14 DAY TRIAL // One of the movies for which Mark Wahlberg has been getting a lot of media attention is next year’s “The Gambler,” in which he plays a literature teacher with an uncontrollable addiction to gambling and a clear desire to self-destruct. The first trailer for it was released yesterday, so the timing is perfect to talk about Mark’s shocking transformation.
If you remember, there was a lot of buzz around his drastic weight loss at the beginning of the year, with Mark himself telling the media that he was striving to look as unhealthy as possible.
He achieved that by going on an all-liquid diet and jumping rope for hours on end every day.
60 pounds (27.2 kg) lighter to bring more weight to the role
Mark Wahlberg is very fit, even when he’s not especially bulking up for an action movie, like it was the case with his debut in Michael Bay’s “Transformers” franchise, for which he had to train hard to build muscle mass.
Clearly, he has the physique of a movie star, not of a bored-out-his-skull teacher who’s looking for ways to feel less bored even if that ends up putting his life in danger. So Mark had to do something drastic and he had to do it quickly.
Speaking to Yahoo! Movies, he explains that he met with director Rupert Wyatt (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) and he started “freaking out” that he was too buff for the role.
“He said, ‘I don’t really think this [character] is a guy who focuses too much on fitness or nutrition.’ He wanted to me to get as thin as possible, and once I start doing something, I obsess about it. So I just kept losing more and more weight, and ended up going from 197 [pounds] [89.3 kg] to 137 [62.1 kg],” Wahlberg explains.
This sounds easier than it actually was, though
Mark has spoken before this about his weight loss, though, at the time, he wasn’t yet at his lowest. This time, he goes into the specifics – and they’re not pretty.
Going from fit to scrawny over a short period of time can only go one way: it has to feel horrible. It’s also very unhealthy, but it’s all for art. So Mark went on an all-liquid diet and would jump rope for 2 to 3 hours every day. He’s not afraid to admit that he was “miserable” during the entire duration of the shoot, and would go to places where he knew they cooked great food just to be able to smell it.
“I became a miserable [dude],” he says. “I’m a huge foodie. I’d have a dinner meeting with a group, and just watch them eat. I had a major, major craving for anything and everything. I would go to places and look at the menu. My wife would be like, ‘Why are you torturing yourself?’”
By the time production wrapped, he was so famished and frustrated that, the day of the wrap, he went out and had a meal with most of the things he’d been fantasizing about for months. And, naturally, right after that, he got sick.
Bouncing back to shape was a breeze, comparatively
Once done with “The Gambler,” Wahlberg had exactly 6 weeks to get in shape for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” which meant he had to pack 40 pounds (18.1 kg) of muscle mass, preferably without killing himself.
When Bay met him at a party a couple of months before the production started, he first thought that Mark was sick and dying from it. Then, when he learned the excessive weight loss had been for a role, he positively went ballistic, because he imagined Wahlberg would never be able to get back in shape in such a short time and the production would have to be delayed because of it.
But Wahlberg proved him wrong. If you want a taste of the movie for which he’s put himself through hell, the red band trailer for “The Gambler” is on YouTube. *Please note that discretion is highly recommended because it contains language that might offend.