7 Actors Who Drastically Transformed Their Bodies For Forgettable Movies

What possessed Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix to spend the time and effort required to make I’m Still Here will always be one of the great Hollywood mysteries. Supposedly a satire on the nature of celebrity and reality television, the end result plays like a two-hour in-joke that only the creators truly understand.

The mockumentary follows Joaquin Phoenix through a supposed breakdown as he decides to quit acting and pursue a career as a hip-hip artist instead. If that sounds like a terrible idea, that’s because it was. Casey Affleck even went on record saying:

"I went broke. I hadn’t worked for more than a year, and I was pouring money into the movie. I had to stop for a month to do The Killer Inside Me. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to finish the film.”

To promote the film, Phoenix stayed in character as a parody version of himself in a number of public appearances, most infamously a David Letterman interview that is widely believed to have been staged.

This meant that he let himself go, putting on a bit of weight and growing a huge beard that made him look like he’d just woken up from a 10-year coma. It would have made sense to undergo this transformation if there was any chance of the project being a success but the fact that it nearly ruined both Phoenix and Affleck speaks volumes as to why it was a truly terrible idea.