Garland's troubles with her weight began at age 14 when MGM told her she looked fat on film in Pigskin Parade (1936). The studio, with whom Garland was contracted, reportedly assumed strict control over her diet. "Because her calories were so restrictedexecutives would go so far as to remove a plateful of food when she was about to eat itshe was permanently hungry and fantasised wildly about such things as chocolate sundae with pecan nuts and whipped cream. Still a child, she fell into habits of starving and bingeing," reported The Telegraph. At age 18, Garland was reportedly instructed to "consume only black coffee and chicken soup, plus 80 cigarettes a day and pills every four hours to quell her appetite."

According to Garland, she wasn't the only actor subjected to this kind of treatment at the time. "They'd give us pep pills. Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills. After four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep pills again." she wrote (via The New York Times). Garland developed a lifelong eating disorder and drug addiction, struggled with depression and financial woes, attempted suicide, endured several failed marriages, and died, at age 47, from an accidental drug overdose in 1969.

Ryan Gosling

While most actors who put on weight for a role get to bask in the glory of suffering for their art, things didn't work out that way for Ryan Gosling. In 2009, Peter Jackson released The Lovely Bones, a supernatural story about a young girl who gets murdered. The story focuses on her ghost, and is split between her entrance into the afterlife and her family trying to deal with her death. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg as the girl's father, but originally Ryan Gosling was cast. When Gosling was hired, he decided that the father should be overweight. The actor gained a whopping 60 lbs for the role. Unfortunately, he never ran this idea by Peter Jackson. It turns out that Jackson didn't agree with Gosling playing an obese dad, and he ultimately was dropped from the film.

Jennifer Lawrence

According to a 2013 interview with Harper's Bazaar UK, actress Jennifer Lawrence was once told to lose a certain amount of weight or face being fired from a film. She didn't reveal which film, but she did reveal how low this person, or people, stooped to get her to shed the pounds. "They brought in pictures of me where I was basically naked, and told me to use them as motivation for my diet," she said.

We hope that whoever that was now feels like a fool knowing that Lawrence is one of the most sought-after actresses in the world, no matter what the scale says. An Oscar-winning Lawrence told the magazine she'll never allow herself to be pressured like that again. "If anybody even tries to whisper the word 'diet', I'm like, 'You can go f**k yourself,"' she said.