This post deals with sensitive topics like eating disorders, body image, and suicide.
2. Will Poulter had to go through a series of "different diets" to play "the perfect being" in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 but said he wouldn't recommend other people do this.
"It’s been a lot of gym work and a very, very specific diet,” Poulter explained. “Not particularly civilized at times. Quantities of food you wouldn’t necessarily want to ingest. And other times not enough food. I’ve gone through a series of different diets over the last few months.”
3. When Jennifer Lawrence was first starting out, she was told by producers of a film that she needed "to lose 15 pounds in two weeks."
"During this time a female producer had me do a nude line-up with about five women who were much, much, thinner than me. We are stood side-by-side with only tape on covering our privates,” she added.
4. At the beginning of Gigi Hadid's career — right as she was getting out of high school — many people told her she didn't have a "runway body" and when they did put her in their fashion shows, they'd dress her in clothes that covered her body.
"I was coming out of high school, I still had my volleyball body," she told i-D. "It was a body that I loved. I knew how hard I worked to have those muscles, to be curved in those places – I kind of miss it now. At the time, people were hard on me and tried to say that I didn’t have a runway body."
5. Hayley Atwell was told that she needed to lose weight for her role in Brideshead Revisited. Infuriated by this, her costar Emma Thompson threatened to drop out of the film if they forced Hayley to lose weight.
She told First Post, "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."
6. Amber Riley was told by many industry execs that she should "lose a little weight" because, at the time, the only roles she'd be offered were "the girl who wanted to commit suicide 'cause she was fat."
She added she struggles with her own body image but never wants to conform to the industry standards. She also said that these expectations made Hollywood "a very hard place to be in" for her.
7. After winning American Idol in 2005, Carrie Underwood began reading message boards that criticized her weight saying things like, "Carrie's getting fat."
She said she struggled with her body image after reading those comments and would consume as few as 800 calories a day — the FDA recommends adults have at least 2000 calories per day — which led to a cycle of overeating and undereating. "Your body is screaming out, 'I need more calories, I need more carbs!'" she said.
8. Richard Madden has been forced to wear corset-style costumes because studios wanted him to look thinner. He said that he's even had his "fat rolls" pinched.
"I've done numerous jobs where you're told to lose weight and get to the gym," he told British Vogue. "It doesn't just happen to women, it happens to men all the time as well.
9. Sam Claflin said that Hollywood's obsession with people's bodies is "anything but normal." He told The Sydney Morning Herald, "I remember doing one job when they literally made me pull my shirt up and were grabbing my fat and going, 'You need to lose a bit of weight.' This other time they were slapping me. I felt like a piece of meat."
"I'm not saying it's anywhere near as bad as what women go through but I, as an actor approaching each job, am insecure – especially when I have to take my top off in it – and so nervous," he added. "I get really worked up to the point where I spend hours and hours in the gym and not eating for weeks to achieve what I think they're going for."
10. Amber Tamblyn's agent told her that she'd only become a star if she lost weight. "I think at that point I was 128 pounds and I'm 5-7," Amber told The New York Times. "I remember my agent saying to me and she was a woman, 'You have a real choice here. You can either be Nicole Kidman or you can be a character actress.'"
In an op-ed she wrote of her previous experience with another director who told her to lose weight, "He said the film studio would provide a trainer and a meal plan for me. I was 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed just 120 pounds. I remember this number precisely because five pounds lighter would make me 115 pounds, which is the number I ended up achieving after I spent two weeks eating only the deli meat off Subway sandwiches and skipping dinners altogether."
11. Early on in her career, Jennifer Lopez got a lot of "flak" from people in the industry for her body type. "They didn't bother me at all but I got a lot of flak for it from people in the industry. They'd say, 'You should lose a few pounds,' or 'You should do this or do that.' It finally got to the point that I was like, 'This is who I am. I'm shaped like this,'" she told InStyle.
"Everybody I grew up with looked like that, and they were all beautiful to me. I didn't see anything wrong with it. I still don't," she added.
12. Amy Schumer was told that she needed to lose weight to star in Trainwreck, a movie that she wrote. She did it, but said "never again."
"It was explained to me before I did that movie that if you weigh over 140 pounds as a woman in Hollywood if you're on the screen it will hurt people's eyes," she said on The Jonathan Ross Show.
