15 Celebs Who Lost A Scary Amount Of Weight For A Role

We all know that celebrities are dedicated to their craft. They learn new accents, wear crazy costumes, spend months away from their families and sometimes even do their own stunts. They spend hours getting their hair and makeup done before getting to set at an ungodly early hour. And then there's all of the interviews, red carpets and social media to stay on top of. You can't say these guys don't work for their money. Sure, they are definitely overpaid, but they put in the work. And then there are those actors who really go for it. Not only do they do the accents, costumes and hours in the makeup chair, but these actors undergo a complete physical transformation. And we're not talking just heading to the gym a couple times a week or drinking a protein shake for breakfast. We're talking fasting, living in the gym, hiring a nutritionist and going above and beyond to lose a ton of weight really quickly. Here are 15 celebrities who took things almost too far to lose a drastic amount of weight for a movie. Do you think it was worth it? Did they really need to lose the weight or would the movie have worked with a few more pounds? And was the movie worth it - was it Oscar worthy or straight to DVD? Warning: do not try this at home! These celebrities were under watchful eyes and were, hopefully, nowhere close to actually endangering themselves.

15 Chris Hemsworth

In the Heart of the Sea was a 2015 adventure movie about the 1820 sinking of a whaling ship that inspired the novel, Moby Dick. Chris Hemsworth played the lead, Owen Chase, the first mate who goes toe to toe with the big whale. His character and the other survivors are shipwrecked and go without food or water for many days. To achieve this look, Chris Hemsworth had to drop from 215 lbs to 175 lbs. For about a month, Chris was eating between 500-700 calories a day, which is equal to roughly one bagel with cream cheese per day. When asked about the experience Chris admitted, "I spend more time thinking about food than anything else at the moment." Looking back after filming he continued, "[This is] physically and emotionally the hardest movie that I've been a part of… Losing the weight to this length, I just never want to do it again, but it had such an emotional effect on us… in some small way, we felt like we were doing what these men went through justice."

14 Christian Bale

Christian Bale is most well known for playing Batman and for his extreme weight loss in The Machinist - two roles that were polar opposites. For The Machinist, a psychological thriller where Bale played an insomniac with paranoia and delusions, Bale lost 63 lbs. He dropped one-third of his body weight! Reportedly, Bale lived off a diet of water, an apple, and one cup of coffee each day for four months before filming. After dropping the weight, Bale was at a scary 120 lbs. He wanted to take things even further and hit 99 lbs but the filmmakers felt it would be unsafe. We can't even imagine how scary he would look at 99 lbs! Impressively, once filming on The Machinist wrapped, Bale only had six months to gain the weight back for his role in Batman Begins. About the experience, Bale said, "Interestingly, I did find that mentally it was very, very calming being that skinny, because you really didn't have any energy for expending on unnecessary things, so you just kept it simple."

13 Christian Bale AGAIN

Is it any surprise to find the incredibly dedicated Christian Bale on this list again? Of course not. This time, Christian Bale dropped the weight to play Dicky Eklund, the substance addicted brother, former boxer, and trainer to Mark Wahlberg's lead character, Micky Ward, in The Fighter. Bale actually got this role after Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Eminem dropped out. Wahlberg suggested Bale for the role after meeting him at the preschool their children attend. Bale explained why the filmmakers needed him to slim down, "I've had to lose a great deal of weight because he was a welterweight." To lose the weight, Bale followed a special diet and took boxing lessons from the real life Dicky Eklund. He also did a lot of running and joked to reporters that he did dabble with illegal substances to lose the weight. Whatever he did, we guess it was worth it since Christian Bale took home an Oscar for his work in The Fighter. Fun fact: shortly after this, Bale had to gain 43 lbs for his role in American Hustle. How does he do it?

12 Lily James

Lily James faced quite a bit of controversy once photos of her in her Cinderella corset surfaced. Critics felt that her waist was just too small and she was setting unrealistic expectations for the many little girls who would be seeing the movie. Well, we guess filmmakers didn't feel the same way. Lily was on a liquid diet in order to squeeze into her tiny princess corset. But she protests that the liquid diet wasn't to lose weight but to stay comfortable on set, "When [the corset] was on, we would be on continuous days, so we wouldn't stop for lunch… you'd be sort of eating on the move. In that case, I couldn't untie the corset. If you ate [solid] food, it didn't really digest properly, and I'd be burping all afternoon in [costar Richard Madden]'s face, and it was just really sort of unpleasant. I'd have soup so that I could still eat, but it wouldn't get stuck." Sure, Lily. Whatever you need to say to make yourself feel better but the photos speak for themselves!

