Christian Bale's weight loss and weight gain for THE MACHINIST and BATMAN BEGINS is celebrated by fans as the gold standard of physical transformation for cinema. But Chris Hemsworth seems to have done one better for his many roles off late.
Hemsworth got big and muscular for THE AVENGERS. But then had to slim down for Ron Howard's racing drama RUSH because otherwise he wouldn't fit into a racing car and those guys are much more lightly built than the He-Man like Thor. Next, he shot THOR: THE DARK WORLD which required a return to his Thor physique. And now currently he is shooting survival-at-sea story IN THE HEART OF THE SEA for Ron Howard again (about the true events that inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick) and this role has called for his most extreme transformation yet. You can see in the image below that Hemsworth is a far cry from his Thor proportions here, with narrow shoulders, a caved in chest, twiggy arms and a skinny face and waist.
How did he achieve it? A crash diet of 500 calories a day. Here's what he had to say about his diet on Jimmy Kimmel.
"A bunch of sailors in a whaling ship get struck by a whale, the ship sinks and they jump onto the small rafts and drift for 90 days. And basically they begin to die and eat each other ... And we have to get rather skinny. So we're on 500 or 600 calories a day... It's funny, you've never heard 15 big, burly guys playing sailors talk about their calorie-count, what they should and shouldn't eat... I mean, you can consume 600 calories in a milkshake... So it ends up being a couple of small salads, a couple of small pieces of protein and that's kind of it and you go to bed hungry. And then you have like a fasting period of 15 hours, like you stop eating completely, and then you have little meals through the day."
Next up for him? Muscling up yet again for THE AVENGERS: THE AGE OF ULTRON.
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THOR: THE DARK WORLD Reshoots Underway
Running Time: 1 hr 52 minutes
Release Date: 8 November 2013 (USA)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings, Anthony Hopkins, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Jaimie Alexander, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Clive Russell, Zachary Levi
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Written by: Don Payne (story), Christopher Yost (screenplay), Christopher Markus (screenplay), Stephen McFeely (screenplay), Stan Lee (comic book), Jack Kirby (comic book), Larry Lieber (comic book)
| "Marvel’s "Thor: The Dark World," in theaters November 8, 2013, continues the big screen adventures of Thor, the Mighty Avenger, as he battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself. In the aftermath of Marvel’s "Thor" and "Marvel’s The Avengers," Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos...but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. Faced with an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor must embark on his most perilous and personal journey yet, one that will reunite him with Jane Foster and force him to sacrifice everything to save us all." |