9 Actors Whose Physical Transformations Had Negative Consequences On Their Health

The Australian actor’s outstanding performance as Jean Valjean in the musical film Les Miserables earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe for the same category.

To prepare for the leading role, Jackman lost 30 pounds (13 kg) and didn’t even drink water during his long hours on set. That sacrifice was essential for the opening scene when Jean is released from prison on parole after serving 19 years of intense labor.

Weirdly, he admitted, preparing for the role was tougher than getting ripped to play Wolverine.
 
“This was almost more physical in a way than an X-Men movie!” Jackman told Vulture. “I was spending even longer in the gym—like three hours in the gym—because I needed to be as emaciated as possible.”
 
However, looking back on that opening scene, the talented actor has no regrets. “I realized the sacrifices had been worth it, that the headaches, dizziness—and the grumpiness—had been a relatively small price to pay,” Hugh explained.

This time, the chameleonic star had to gain 43 pounds (19 kg) to play the 1970s con artist Irving Rosenfeld in American Hustle. Before that, he had hit the gym and gotten ripped for Batman Begins.

The preparation to play Rosenfeld was probably less of a sacrifice than consuming a single apple a day.  “I ate lots of doughnuts, a whole lot of cheeseburgers and whatever I could get my hands on. I literally ate anything that came my way,” the actor explained to People Magazine.

Still, he had to slouch a lot during the scenes, a posture that ultimately caused him to herniate a disc in his back. He also admitted that losing all those pounds once the filming was over proved far more challenging than he had anticipated.

“I said, two months, flat, that'll do it. And I'm still working that off!” he said in 2013. “Now I know that when I was in my early 20s it would have been two months and that's it.”

Parrette had to dye her hair black for twenty years to play Abby Sciuto on NCIS and ended up becoming allergic to the hair dye. On one occasion, the natural blonde had a severe allergic reaction and was rushed to the hospital.

The actress had a rash and experienced severe swelling. “The other half of my face had become twice the size of my head," she shared.

Pauley posted the photo on social media to warn her thousands of followers about the dangers of hair dye allergies. “The most important thing to me is that anyone out there that dyes their hair, particularly black, you need to be aware of the symptoms.” such as itchiness, redness, or eczema.

After that traumatic episode, she said she would begin wearing a wig or using natural dye.

To play the manipulative crime journalist Lou Bloom in the neo-noir thriller film Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal tried to eat as few calories as he could.

Ultimately, he dropped 30 pounds (13 kg) from his 180-pound frame in a process that became a “struggle.”

The actor, who also produced the movie, came up with the idea to make Lou look gaunt in a brainstorming session with director Dan Gilroy.

“I knew if I was hungry that I was in the right spot,” Jake told Variety. “Physically, it showed itself, but chemically and mentally, I think it was even a more fascinating journey. It became a struggle for me.”

For some reason, Mark Hamill used permanent dye to color his hair purple for his two-episode guest appearance as Trickster on DC’s show The Flash.

“Road to Recovery From the Perils of Purple Hair. Took me 3 dye jobs to get back to normal.” the actor shared on X, along with a picture of himself wearing dozens of hair foils on his locks to get them back to their natural color.

He accompanied the funny snapshot with the hashtags #ACautionaryTale #HairDont #DudeWheresYourDignity.

The Ukrainian actress had to weigh 95 pounds (43 kg) to take on the role of Lily, a troubled ballerina, in 2010’s Black Swan.

Kunis, who is 5’4'', explained that she didn’t “starve” herself but consumed only 1,200 calories a day. (The recommended daily intake of calories for women is 2,000, according to the NHS).

To achieve this, she turned to the “awful” method of smoking cigarettes, which she had recently quit.

“I never watched what I ate [before]. It was one of those things, for the first time in my life, I got a food delivery service,” Mila told Entertainment Tonight in 2014 before adding that she “had to look skinny in order to look like a ballerina.”

“And I’ll tell you this – I’m not promoting this at all – but I used to be a smoker, and so I smoked a lot of cigarettes and I ate a limited amount of calories.”

In Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto gets in the skin of Rayon, a transgender woman with AIDS who befriends Matthew McConaughey’s character Ron Woodroof.

The actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman lost more than 30 pounds for the film, and said that he “stopped eating” and had to change his “entire being.”

Playing Rayon, he explained, changed everything, including the way he walked, sat, and thought.

"It was 30 or 40 pounds," Leto told The Wrap about his shocking weight loss. "After a while, I stopped counting. It changes the way you walk, the way you sit, the way you think."

What constantly kept him motivated was a commitment to accurately represent his character.

“For me, it's not about the most weight I can lose, it's more to represent the character. I'm focused on what it means to be a transsexual woman."

The Canadian-American actress’s hair became increasingly damaged as she continuously bleached it white-blonde for her role as Number Six in Battlestar Galactica. For the second season of the show, the crew had to cut it shorter because it looked really unhealthy.

Over time, Helfer’s hair started falling out, which led to her wearing a wig.

She told TV Squad: "When we started the second season, every episode my hair got thinner and thinner and thinner, and shorter and shorter and shorter—and then finally it started falling out in chunks and they had to give me a wig."

Segel was “forced” to lose weight in order to play Emily Blunt’s love interest in the romcom The Five-Year Engagement.

The process of losing 35 pounds (15 kg) involved exercising on set and having someone closely watch the actor’s diet.

“I didn’t enjoy it. They sent a trainer to set, and I had to work out twice a day, and he would also watch me eat all day,” the How I Met Your Mother actor revealed during an interview with David Letterman.

However, he figured out a way to disobey the filmmakers’ request. Since he played a chef in the movie, he paid his co-stars “phenomenal amounts of money” to purposely mess up their lines so he could eat whatever was available on set.

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