12 Actors Who Refused To Lose For A Role
Over the past few decades, the average body size of the women in Hollywood has shrunk dramatically. Today, the women represented in the media are super thin, drastically thinner than the majority of the population. The average woman in America today is a size 16, while the average Hollywood actress ranges from a size double zero to a size four. So, the women in Hollywood are approximately a quarter of the size of the average woman. In fact, they are so thin that their body type is unachievable for the majority of the population.
Women's bodies are constantly policed in today's society. Even though the standard set by women in Hollywood is completely unachievable, women are still expected to strive to make their bodies smaller, like the women they see on the screen. This unrealistic expectation causes many women to have extremely unhealthy relationships with their bodies.
Despite the fact that these actresses are already so thin, they often face pressure to be even thinner. Many actresses report being asked by directors, agents, and producers to lose weight in order to get a role or keep a role. Some of these actresses relent and lose the weight they're asked to lose. Others tell their directors, agents, and producers to F off and refuse to lose the weight. Here are a few women who have been brave enough to reject Hollywood's body ideals and refused to lose weight for a role.
12 Kirsten Dunst
When director Sofia Coppola asked Kirsten Dunst to work with her on her new movie “The Beguiled” she also requested that Dunst lose some weight for the role. Dunst and Coppola have worked together on several projects and the two are friends outside of work as well, so Dunst felt comfortable enough with Coppola to refuse her request.
Dunst reportedly told Coppola that she didn't have enough time to lose the weight responsibly jokingly saying that she'd been “eating fried chicken and McDonald's” all the time. Dunst also pointed out that because she was getting older and her body was naturally changing it wouldn't be as easy for her to shed the pounds as it had been when she was younger.
Coppola said she understood and agreed that Dunst need not lose weight to play the role. It's still a little disappointing that a woman who makes movies about women, from the perspectives of women, asked a good friend of hers to lose weight for a role. Not very women friendly if you ask me.
11 Jennifer Lawrence
Everyone's favorite “cool girl” has said a lot about how she refuses to diet for roles. She talks all the time about her love for pizza, cheeseburgers, and fries. She says she eats like a normal human being and tells anyone who asks her to diet to “F off.”
Lawrence has said that one of the main reasons she refuses to diet for a role is because she doesn't want to encourage girls who watch her movies to think they have to be rail thin. When she was asked to play Katniss Everdeen, producers asked her to lose a little weight and Lawrence refused. She said that she didn't want girls to skip meals in order to look like Katniss because they idolized her.
Lawrence has also pointed out the negative aspects of dieting on her ability to perform her job. She says that she can't perform well when she's hungry. So, she eats what she wants, when she wants and refuses to change that to land or keep a role.
10 Patricia Arquette
The obsession with celebrity moms often leads to the discussion of how those celebrity moms plan to or did “shed the baby weight.” Celebrity moms are under an extreme amount of pressure to lose their pregnancy weight and to lose it quickly. Think about how many magazine covers you've seen advertising the “miracle diet” that X celebrity mom used to get back her pre-pregnancy body in just eight weeks. A lot, right?
The truth is that women's bodies change after a pregnancy and magically dropping the pregnancy pounds is completely unrealistic. And that's what Patricia Arquette told the producers of “Medium” when they asked her to quickly lose weight after having her baby.
She also pointed out that it made no sense for her character to have to shed the weight. Arquette admitted to having lost weight for roles before because she believed the body type was important to the character, but in this case, it made no sense for her to slim down since it wasn't right for her or her character. Her character on the show is a mother of three, so her producer's logic that she should lose weight to better portray the character proved to be ridiculous.
9 Amy Schumer
Hollywood's favorite funny girl is famous for talking about her “un-Hollywood” body type. Amy Schumer is larger than many other women in Hollywood, but as she's pointed out multiple times, it hasn't seemed to harm her career or her sex life yet. She also talks a lot about how according to Hollywood she's “fat” and how ridiculous that is since she's still much smaller than the average American woman. She's been a vocal opponent of Hollywood's ridiculous expectations of what a woman should look like.
After the movie “Trainwreck” came out, Amy admitted that she had gone on an extreme diet to lose weight for the role. Her producers had told her that the movie wouldn't be successful if she was too heavy and asked her to lose weight. She agreed, but regretted every minute. After that, she swore she'd never diet for a role again. Schumer stated that she is comfortable in her body and that she regrets letting Hollywood force her to forget that and change.
8 Christina Hendricks
This sexy as hell “Mad Men” star has one of the most talked about bodies in Hollywood, mostly because her body defies Hollywood's typical standards. Christina Hendricks has lots of curves in all the right places, but people still frequently talk about how much larger her body is than the typical Hollywood actress.
Though her body is frequently talked about by other people, Hendricks doesn't talk about her body at all. In fact, interviewers are told by her PR firm not to ask questions about her body. And if they try to push the topic with her, she'll politely change the subject. It's not that she's never made comments about her own body, it's that Hendricks believes she's been pretty clear on the subject. She's been quoted in the past as saying how much she loves her body and how she would never change it for any reason. To her, the subject is closed.
Hendrick's refusal to make her body the focus of her media attention is a refreshing change from the barrage of commentary about women's bodies that surrounds us all the time.
7 Tyra Banks
When you hear the word supermodel, the woman you probably think of first is Tyra Banks. She's been modeling for years and her image is literally iconic. When she was modeling regularly and in the early years of “America's Next Top Model,” Banks maintained the super thin figure that seems to be a requirement for modeling.
