This post contains discussion of body image issues.
Sounds like Orlando Bloom‘s latest film role wasn’t exactly a peachy-keen dream to film.
So, Orlando’s upcoming flick The Cut just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie centers around a boxer struggling to make weight for an upcoming match. It sounds pretty intense.
And according to a new interview with People, it was a physically taxing experience for the actor in real life as well.
“I was very hangry,” he said of his experience engaging in drastic weight loss for the sake of the film. “The last three weeks in London, before we started filming, were just tuna and cucumber.”
He went on to explain that a nutritionist who worked on the film “had me on a strict regime to tear me down, so that we started the film at my lightest weight. And then I put on weight as we filmed.”
“I literally thought I was gonna die,” he said about the process.
Orlando also said that his fiancée Katy Perry was “freaked out” when she saw the film for a first time. “She watched it and was like, ‘I need a stiff drink,'” he claimed, later adding that she cried during the film’s premiere. “She was really moved. She knew what it took.”
Even Orlando’s co-stars were a bit unnerved by the extreme results. Caitriona Balfe, who plays his wife and trainer in the film, said that his face was “gaunt” before filming started. “The transformation was shocking… I was like, ‘You look like a raisin,'” she said.
Fellow co-star (and, might I add, absolute legend) John Turturro also joked that “the only reason [Bloom] put himself through this” was the paycheck.
Personally, you couldn’t pay me enough to make myself feel like I was going to die, but what do I know? I’m no actor. Anyway, read the whole interview here.