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Making Weight: Memorable Body Fluctuations for Movie Roles


16 November 2012

Hollywood women are generally the targets of weight loss or gain attention, but their counterparts have done their fair share of grueling diets and workouts to look just right for an upcoming role, displaying their dedication to pleased directors.

These male stars have lost weight, put on pounds and pushed themselves through hours of workouts to transform their bodies to fit the roles of bodybuilders, AIDS victims and more. Enduring endless hours of training and taking extreme measures to gain and lose weight, these men will impress you with more than their acting skills...

Matthew McConaughey

Committed to losing 30 pounds for his upcoming role in "The Dallas Buyers Club," Matthew McConaughey told Larry King in July that "I should not look healthy by the time I'm doing that film." The story is loosely based on the true-life tale of Ron Woodroof, a drug-taking homophobic man who was diagnosed with HIV/Aids in 1986, according to IMDb.

McConaughey will play the role of the man who was given 30 days to live and took matters into his own hands, smuggling non-toxic, anti-viral medications into the U.S. for himself and other AIDS patients. Defying his death sentence by years, Woodroof and his clientele waged a war with the FDA and pharmaceutical companies.

Mark Wahlberg

In order to play the role of bodybuilder Daniel Lugo in the upcoming Michael Bay film "Pain and Gain," Mark Wahlberg needed to bulk up. Eating 10 meals a day to gain weight for the role, Wahlberg told E! Online that he was on a 24-hour eating schedule that required him to wake up throughout the night in order to eat. "It was a lot of work," Wahlberg told E! Online. "I like being able to change for parts, both physically and preparing mentally. It was a good time."

Wahlberg recently committed to starring in "Transformers 4." He'll likely need to immediately lose the weight he gained to star in the action-film guru's latest instalment of the popular franchise — if he already hasn't.

Tom Hardy

Aiming for 198 pounds to play Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises," Tom Hardy still received early criticism for his transformation. Fans claimed they needed onscreen Bane to be 400 pounds, but possibly bit their tongues when they saw the finished product. The actor gained nearly 30 pounds for the role and topped off at 190.

Christian Bale

Weighing in at 121 pounds for his role in "The Machinist," it took Christian Bale four months to lose nearly 65 pounds, according to the HuffingtonPost.com. He ate only 275 calories a day during the time period and five months later, gained almost 100 pounds for his role in "Batman Begins." Later, he gained another 30 pounds of muscle for "The Dark Knight."

"It was like a massive shock to my body because of what I was trying to get it to do," Bale told the BBC.

50 Cent

Dropping from 214 pounds to just 160, rapper-gone-actor 50 Cent lost a shocking amount of weight prepping for his role in "Things Fall Apart." In just nine weeks, being on a liquid diet on and on a treadmill three hours a day lost him his entire muscular frame. 50 Cent plays a cancer-ridden football player in the 2011 film he co-wrote with Brian A Miller, according to IMDb. The actor gained more than 40 pounds back after filming ended.

Ryan Gosling

Transforming from 150 pounds to 210 to play in "The Lovely Bones," Ryan Gosling's weight gain ultimately lost him the job. He says he and director Peter Jackson had different ideas of how the character should look. Unfortunately, packing on 60 pounds by drinking melted Haagen Dazs didn't score him the spot, but he quickly lost the weight and went on to play in other big films.

Transformers 4 Film Page

TRANSFORMERS 4 IS OUT IN JUNE 2014