13. During the height of her modeling career, designers at Milan Fashion Week said that Tyra Banks was "too big." "Her butt is getting too big and you need to go tell her to lose some weight," they told her mother, along with a list of designers who didn't want to work with Tyra anymore.
She said, "I started crying and I was like, 'Mom, OK, what do I do. Should I diet? Should I work out twice a day? Should I just have salads for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?'" But her mom told her she'd "be damned" if her child "starved" for this profession.
14. At the beginning of her career, Florence Pugh was told that she had to fix her "weight, [her] look, the shape of [her] face, the shape of [her] eyebrows." Because of this criticism she thought she'd made a "massive mistake" coming to Hollywood.
"Women in Hollywood, especially young women in Hollywood, are obviously putting themselves in all these ways in order to get whatever opportunity that they need to get because that's just the way that it's been. I think I definitely put my foot down in that aspect. I love food," she added.
15. Once while walking through the mall, a modeling agent told Ashley Graham that she'd be a model, but only if she lost weight.
Ashley's dad even agreed with them. She said, “The really hard moment was when my dad said, ‘Honey, if an agent is telling you to lose weight, then maybe you should lose weight.’ I was 15, standing in our living room having a moment I will never forget. I never had a parent tell me to lose weight and it hurt."
16. David Harbour was told he was "perfect" for The Blob because they needed a "big guy" to play the role, but then when he went into the audition, they told him he was "too fat" to play the role.
"[The director] was like, 'David, look, you're wonderful, we really think you're just a great actor, we're just concerned … we're really concerned … it's just, you lifted up your shirt and ... we're just a little worried about your health,'" he told The Wrap. "I was like, 'Wait a minute. You are telling me I'm too fat to play The Blob?'"
17. Sophie Turner faced pressure from TV studios to lose the weight she gained while filming Game of Thrones.
"My metabolism suddenly decided to fall to the depths of the ocean and I started to get spotty and gain weight, and all of this was happening to me on camera," she told Marie Claire Australia.
18. Amanda Seyfried has lost out on several roles because she was "overweight."
19. Misty Copeland didn't go through puberty until she was already a professional dancer, so when she started gaining weight American Ballet Theatre (ABT) asked her to lose it in order to "lengthen" her body.
"Being told to lose weight, and being African-American, not having anyone else around who looked like me, caused me so much doubt," she added.
20. Carrie Fisher was pressured to lose over 35 pounds so she could appear in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
"They don’t want to hire all of me – only about three-quarters!" she told Good Housekeeping. "Nothing changes: it’s an appearance-driven thing. 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"
21. Margaret Cho was told she was "too overweight" to play herself and because of the pressure, she "ended up hospitalized with kidney failure from not eating.”
She said, “When someone says something negative about my face or body I will always and forever just completely lose my shit, because I have so much hatred in me, a violence that lies just beneath the surface of my delightfully illustrated skin. Being called ugly and fat and disgusting to look at from the time I could barely understand what the words meant has scarred me so deep inside that I have learned to hunt, stalk, claim, own, and defend my own loveliness and my image of myself as stunningly gorgeous with a ruthlessness and a defensiveness that I fear for anyone who casually or jokingly questions it, as my anger and rage combined with my intense and fearsome command of words create insults meant to maim, kill and destroy.”
22. Margot Robbie was asked to diet for her role in The Legend of Tarzan, but she refused.
"It’s the 19th century [in the film] – if she’s got a bit of weight on her, it’s probably a good thing,” she said. “I’m not going to look thin just for the sake of it.”
23. Alex Newell was told he was "too big" to star in the Broadway musical Kinky Boots.
"They said my weight would inhibit me from playing the role, which is not true, but to each their own,” they told StyleCaster. “I was like, ‘This is a show where they’re encouraging you to be who you want to be. Don’t let them tell you who you should be.’ They literally looked me in the face and told me I was too big to play a role. There’s no limitation. My weight does not prescribe what I cannot do.”
24. And finally, Chris Pratt initially gained weight to play Andy on Parks and Recreation, but when he went out to audition for other roles he was told he was "too fat."
One of the movies he auditioned for was 2011’s Moneyball, he shared, “That was the first time I heard someone say, ‘We’re not gonna cast you—you’re too fat.’ So I decided to drop the weight, like in wrestling. I couldn’t afford a trainer, so it was all running and crash-dieting and cutting alcohol.”
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
The National Eating Disorders Association helpline is 1-800-931-2237; for 24/7 crisis support, text “NEDA” to 741741.