10 Actors Who Went Unnecessarily Muscular For Movie Roles
Chris Pratt may be the worst Chris – but let the guy eat some cake every now and then.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s 200lbs of beefcake hurling itself over Metropolis.
Long gone are the days when the average Joe Sixpack could don a skin-tight pair of red speedos and throw shapes in front of a green screen to play Superman. In the age of Instagram and Chris Hemsworth’s abs, to land a superhero role, you’ve also got to be able to compete for Mr. Universe.
Ever since Thor removed his shirt, the bar for playing a shirtless male on-screen has been raised. Nowadays, after an actor has been cast in a superhero role, it’s commonplace to ask, “are they capable of the grueling months of training it will take them to look like the character?”
But is this necessary? Are actors just competing amongst themselves to be named Sexiest Man Alive to the detriment of the movie they're starring in? Do the Academy Awards need to introduce a new Oscar for 2022 – “Most Ripped Leading Man in a Drama”?
When were you expected to consume your entire body weight in protein every day to become police commissioner or survive a post-apocalyptic wasteland?
Join us as we take a look at 10 actors who spent WAY too much time in the gym for a role.
10. Jai Courtney - Kyle Reese (Terminator Genisys)
As a huge fan of James Cameron’s 1984 movie The Terminator, I was cautiously optimistic at the prospect of revisiting the events of the film in 2015’s Terminator Genisys. As soon as Jai Courtney stepped into the time machine naked, however, I knew I was a fool to have been.
Perhaps when Courtney’s agents called to tell him he'd landed the lead role in the new Terminator movie, he thought he’d be playing the T-800, and not somewhat-scrawny human resistance fighter Kyle Reese? Perhaps Courtney had never seen Michael Biehn's original portrayal and didn’t realise the physique he was rocking was that of a man twice the size? Or perhaps he just didn’t care and wanted a double-page spread in Men’s Health magazine?
Either way, his chiseled body completely takes you out of the movie. How would Kyle Reese, a man fighting for his life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, have the freedom, the resources, and access to that much protein, to achieve a body like Jai Courtney’s?