Southpaw’s director, Antoine Fuqua, told Deadline Hollywood, which first
published the image: “We literally turned him into a beast. Jake, my god,
he’s a very electric, powerful fighter in this movie. He’s so committed and
gives his heart. The word is sacrifice.”
Mr Fuqua told Variety magazine: “Two people have done this in their lives –
Robert De Niro in Raging Bull and Denzel Washington in The Hurricane. Those
kinds of guys are rare.”
Dramatic physical changes have long been a goal for committed actors,
particularly those seeking Oscars. At this year’s Academy Awards
“transformational” was the word widely used to praise Matthew McConaughey’s
performance in Dallas Buyers Club, which secured him the best actor award.
The normally muscled actor survived on Diet Coke, egg whites and a piece of
chicken a day as he lost 40lbs.
The bar for weight gain was set high by De Niro in 1980 when he piled on 60lbs
to play the ageing boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull.
His record was broken in 1987 by Vincent D’Onofrio who gained 70lbs for his
role as an overweight military recruit in Full Metal Jacket.
The petite Renee Zellweger gained 30lbs for Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001
after gorging on a 4000 calories-a-day diet including biscuits and gravy,
pizza, and butter-soaked potatoes. She then quickly lost it all by switching
to “eating bran” and was dramatically thinner in Chicago the following year.
Perhaps the recent king of weight fluctuation is Christian Bale who dropped to
a weight of 120lbs for The Machinist in 2004, before bulking up to 220lbs in
five months for Batman Begins.
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