On-set injuries are nothing new to dramatic actors who pursue challenging and physically-demanding
roles, and just about everyone's busted a toe at one point or another.
"Yaaahhhh!"
But it's another thing entirely to torture your god-given temple before the movie even starts.
Some actors are just insanely dedicated to their craft and have made some pretty intense
sacrifices to sell movie tickets.
Here are a few movies that caused serious damage to actors' bodies.
Mila Kunis in Black Swan
The intense look that Black Swan took into the world of ballet was, unsurprisingly, pretty
hard on the bodies of its stars.
Mila Kunis had to lose 20 pounds to look like a ballerina, which might not sound too drastic,
but it sent the 5-foot-4 Kunis down to 95 pounds.
Kunis lost the weight by sticking to a strict 1200-calorie diet, which isn't necessarily
damaging — but Kunis added smoking tons of cigarettes to the mix.
Add to that four hours of ballet training every day for seven weeks, and you have the
perfect recipe for a messed-up body.
By the end of the film, Kunis had also torn a calf ligament and had scars on her back
from being lifted.
Natalie Portman, on the other hand, employed a stunt dancer.
Kunis said she gained the weight back instantly after filming stopped, but the whole process
was rough.
So if you have any scripts about chilling in a tropical paradise, give Kunis a call.
She deserves a break.
Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
It's easy to forget that Rooney Mara didn't always look like the rail-thin, raven-haired
girl we know today.
She was always very trim, but she used to look a little more "girl next door" than "high
fashion model" or "what it would look like if a Hot Topic and Lurch from the Addams Family
had a baby."
Needless to say, Mara had to undergo a big transformation to play Lisbeth Salander, which
she achieved mostly by starving herself.
Director David Fincher never asked her to her slim down, but he didn't treat Mara like
a delicate flower, either.
The director told her to get really drunk and come in the next day as hungover as possible
to take pictures, in order to convince Sony that Mara could look properly strung out.
So, she got super drunk, threw up all night, and got the part.
Side note: showing up drunk won't earn you bonus points at your normal job, so don't
even try.
Outside of mild liver damage, Mara was perpetually covered in bruises from the more violent scenes.
Her injuries were so bad the makeup artist thought she already had makeup on when she
showed up to the set, and was horrified to discover it was all real.
Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby
When you sign up for boxing, even in a movie, you figure you'll end up with a lot of bruises.
What you might not realize is that you'll have to drink raw eggs Rocky-style every morning
for weeks on end.
Former Karate Kid Hilary Swank was always fit and athletic, but she said her training
for Million Dollar Baby was much harder than anything else she'd ever done.
Swank needed to gain weight to play Maggie Fitzgerald, and reached her goal by consuming
4000 calories a day, and it didn't mean didn't mean glorious, fat-filled trips to Five Guys.
Instead, Swank had to eat 60 egg whites daily, which was pretty tough.
"I had to eat 60 egg whites in a day and I couldn't.
I mean, I could barely eat four.
I drank them. I would just be like… (glugging noises).
She also said that she needed to eat every 90 minutes, without exception, and even though
getting up in the middle of the night to eat sounds like a pretty fun job, it's a lot less
fun when you have to train five hours a day.
She'd gained 23 pounds of muscle by the time filming started, and suffered no serious side
effects, but she probably has a hard time eating egg whites — which, to be fair, is
just chicken birth goop anyhow.
Ugh.
Gross.
Adrien Brody in The Pianist
Another actor who got an Oscar for torturing himself, Adrien Brody fully devoted his life
to The Pianist.
Brody played a starving man who had lost his home and family during the Holocaust, so to
prepare for the part, he sold all his possessions, gave up his apartment, packed two bags and
a keyboard, and moved to Europe.
Brody ate as little as possible to achieve the skeletal figure of a starving man.
In six weeks, he got down to 130 pounds, which is incredibly thin for a 6-foot-5 man.
The shoot was also full of physical and mental anguish; Brody missed his friends and family,
and had to spend each day in near isolation pretending to live through the Holocaust,
which he said threatened his sanity.
But probably not as much as, like, real Holocaust survivors.
He felt the suffering was worth it, telling the BBC,
"I couldn't have acted [loss] without knowing it.
I've experienced loss, I've experienced sadness in my life, but I didn't know the desperation
that comes with hunger."
Robert De Niro in Cape Fear
Veteran actor Robert De Niro is no stranger to putting his body through hell for a role.
He famously gained 60 pounds to play Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, and for Cape Fear,
his transformation was even more extreme.
To play a frightening criminal out for revenge, De Niro trained for six months to get his
body fat down to a single digit.
When he filmed the shirtless scenes, he cut weight like a fighter, refusing to drink any
water during the shoot, and when he was dying for a drink, he'd pour some seltzer into his
mouth… and spit it out.
Not content to settle for his bulked-up physique, De Niro felt his teeth looked too pristine
for the role, so he paid a dentist $5000 to get them shaved down to look more grungy.
Unfortunately, repairing teeth was a little harder.
He had to shell out another $20,000 to get his movie star smile back.
Shia LaBeouf in Fury
Most of Shia LaBeouf's notoriety comes from his off-the-set exploits, but it turns out
he can be just as outrageous during filming.
In the World War II drama Fury, LaBeouf plays a soldier trapped near enemy lines, so — completely
unprompted by the director or producers — he maimed himself for the role when he decided
his character needed to be missing a tooth.
He found a shady dentist and showed up on set looking like a jack o' lantern.
Co-star Logan Lerman reported an even stranger story, telling British GQ,
"[LaBeouf] walks out into the hallway and says, 'Hey man, wanna see something fun?
Check this out…' and he takes out a knife and cuts his face.
For the whole movie he kept opening these cuts on his face.
That's all real."
Cutting your face to play a Bible-quoting soldier in the '40s seems a little nutty,
but co-star Brad Pitt claims LaBeouf is one of the best actors he's ever worked with.
You don't have to draw blood to really make it in this business… but it seems like it
might help sometimes.
And if Shia ever asks you if you want to see something cool, JUST SAY NO.
"JUST DO IT!"
Nope.
Not even once.
Thanks for watching!
Click the Grunge icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!