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Actors Who've Undergone Major Transformations For Roles

Christian Bale
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Actors Who've Undergone Major Transformations For Roles

By ETonline Staff

1:16 PM PDT, April 20, 2021

How far will actors go to look the part?

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Christian Bale

Christian Bale
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The Oscar winner is no stranger to big transformations! On April 18, 2021, the actor was spotted with a completely bald head while in Sydney, Australia, where he was filming Thor: Love and Thunder and portraying Gorr the God Butcher.


Christian Bale

Christian Bale transformation
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The Oscar winner looked nearly unrecognizable on Sept. 4, 2017, at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, after packing on the pounds to portray former Vice President Dick Cheney in Backseat. 


Jake Gyllenhaal

Jake Gyllenhaal transformation
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The Prince Of Persia certainly came down a few pounds! Jake Gyllenhaal underwent a dramatic weight loss for his role in the 2014 film Nightcrawler. The movie, also starring the late Bill Paxton and Renee Russo, is about a young man who stumbles upon the underground world of Los Angeles' freelance crime journalism. Gyllenhaal told Us Weekly of his character, Lou, a freelance reporter, "I knew that [Lou] was literally and figuratively hungry."

That being said, the actor revealed he went into a mode where he too was "always a bit hungry."


Russell Crowe

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Russell Crowe gained 63 pounds for his role in Body of Lies. 

Christian Bale

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Christian Bale lost a staggering 63 pounds for The Machinist. The actor plays a man whose health deteriorates after not being able to sleep for a year. His daily diet consisted of coffee, cigarettes and an apple.

Renee Zellweger

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Renee Zellweger gained an estimated 30 pounds for her role in the romantic comedy Bridget Jones' Diary.

50 Cent

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Rapper 50 Cent went from 214 pounds to 160 in just nine weeks with a liquid diet and working out three hours a day. This was for a role in the movie Things Fall Apart.

Jared Leto

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Jared Leto gained a reported 60 pounds to play John Lennon's assassin in Chapter 27.

Matt Damon

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Matt Damon gained an estimated 30 pounds for his role in the dark comedy The Informant.

Mila Kunis

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Mila Kunis gained a bit of weight for her role in the movie Blood Ties. This curvier figure comes after her extreme diet for her role in Black Swan.

Natalie Portman

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Natalie Portman lost 20 pounds for her Oscar-winning role in Black Swan.

Anne Hathaway

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Anne Hathaway told Vogue magazine that she dropped 25 pounds for her role as the prostitute Fantine in Les Miserables. "Looking back on the whole experience - and I don't judge it in any way - it was definitely a little nuts," she said of the extremes she went to for the role.

Matthew McConaughey

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Matthew McConaughey is dropping weight like crazy for his new role as AIDS victim Ron Woodroof in his new movie The Dallas Buyers Club -- but he's not the only actor to drastically change his appearance for a part. From Anne Hathaway's "near starvation diet" for Les Miserables to Matt Damon's major weight gain for The Informant, here are 10 of the most shocking body transformations actors have undergone to win the role.

Jared Leto

After a major weight gain in the 2007 film Chapter 27, Jared Leto slimmed down drastically in 2012 for his role as a transsexual named Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club, the same movie Matthew McConaughey dropped weight for. "I waxed my entire body, including my eyebrows. I've lost a lot of weight because I'm playing a young person with AIDS," he told ETonline at the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards. "It's been challenging but really inspiring too." Leto revealed his weight loss in a Terry Richardson photo shoot.

Chris Pratt

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Parks and Recreation star Chris Pratt plays one of the members of Seal Team Six (the elite group of soldiers who eliminated Osama bin Laden) in Zero Dark Thirty and revealed on Conan that he put his body through the wringer in order to look like one of these super soldiers.

"I've always been a little soft, I like to eat and I don't like crunches. I had about five or six months and I really busted my ass to get in good shape," Pratt said before showing the photo on the left to Conan O'Brien.

But, the actor's abs were short-lived as he revealed, "Almost immediately after I wrapped that movie, I gained 60 pounds to play a role in another movie. I'm kind of like a fatass [now]. I have a little extra belly going on."

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