11 Anne Hathaway

Another famous weight loss and another Oscar win. This time, Anne Hathaway slimmed down to play a down on her luck lady of the night dying from tuberculosis named Fantine in the Les Miserables movie adaptation. Anne lost 25 lbs in total, 10 before shooting began and 15 during filming. Her diet consisted of two squares of dried oatmeal paste per day. How did she live on that? We have no idea! Anne explained, "I had to be obsessive about it -- the idea was to look near death. Looking back on the whole experience- and I do not judge it in any way- it was definitely a little nuts. It was definitely a break with reality, but I think that is who Fantine is anyway." Anne also shaved her head for this role, so you know she was committed. We would give her the Oscar just for that alone! So, so crazy!

10 Matthew Fox

In 2012, the crime/action thriller Alex Cross was released starring Tyler Perry as Alex Cross and Matthew Fox as villain, Picasso. Unfortunately, this might not be a weight loss that was worth it. No one was handing out any Oscars for Alex Cross. In fact, the movie only has a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and made $34 million worldwide despite costing $35 million to make. But no one told Matthew Fox it was going to bomb when he lost 40 lbs in order to play his character. Fox clearly did not enjoy the experience. He explained, "I played college football [at Columbia]. I thought I knew my way around exercise. Either I was wrong, or things have changed drastically. Maybe it's both. This was full-bore. Many times I felt like throwing up." Losing that much weight and doing as much circuit training as Fox did also make us feel like throwing up. We'll pass on that, thanks.

9 Matthew McConaughey

It seems the Academy really loves when people lose weight. Matthew McConaughey nabbed a golden statue for playing Ron Woodruff in 2013's Dallas Buyer's Club. Woodruff was addicted to illegal substances and contracted HIV in the 1980s and became one of the first AIDS activists. McConaughey lost 50 lbs in order to play Woodruff. And while 50 lbs may seem like a lot, McConaughey insists he lost the weight under the guidance of a nutritionist. "I got the means to lose the weight in a really healthy way. I'm eating fresh fish. I'm just eating small amounts. I'm not being starved… I'm taking care of myself. I did it in as healthy a way as I found possible." We're not sure if there actually is a healthy way to drop the weight and look as sick and thin as McConaughey did in Dallas Buyer's Club. But it seems to have worked out for him!

8 Jared Leto

Jared Leto also benefitted from a big weight loss on the set of Dallas Buyer's Club. He picked up a Supporting Actor Oscar with McConaughey in 2014 for playing Rayon, an HIV positive trans character who befriends McConaughey's, Woodruff. Leto lost between 30 and 40 lbs in order to accurately portray Rayon. He also shaved his eyebrows and waxed his entire body. Leto went totally method with this role. He worked on the voice and refused to break character during filming. Leto got down to a terrifying 114 lbs and basically stopped eating. He explained the effects of his dramatic weight loss, "It changes the way you walk, the way you sit, the way you think." But Jared Leto is no stranger to crazy diets and weight change. Five years earlier, he gained 60 lbs to play Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon, in 2007's Chapter 27.

7 Mila Kunis

In 2010, Mila Kunis played Lily, a passionate and dark ballet dancer, in 2010's Black Swan. To get into top ballet dancer form, Kunis was on a strict exercise and food regime. She trained five hours a day, seven days a week for six months and stuck to a 1200 daily calorie diet. Kunis ended up losing 20 lbs to get down to a startling 95 lb weight. Kunis described her weight loss, "My shape is different. When I got down to 95 pounds, I was muscles, like a little brick house, but skin and bones. In real life, it looked disgusting. But in photographs and on film, it looked amazing." Kunis joked that while it took her over five months to lose the weight, it only took her five days to put it back on. But it didn't go back on exactly as she planned. "When I gained it back, it went to completely different areas. All the weight that left my chest went to my side hip, my stomach… I'd be happy if my a$$ got bigger."

6 Natalie Portman

Another major transformation from Black Swan was Natalie Portman as the lead ballerina, Nina Sayers. Portman took home an Oscar for her terrifying and intense portrayal of Nina who wanted the lead role in her company's performance of Swan Lake and would do anything to get it. Portman lost 20 lbs by doing ballet, cross-training, and swimming. She also worked with a choreographer and did much of her own ballet stunts in the movie. Natalie explained the extreme weight loss, "I think it was just the physicality of it all that was the most extreme. I mean, I had never gotten that much training -- to be doing five to eight hours a day of it was really a challenge." Well, it seems that Portman was certainly up for the challenge. The film was a success, she won an Oscar and she also went home with a new love interest. Portman met and eventually married the choreographer for The Black Swan, Benjamin Millepied. She was pregnant with their first child when she won her Oscar and is now pregnant with their second. Seems like The Black Swan was definitely a great choice of roles for Natalie Portman!

