7 Actors Whose Eating Disorder Struggles Were Made Worse By Working

It doesn't help when you literally have to lose weight for work.

Content Warning: Mentions of dieting, weight loss, and eating disorders ahead.

Hollywood is notorious for its treatment of human beings as props. With extreme objectification, body-shaming, and trolling it is difficult for people in the industry to have a healthy relationship with food.

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Some celebrities have opened up and called out the industry's impossible standards and have opened up about their struggles trying to meet them. The process of recovering from an eating disorder is painful, time-consuming, and may feel never-ending, especially if one's job requires someone in recovery to go back to old, unhealthy eating patterns.

Here are just a few instances where actors' recovery journeys were made difficult because their roles demanded them to lose weight:

1. Camila Mendes

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While speaking at the 2019 PopSugar Playground, Riverdale's Camila Mendes opened up about her battle with bulimia. She said that she always thought that dieting was a "nice, healthy way to live" and that it took a lot of effort "to get rid of the fear of carbs."

Mendes explained that every few episodes she had a two-hour fitting that was "overwhelming" because she was trying on clothes her character, Veronica Lodge would wear that she normally would not. "It was like so the opposite of what I like to wear and it was really uncomfortable," she said. "It made me really insecure, so it got to a point where I couldn’t get through a fitting. Thirty minutes in, I was crying…I was like, 'Why don’t things fit me a certain way?'"

Previously, in a 2018 interview with Shape, she revealed that she had struggled with eating disorders while in high school and in college. In February 2018, she declared that she was #donewithdieting via an Instagram post. She also said that it was the Riverdale fitting sessions that made her want to seek professional help and finally meet a therapist. 

2. Zoe Kravitz

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Growing up in the limelight as the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz definitely has had its toll on Zoe Kravtiz. In the 2015 April/May cover issue of Complex featuring her, she revealed her struggles with having an unhappy relationship with food. "I had a really hard time when I was 16, 17, 18. I started with the eating disorder in high school…Just [a hard time] loving myself," she said.  

She went on to explain how playing the role of an anorexic teen in the 2014 dramedy The Road Within caused her to restart her unhealthy eating patterns at the age of 25. Having lost a considerable amount of weight for the role, she wasn't happy with her 90-pound figure either. "It was fucked up, man," she said. "You could see my rib cage. I was just trying to lose more weight for the film but I couldn’t see: You’re there. Stop. It was scary."

Kravitz also revealed that the recovery process was not easy and that she was hard on herself. She wasn't happy gaining back all the weight she had lost even though she had lost her periods and her thyroid had been thrown off risking her immune system. "I was like, 'I don’t want to gain weight,' as opposed to being like, 'Good, I’m a normal human being,'" she said.

3. Joaquin Phoenix

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Joaquin Phoenix had to lose over 52 pounds (around 24 kgs) to play the role of Arthur Fleck in the 2019 film Joker. In an interview with People, he revealed that the extreme weight loss had a negative impact on his mental health. "As it turns out, [extreme weight loss] impacts your psychology, and you really start to go mad when you lose that much weight in that amount of time," he revealed. 

In an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live Phoenix also mentioned that the experience might have caused him to develop disordered eating patterns. He went on to explain that hunger "rears its head in strange ways" and he couldn't socialize with anyone because that would likely involve eating and drinking or watching commercials that involved eating or drinking. 

4. Hillary Duff

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Hilary Duff has spoken about her battle with eating disorders during her teenage years while starring in Lizzie McGuire. In an interview with Health, she candidly explained her struggles. "I was totally obsessed with everything I put in my mouth. I was way too skinny," she revealed. "Not cute. And my body wasn't that healthy —my hands would cramp up a lot because I wasn't getting the nutrition I needed. That constant pressure of wanting something different than I had? I regret that." Today, the mother of three continues to heal her relationship with food and her body.

5. Alyson Stoner

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In an interview with People, Disney Channel star, Alyson Stoner, revealed that she developed mental health issues at the tender age of 6 due to her high-stress work environment. The pressure to be perfect present in the entertainment industry led her to develop anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder. "Some people are complimentary of me when it comes to maybe not acting out in ways that they see other child stars behaving," she revealed. "I was acting out, but I chose vices that were societally acceptable and praiseworthy." 

In another interview with Access Hollywood, Stoner revealed the preparation she went through for her audition for the role of Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games. "I was so committed to the audition process that I underwent very intense physical training, and I was on a very restrictive diet," she said. "My hair is starting to fall out, my skin is sallow, and I'm medically underweight." In 2011, she was hospitalized and admitted herself to rehab for further treatment of her eating disorders at the age of 17.

6. Jared Leto

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Jared Leto is famous for his 'method acting.' For his role as a trans person with HIV, and then AIDS, in the 2013 movie Dallas Buyers Club he had to go down to 116 pounds. In an interview with E! he revealed that he had lost about 30 or 40 pounds for the movie. "I just basically didn't eat. I ate very little," he said.  He explained that losing so much weight affected the way he walked and made him feel fragile and unsafe. 

Years of putting his body through diets to achieve extreme weight loss or gain have had a heavy impact on the actor's relationship with food. In an interview with Albawaba, he revealed the extreme transformation to play the role of a heroin addict in Requiem for a Dream made him "addicted to losing weight". 

Leto said he kept looking in the mirror but didn't "see himself" as being thin enough and that "a little voice" in his head kept telling him that it was possible to lose more weight.

7. Molly Sims

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In an interview with HuffPost, the actor and former model revealed her body image issues and struggle to maintain a healthy relationship with food. She talked about how she was instructed to lose weight at the beginning of her modeling career and that her soaring popularity after she appeared as the cover girl of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit worsened her relationship with food.

"It was very difficult to stay the weight that you were supposed to stay," she said. "For me, I'm genetically blessed in certain ways, but in terms of having the weight be a certain size 0, it was very hard. I didn't eat sometimes for a couple of days." Sims also said that she would end up walking for 14 miles a day to maintain a size 0. 

The National Eating Disorders Association helpline is 1-800-931-2237; for 24/7 crisis support, text “NEDA” to 741741.

UPDATE

Aug. 30, 2022, at 16:25 PM

This post has been updated to reflect BuzzFeed's editorial standards.