Being a Hollywood actor can be a demanding job. We know everyone looks at movie stars and just thinks about all the money and the glamour, but the actual work of being an actor can be hugely challenging, in more ways than one. Actors go through relatively short, but intense periods of ultra-long filming days, alternating with slow periods of little work, and that sometimes leaves them searching for more. To make their characters believable, they often have to learn new skills like a language or playing a musical instrument, and often, they have to undergo major physical transformations.
While fat suits and prosthetics are usually an option, having an actor who is willing to gain or drop a couple dozen pounds or hit the gym ultra-hard for a role can make a movie seem much more realistic. A lot of actors transform in smaller, less difficult ways, too. They might shave their heads bald or grow a full beard or start up an intense tanning regimen, for example.
All of those things can literally make some of our favorite actors totally unrecognizable, not to mention it helps some stars really get into character so they can deliver their best performances. Sometimes, though, it's truly unhealthy and no matter how much we enjoy a particular film, we just can't wrap our heads around how some actors are willing to risk their physical — and maybe even mental — health for a role.
Scroll on to see some of the most incredible transformations that actors have gone through for a movie role.
Colin Farrell
Leading man Colin Farrell lit up the internet in March 2023 when photos surfaced of him in character as the DC Comics supervillain Penguin for the upcoming HBO series The Penguin. In addition to a much heavier frame, Colin was sporting facial prosthetics that gave him multiple chins, deep wrinkles, pockmarked skin, and a receding hairline. The transformation was so dramatic that it was nearly impossible to believe one of Hollywood's biggest hunks was hidden underneath.
Jude Law
No matter how much we stare at this photo, we cannot recognize Jude Law in it. But it is in fact him, transformed into the evil Captain Hook for a new live-action adaptation of the classic Peter Pan tale, called Peter Pan & Wendy. The mustache and long hair are definitely a different look for Jude, but it's the dark eyes that really throw us. After all, Jude practically built a career off of his piercing blue-green peepers.
Brendan Fraser
Brendan Fraser has been enjoying one heck of a career comeback — and widespread critical acclaim — thanks to his work in the moving 2022 drama The Whale. He plays a reclusive, morbidly obese professor who is desperate to reconnect with his teenage daughter, with whom he's been estranged for eight years. To transform into the character, Brendan spent up to six hours in the makeup chair each day, wearing a prosthetic suit so heavy that several people had to assist him in standing up, sitting down, and wheeling him short distances on set.
The costume was so cumbersome that he experienced vertigo after taking it off after filming, as if he'd just stepped off a boat. "I learned quickly that it takes an incredibly strong person inside that body to be that person," he told Vanity Fair.
Christian Bale
Christian Bale is pretty much the king of committing to extreme physical transformations for film roles. The most striking was when he lost a whopping 62 pounds to star in 2005's The Machinist, in which he played an insomniac. "I came up with the absolutely brilliant method of just smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey to lose weight," he once explained, going on to add that he also drank black coffee, and ate one can of tuna and one apple a day.
Joaquin Phoenix
For a long while, everyone thought it would be impossible to love anyone in the role of the Joker as much as we did Heath Ledger, but when Joaquin Phoenix took on the role in the distinctly dark and disturbing 2019 film Joker, he shocked us all. He completely transformed for the movie, admittedly using the method approach to lose 52 pounds in a short time, which he's explained actually helped him tap into the emotions he needed to play such a troubled character.
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron has long been considered one of the most beautiful and graceful women in Hollywood, but she did a complete 180 with her image in the 2003 film Monster to portray real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Charlize gained a significant amount of weight and wore fake teeth, and a makeup team totally de-glammed her. "What happened was, the more I dived into [Aileen's] life, the more I realized that everything she did physically came from an emotional place," Charlize told Advocate.
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey is a naturally slim but muscular guy, so when he lost weight to play a stage 4 HIV/AIDS patient in the 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club, it was a little scary. He lost 50 pounds and appeared positively gaunt. "I did not torture myself. I was militant. The hardest part was making the damn choice," he recounted on The Joe Rogan podcast, noting that all he ate was fish, egg whites, vegetables, tapioca pudding, and lots of wine.
Tom Hardy
English actor Tom Hardy is another star who doesn't ever shy away from making extreme physical transformations for roles. He's done it many times, but perhaps the most shocking was for the 2008 film Bronson. He played Michael Gordon Peterson aka Charles Bronson, who is a real-life criminal known as the "most violent" in all of Britain. Not only did Tom gain 40 pounds in just five weeks, but he also sported a bald head and a mustache that was allegedly made from the actual mustache hair of Charles Bronson himself.