5 50 Cent

Would you believe that's 50 Cent? Looks more like he could be 50 Cent's dad if his dad was extremely malnourished. But that's 50. That was him back in 2010 when he played a football player with cancer in All Things Fall Apart. He lost 54 lbs, going from 214 to 160 lbs, in only nine weeks. Nine weeks to lose 54 lbs? That's disgusting! How did he do it? A liquid diet and three hours on the treadmill everyday. Can you imagine living off of only liquids for more than two months? We can't. But apparently, it wasn't such a challenge for 50 Cent. He told reporters that when he was shot in the jaw in 2000, he could only have liquids and accidentally dropped down to 157 lbs. Who accidentally drops like 50 lbs of weight? Unfortunately, the movie didn't go as well as 50's weight loss. There was controversy over the title - the movie was originally called Things Fall Apart which is also the title of a book by Chinua Achebe. 50 offered $1 million to Achebe's team to keep the title which they felt was an insult. They responded, "[The novel is] listed as the most-read book in modern African literature, and won't be sold for even £1 billion." 50 Cent was forced to change the name and his film was released directly to DVD.

4 Tom Hanks

Everyone knows Tom Hanks' role in the 2000 survival drama Castaway. We can't even hear the name "Wilson" without shedding a small tear for our favorite volleyball lost at sea. But Wilson was not the only one that got lost. Tom Hanks also lost almost 50 lbs so he could realistically portray a man stuck on a deserted island. And while Tom did not win an Oscar for his work, he was nominated and Castaway was definitely a success at the box office and for the critics. Over the years of Tom's lengthy and successful career in Hollywood, he has done his fair share of losing weight and gaining weight. Unfortunately, all of the yo-yo dieting may have contributed to Hanks' Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis. He confessed, "The gaining and the losing of weight may have had something to do with it." That is really too sad to hear but we still appreciate all the hard work!

3 Liam Neeson

Everyone's favorite revenge-seeking father, Liam Neeson, isn't always kicking butt and saving his loved ones across Europe. Sometimes he has to go in the opposite direction and actually lose all of that badass muscle. Just like he did to play a Jesuit missionary in Martin Scorsese's 2016 historical drama, Silence. In Silence, Neeson plays Father Cristóvão Ferreira and lost 20 lbs to portray the look of a wandering missionary in Japan. His co-stars, Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield, played Jesuit missionaries who traveled from Portugal to Japan in search for Neeson's character. Both Driver and Garfield also had to slim down to portray their characters. Driver lost 30 lbs and said, "It made sense. We were playing Jesuit priests in the 17th Century who were starved and beaten. But it was one of the hardest things I've had to do, just because of the physical toll it takes on you."

2 Hilary Swank

Way back in 1999, Hilary Swank portrayed a trans man, Brandon Teena, in Boys Don't Cry. At the time, Swank was a relatively unknown actress who lied about her age in order to win over the director. Swank was committed to the role from day one. At her audition, she convinced the doorman that she was male. In order to capture the look filmmakers desired, Hilary had to reduce her body fat percentage to just 7% in order to accentuate the bones in her face. She lived for a month before filming like a man - Hilary cut her hair short, wrapped her chest in elastic bandages and stuffed a sock down her pants. Apparently, she was quite convincing, her neighbors thought that she was Hilary Swank's brother! Her own husband had a hard time recognizing her when she first arrived in her new look. While Boys Don't Cry helped to make a household name of Swank and won her an Oscar, it wasn't a huge pay day for her. Swank made only $75 per day, for a total of $3000 for the film. She didn't even qualify for health insurance!

1 Matt Damon

An oldie but a goodie! In 1996's Courage Under Fire, Matt Damon lost 60 lbs to play Specialist Andrew Ilario. How did he do it? Chicken breast. In a recent Reddit AMA, Damon revealed that to achieve the gaunt look of someone addicted to illegal substances like Andrew Ilario, he ate chicken breast as a part of every meal. At the time, Damon didn't have a chef or nutritionist so he was making up his diet as he went along. To get down to 139 lbs from his usual 190 lb weight, Damon also ran about 13 miles per day. After filming, his doctor prescribed special medication to Matt to help repair his adrenal glands. He also revealed that Damon's heavy chicken diet could have caused irreparable heart damage. In more recent films, like the Bourne series, Matt Damon has traded in his DIY diet for a monitored low-carb plan and opted for high-intensity gym sessions over running.