I can say this in
two ways. First, Professional working out and the second, Professional help.
Professional
Working Out
If you could afford a personal trainer, a
personal chef, had someone else do your shopping and could devote 8+ hours of
your day to your physical condition, you too would probably look a lot
different, especially if there was a six-figure paycheck hinging on the
outcome.
I bet you know someone in your life who has gone
on a fitness kick and looked a lot different. That person almost certainly had
a full-time job and other life responsibilities. What if they didn’t? What
would they have looked like?
It doesn’t hurt that a lot of the actors tend
to be relatively young when they are doing this. I think Brad Pitt was in his
mid-30s for Fight Club. Henry Cavill was in his late 20s when
prepping for Man of Steel, as was Chris Hemsworth for Thor.
A 20-something dude with nothing but time on his hands and a nutritionist can get
a lot done, especially with reasonably good genetics.
Professional Help
Also, a lot of these dudes are clearly using
some performance-enhancing drugs: let’s say abnormal for a man
in his mid-40s to be significantly more vascular and have a lower body fat
percentage than he did in his 30s. The fact that his traps are larger than some
of his co-stars is also good circumstantial evidence here.
Similarly, Kumail Nanjiani (who is great!) is
in his early 40s now and looks like he may have gone up a hat size or two: Again,
it’s unusual to have that kind of total body transformation when you are in
your late-30s, early-40s. It might happen, but it’s . . . I’ll say lucky that
every actor they hire for one of these roles has the genetics to do it. Kumail
didn’t look like that when they hired him, yet they were apparently very
confident they’d end up with the results they wanted. And they did!
But, as with
the ability to be a professional gym rat, having access to the MCU “vitamin
guy” is one thing that lets these guys do things that you might have a hard
time doing.
For
instance:When Rob McElhenney went from Fat Mac to
Jacked Mac he talked about how he did it.
“I’m gonna break it down for you,
because it’s actually quite simple, and anybody can do this. Anybody on the
planet can do this. First thing’s first: if you have a job—like a 9-5 job—quit
that. Do you like food? Forget about that. Because you’re never going to enjoy
anything you eat. Alcohol? Sorry. That’s out. So what you need to do—you have a
chef, right? like a personal chef? —make sure the chef makes you a lot of
chicken breast. And make sure you keep your caloric intake at a certain level.
And as you go to your physician 2-3 times a week—just to monitor all your
testosterone levels—because testosterone is important to building muscle.
“You are good friends with the trainer from
Magic Mike? Arin Babaian. So you want to give Arin a call. And you want to make
sure he’s at your house and takes you to the gym at least twice a day because
you’re gonna want to do your muscle-building in the morning and then your
cardio in the afternoon. Now, do you have a family? Like a significant other or
kids? Yeah, forget about them. You’re not going to have time to deal with them.
“So that’s really all you have to do.
And make sure you have a studio pay for the entire thing because it could
become exceptionally expensive. So, I think if you just do all those things,
then you too can have an absolutely unrealistic body type, such as me.”
And that is how actors change their bodies so
quick.
With the time
actors have to devote they are able to get a lot more work into a shorter
period of time. For us non-rich, 9–5er’s the same principles apply, just hire a
coach and elongate the timeline slightly.