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks went all in for the 2000 film Cast Away, for which he earned an Oscar nomination for best actor. The film is about a man stranded on a desert island, so Tom of course starts the film with his usual appearance and as it progresses, and the character spends more time alone on the island, he loses a tremendous amount of weight and grows a rough, scraggly beard. Tom lost 50 pounds, and filming actually paused for a year to allow for his dramatic transformation.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal got positively jacked for the film Southpaw. It's not the only movie he's physically transformed for, but it still shocks us every time we see him in it. He played a boxer and trained intensely to get in shape for the role. His dedication seriously impressed costar Rachel McAdams. "To actually see the transformation up close was really awe-inspiring," she said.
"When I first signed on to the movie, he had just started his training and had long hair in a ponytail and a bushy beard and didn't even look like a boxer. But three months later, to have completely changed and to be so convincing — not just the physical transformation, but to become that character in every single way so that it was just part of his DNA — was phenomenal to watch."
Renée Zellweger
Renée Zellweger famously gained around 30 pounds for each of the Bridget Jones films, which is a lot on her petite 5-foot-4 frame. As a woman she was of course intensely scrutinized by the media each and every time. Most of us associate her with those movies so strongly that we were surprised to see what she really looks like when she finally stopped filming them.
50 Cent
Rapper, actor, and businessman Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson has always been a buff, muscular guy, so it was pretty amazing when he lost more than 50 pounds to play a cancer patient in the 2011 movie All Things Fall Apart. He lost the weight in nine weeks by running and following a liquid diet. He says he wanted to get it right in honor of a friend of his who died of cancer.
"I had so much muscle on me that it was hard for me to lose definition even as I got lighter and slimmer," he said. "I started running to suppress my appetite. Towards the end, it was really difficult. It was like, if I don't get close enough to what my best friend looked like to me at that point before he passed, then I'm not doing the story any justice."
Demi Moore
Demi Moore showed a lot of commitment when she starred in the movie G.I. Jane in 1997. Not only did she get super fit by training for several hours a day, often starting before dawn, but she also shaved her head bald. It was really striking for someone who normally looks so feminine and delicate.
Jared Leto
In Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto played a transsexual with AIDS, and he not only had to make a gender-bending transformation, he had to lose nearly 30 pounds. He, too, chose to approach the role through method acting, so he stayed in character for nearly a month.
"I had dropped about 30 pounds," he told RogerEbert.com. "But there are other things too. You couldn't really take the costume off. I waxed my body from head to toe. Then there is all the inside stuff. I lived in that character throughout the course of shooting. It was really important to do that."
Matt Damon
Way back in 1996, when Matt Damon was in his mid-20s but looked younger, he lost 40 pounds to portray the emotional turmoil of his character in Courage Under Fire. The character he played was a soldier suffering from PTSD and battling a serious heroin addiction. Matt's chiseled facial features looked positively skeletal.
Emma Stone
That really is Emma Stone! In the 2017 movie Battle of the Sexes, she plays real-life tennis player Billie Jean King. The movie takes place in 1973, so that alone required a major change in appearance, but since Emma was also playing an athlete, she had to bulk up by gaining 15 pounds of muscle. She looked almost nothing like herself.
Robert De Niro
In what iconic actor Robert De Niro has called the toughest role of his life, he played an aging boxer in the 1980 film Raging Bull. The story is based on the real life of Jake LaMotta, and Robert had to undergo multiple physical transformations to represent the different stages of Jake's life, including being in incredible shape and then putting on 60 pounds for the scenes that took place later in his life. Between the makeup and prosthetics and the weight gain, Robert was completely unrecognizable. It did earn him an Oscar, though.
Ben Kingsley
This one is absolutely wild, and we're not sure how we feel about the whole brown-face thing, but Ben Kingsley is part Indian, so we'll try not to let it bother us. He played Mahatma Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi, and the resemblance between him and the real historical figure was remarkable. He lost 20 pounds, shaved his head, sported a thick mustache and Gandhi's signature round spectacles, and looked like a completely different person. He reportedly even went vegetarian for the role and began practicing yoga and meditation so he could deliver a more authentic portrayal.
Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Hudson is so underrated, isn't she? In 2011, she took on the role of Nelson Mandela's wife in the film Winnie Mandela, which covers the activist's life between the ages of 19 and 70. Jennifer filmed the movie after giving birth to her first child, which means she had to lose quite a bit of weight. She famously used Weight Watchers to do so, but also admitted that she ended up losing a bit too much, despite playing a woman who was in isolation for 500 days. "I was losing too much, actually. Their food isn't as processed as ours, so that made a big difference. I had to lose weight for the role, and then they said I was too thin," she told Parade.