In the past few years, Tyra's body noticeably changed and, of course, everyone had something to say about it. As her body got larger, people commented that she was letting herself go and that she should be trying harder to maintain her thin body, especially since she was still hosting a show about recruiting models.
Sassy as always Tyra shot back that she refused to go on a diet or to change her body at all. She pointed out that she'd done her time maintaining her perfect body in her years on the runway. She also made it clear that our bodies change as they age and she was perfectly comfortable with the way her body was changing. Banks also stated that she's against dieting, even in the modeling industry and that she encourages her contestants on “America's Next Top Model” not to diet.
For a woman who spent so many years in the modeling industry, which typically destroys a woman's body image, Banks has managed to maintain a much better perspective on her body than most.
6 Candice Bergen
Another former supermodel who's gained a new perspective on her body is Candice Bergen. Over the past decade or so, Bergen has gained weight, and the media has been more than happy to point that out. In her recently published memoir, Bergen proudly announces that she's “fat” and that she's fine with it. She says that after years of simply “eating to live,” she's now “living to eat.” Bergen says that she loves food and it gives her joy, so why wouldn't she enjoy it?
Bergen is one of many actresses and models who fell prey to extreme diets when she was younger, but points out that unhealthy diets always made her miserable. Bergen has also talked about how many of the women she used to work with had eating disorders and made it clear that she doesn't believe that's a happy way to live.
As she's grown older, Bergen has been able to accept her body and her love of food without shame. We should all learn from her example.
5 Sofia Vergara
Sofia Vergara is another actress who has all the right curves and whose body is talked about all the time for being outside of Hollywood's conventions. Despite her gorgeous figure, Vergara was often told that she would need to lose weight in order to make it in Hollywood. She even had people tell her that she looked fat in her photos! Her quick response was that she looked better naked.
Vergara said that though she was discouraged at the beginning of her career, she refused to let anyone force her to change her body. She'd actually been teased for being too skinny as a child and loved her body once she grew in to a woman.
Vergara has also said that because of issues with her thyroid she's had experience with super strict diets and they were completely unworkable for her life. She described how stressful it was to eat when she was on strict diets, so she swore never to diet again.
4 Ariel Winter
Sofia Vergara's “Modern Family” costar, Ariel Winter, has had plenty of her own struggles with body image and the media. Winter grew up and literally hit puberty in front of our eyes. As she became a woman instead of a girl, her body changed drastically and became a topic of conversation for the media and awful people on the Internet. She was called fat and ugly on a regular basis and this took a severe toll on her well-being.
Winter said that when these comments began she started to believe that she should change her body, so she went on all sorts of crazy diets to try and be thin. When the negative comments about her body didn't stop, she realized that she was never going to make people happy anyway, so she set out to make herself happy. A big part of making herself happy was learning how to accept her body the way it was and refusing to diet ever again.
Winter actually credits Sofia Vergara with teaching her about accepting her body. She said that Vergara's example of body acceptance helped her on her own journey to body positivity.
3 Kate Winslet
The “Titanic” actress has long been a vocal advocate for curvy women in Hollywood. She has long refused to diet in order to be skinny like other actresses in Hollywood. Winslet often speaks out about how she believes that serving up images of super thin women to girls encourages them to have unhealthy relationships with their bodies.
She believes that as a curvy woman it's her responsibility to be a positive role model for girls and show them that women of all shapes and sizes can be successful. Winslet wants all young girls to have a positive body image, and she believes that dieting is antithetical to having a positive body image.
Winslet has also been a vocal opponent of having her image Photoshopped so that she looks thinner. She wants her image to represent how she really looks because she believes her body is beautiful just as it is.
2 Bonnie Sveen
Australian actress Bonnie Sveen rocketed to fame when she starred in the Australian soap opera “Home and Away.” The soap was her first major role and she has said that she was really worried that her body would be the focus rather than her acting. Sveen is on the curvier side and had previously been told that she would need to lose weight if she were ever going to make it big as an actress.
She rejected this mentality and was relieved to find out that the show's producers were fine with her body. Sveen has said that she believes it's important to show real, healthy bodies on the screen. She says that girls and women deserve to see a woman who looks like them when they turn on the TV and she's proud to be that woman.
Sveen also spoke to the fact that she wouldn't be able to maintain her shooting schedule if she was on a restrictive diet or expected to exercise religiously. She says that shooting a TV show is strenuous enough and she wouldn't have the energy to perform if she was over exercising and not eating well.
1 Margot Robbie
After seeing Margot Robbie in that Harley Quinn crop top and booty shorts it's hard to imagine anyone asking her to lose weight. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened on the set of her latest movie. Robbie reported that the producers of “Tarzan” asked her to slim down to play Jane. Robbie refused saying that it didn't make sense for her character to be so super thin. She's portraying a woman from the 19th century, when body ideals weren't as strict as they are today. Robbie insisted she didn't need to be super thin to play a woman from that time period and that she wasn't going to be thin just to be thin.
Robbie also revealed that she had more selfish reasons for refusing to lose weight: she wanted to party in London. The film is shooting in London and Robbie wanted to enjoy the pub scene as much as possible while she was there.
It should be noted that all these women are still relatively thin, even if they're not as thin as some other actresses and models in Hollywood. Their ability to refuse to lose weight and still be successful probably has a lot to do with the fact that they're still relatively thin. Their refusal to lose weight may not be as well accepted if they were truly plus sized women.
That being said these women were still brave enough to stand up to Hollywood's ridiculous standards and refuse to lose weight in order to please the media. They are positive examples of accepting your body as it is and refusing to change to please others. We need more women like them!
