15 Actors Who Ate Strange (And Definitely Not Healthy) Diets To Prepare For Their Roles

Ashton Kutcher ate a diet consisting of only fruit, nuts, and seeds while preparing to play Steve Jobs, and ended up being hospitalized twice for pancreatitis.

by Lauren Garafano

BuzzFeed Staff

This post contains conversation of intense diet changes, restrictive eating, weight fluctuations, and binge eating.

1. Jacob Elordi said that while filming Priscilla, he ate a pound of bacon every day. He said, “I averaged, like, a pound of bacon a day. It’s not that noticeable because I’m quite long, but I was the biggest I’ve ever been."

2. Anne Hathaway was only eating two thin squares of dried oatmeal paste per day while she was playing Fantine in Les Misérables. “I had to be obsessive about it—the idea was to look near death,” she recalled about the experience. She also said that the diet was really bad for her health-wise, saying, “That weight loss was not a long-term good thing for my health, and it took a really long time to come back from it. And I was still really sick because of it.”

anne in the film, looking very malnourished for her character

3. Chris Messina gained weight for the movie Live by Night and ended up drinking copious amounts of beer. "It was fun. It was a lot of fun," he said. "[I] just stuffed my face. Beer — lots of beer — bagels, pasta. I would have a beer by the bedside table, and I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and I'd just chug the beer."

4. Rob McElhenney gained over 50 pounds for the seventh season of his show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He explained that he started off with "three chicken breasts, two cups of rice, and two cups of vegetables" per meal, but soon realized that he could get nearly the same amount of calories by eating one Big Mac. He shared that one of his meals was a "high-calorie protein shake" and "every once in a while, [he] would eat three donuts."

his character wearing a tight muscle tank

5. Zoë Kravitz revealed that she "ended up drinking clay" for her role in The Road Within. She needed to lose weight for the role and explained, "I tried to do it the healthiest way as possible, even though it's not healthy to do. I ended up drinking clay, because it cleans out your body and fills you up. I was eating, like, a Mason jar of pureed vegetables a day and running."

a very skinny zoe in character standing at a door frame wearing a muscle tank

6. Ashton Kutcher decided to replicate Steve Jobs' fruitarian diet, where he only consumed fruit, nuts, and seeds while filming the movie Jobs. He ended up in the hospital twice because of pancreatitis. When talking about the experience, he said, "I was, like, doubled over in pain ... My pancreas levels were completely out of whack, which was really terrifying."

7. While filming Black Swan, Natalie Portman's diet was very restrictive and she was "just living on carrots and almonds." She said, "There were some nights that I thought I literally was going to die."

8. While preparing to star in Hercules, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson had to eat seven meals a day. He also said that he drank "one cup of Nemean Lion Blood upon rising" and that it was "served fresh and warm," so do with that what you will...

him in character wearing armor and holding a sword

9. Beyoncé did the Master Cleanse for 14 days while gearing up for her role in Dreamgirls. The cleanse consists of only consuming a concoction of lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup. She later said that the first thing she did after wrapping the movie was "eat a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts."

10. Christian Bale ate an extremely restrictive diet for his role in The Machinist. Each day all he would consume was black coffee, a single apple, and a tin of tuna. He also said, "I came up with the absolutely brilliant method of just smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey to lose weight." Because he was losing so much weight, the movie's producers had to stop him because of the health risks.

11. While filming The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio insisted on eating raw bison liver so that he could live as closely to his character, Hugh Glass, as possible. The prop department had originally created a fake piece of meat that was made of jelly, but Leo didn't think it looked realistic enough.

closeup of him in the freezing outside with ice on his face

12. Sylvester Stallone ate some enormous breakfasts while bulking up for his role in Cop Land. One meal consisted of “five pancakes smothered with peanut butter and whipped cream, a bowl of oatmeal, two bagels with more peanut butter, ten fried eggs, French fries and cheesecake.” And while he didn't mind the diet too much at the time, he shared that it was more difficult for him to lose the weight after filming was complete.

13. Chris Hemsworth had to lose weight for his role in In The Heart of the Sea and explained that “At one point, a day’s rations were a boiled egg, a couple of crackers, and a celery stick.”

14. Matthew McConaughey had to lose weight for his role in Dallas Buyers Club and his diet consisted of "a Diet Coke, two egg whites in the morning, a piece of chicken, then another Diet Coke." And as a "treat," he'd have a tiny amount of tapioca pudding.

a very skinny matthew leaning against a car

15. Finally, Ryan Gosling was originally cast to star in The Lovely Bones and felt that he needed to gain weight for his character. So, he'd melt containers of Haagen Dazs ice cream and "drink it."