Do you think celebrities use steroids to get in shape for movie roles?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been a gym rat for most of the last 22 years. While I am certainly no behemoth, I know my way around a gym, and I can put together a few months of high intensity weight training and strict nutrition to get in decent shape. In fact, I’ve done one of those “3 month comebacks” several times in my life.

My point is, I am familiar with exercise and its effects on the body, and I know what’s realistic when it comes to working out.

So I am routinely bemused when I read about actors bulking up for movie roles; invariably, the star is said to gain ridiculous amounts of muscle in just a few months. Examples are Ed Nortion in American History X, who reportedly gained “35 pounds of lean muscle”; Ben Affleck, who is said to have put on “40 pounds” for Batman; and Chris Hemsworth, who is said to have gained 20 pounds to play Thor.

When reading for an explanation, I generally see platitudes about eating lots of calories and exercising hard. Fine, I get that. But normal people don’t gain 10s of pounds of muscle in just a few months from those activities (now, if you told me an actor lost 20 to 30 pounds of fat while gaining a few pounds of muscle, I would believe it). It generally takes years to put on that kind of quality size, even with proper nutrition and exercise.

Or, I’ll read that the actor worked out for 4 or 5 hours each day. This seems to placate most people, since the assumption is that the actor was able to make extreme gains because he had more time than the average person to devote to it. But, everything I’ve read and seen has taught me that training for hours each day leads to overtraining, which can actually make you weaker.

Unless…you accompany that training with a round of performance enhancing steroids. Professional bodybulders train so much because their bodies can handle the abuse, owing to their performance enhancing drugs. And steroids can add 10s of pounds of muscle in just a few months.

Adding to my suspicion is the fact that Sly Stallone was once convicted of bringing Human Growth Hormone and steroids into Australia. I have little doubt that he is the only one, and it is trivially easy to go to one of those “anti aging” clinics (which I bet abound in Southern Californai) and get a prescription, to say nothing of doctors who will do anything to serve a celebrity.

So, what do you think? Are bodybuilding drugs the commonly used method for movie stars to get ready for their big action role?

2

It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

3

I have no doubt they hit the gym before the scene to get their pump on, but yeah, I’d also be surprised if the majority where natural. You can tell by the face bulk. Toby Maguire in Spider-Man, Brad Pitt in Troy, putting on FACE muscle like that in that amount of time is ridiculous.

4

ISTR Stallone bragging about using steroids to bulk up around the time the first Expendables movie came out, but don’t have a source on it.

5

Of course.

6

My hunch is that you’re right about a lot of this.

Here’s an interview with the guy who stunt-doubled for Chris Hemsworth in Thor. This is a guy who is already fit and strong, and who does stunts for a living. He talks about how hard he had to work in order to put on muscle so that he could approach Hemsworth’s size. He also talks about the incredible rigor of the diet, eating massive amounts of food while also avoiding sugar and salt and sauces and stuff like that.

It sounds pretty miserable, to be honest. I go to the gym and try to keep relatively fit for my age, but i’m far from perfect. I’d like to be stronger, and to shed a few pounds from my waist right now, and i should probably eat less sugar than i currently do. But i also want to actually enjoy my life.

Here’s a more general article about the general difficulty, and the longer-term health costs, of intensive training and over-exertion. I’m sure there are people who are willing to put up with costs, and it could be that actors are among those people, but i still think that these massive gains in short time periods are a bit suspicious in some cases.

Of course, some actors keep themselves big and strong basically all the time, and then just increase the amount or intensity of their workouts as they approach a role the requires a lot of muscle. Hugh Jackman seems to be one of those guys; he’s always working out, and always looks muscular.

There’s a guy in my gym who was complaining about this the other day. He’s probably the strongest and most impressive-looking guy at my YMCA. He’s about 6’3", very muscular with very little fat and excellent tone. From the back, he’s a big V, with big arms and shoulders. He hangs a 45-pound weight from a chain around his waist before he starts doing pull-ups.

He says that he often gets people coming up to him and asking how many months he had to work out to get that big and strong. “Months?” he said. “These people don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. I’ve been working out for years to get like this.”

I think that the stories of actors bulking up and losing huge amounts of fat for their roles gives people the impression that anyone can do this, as long as they’re willing to put in 6 or 8 weeks worth of effort.

7

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has a movie coming up called “Central Intelligence.” He plays a former fat kid, and when he meets up with an old friend from school (Kevin Hart) and says “I just did one thing. I worked out six hours a day. Every day. For twenty years.”

8

There’s a side effect of steroid use called “moon face”, which is what you’re describing, and is due to water retention. If you are noticing it, that’s a good sign of juicing.
…
I suppose another possibility is that movie studios exaggerate how much working out the celebrity did, and how much muscle they gained. If you are a Ben Affleck fan who thinks he’s attractive, you might be really inclined to see a movie where he got huge muscles. And movie magic can certainly make a person look better than in person. But much of the weight and muscle gain does indeed appear real (compare Ed Norton in Fight Club to Ed Norton in American History X), which is why I asked the question.

Thanks for the replies!

9

You can’t go from an ordinary in-shape dude to rippling muscles in 6 months without steroids. Yes, they have personal trainers and work out like crazy and eat like crazy. And as you said, at a certain point you can’t train any harder in a day. Unless you take steroids.

10

It’s also hard to tell if they’re really that huge, or if maybe they’re really that cut. I mean, Affleck Channing Tatum and Hemsworth are all large guys to begin with, and might just need to lose fat more than they need to rapidly bulk up, assuming they already work out regularly (which I think in their case is probably a reasonable assumption). That’s how bodybuilders do it- in the off season, they’re kind of bulky, slightly pudgy looking guys , and then during competition season, they lose all that extra fat and get really lean- they’re no more big than before, but now you can see it better.

OTOH, Bradley Cooper in “American Sniper” is a good example of someone who did bulk up quite a bit vs. his usual size and build. I have no idea how long that took him though, so I won’t offer any opinions about how he did it.

11

Per this article, he gained 40 pound of muscle in 10 weeks…that’s simply outrageous.

This article purports to give his workout routine, which had him working out twice a day, 5 days a week, for a total of 4 hours per day. As I’ve argued, this would not result in massive gains for the typical natural athlete…quite the contrary, I’d expect someone to get burned out from the volume of exercise. Not Mr. Cooper, though…the article says he got to where he was doing “rack pulls [basically, the last half of a deadlift] with 425 pounds for 10 reps”. Ironically, the link promotes “supplements” that Cooper supposedly used to train, and is found on a website full of pictures of bodybuilders neglecting to mention their hormone usage.

12

Seriously.
Pierre Van Den Steen. Looks pretty big, right?
Not so much.

13

I’d guess that most actors who’d be taking roles where they need to be big and muscley are more than just ordinary in-shape dudes most of the time. An average actor probably works out more than the average person just because they know it’s a possibility they’ll be trying to get roles that will require looking big and strong. Steroids still might be in play, but it’s not like if you hired a guy from my office and tried to get him ready to be an action hero in 6 months.

I’d guess there’s also some exaggeration, like exaggerating how many pounds of muscles were put on, and maybe photoshop on photoshoots and CGI on the movie.

14

Most of the accounts of the heroic efforts in the gym that publicity departments put out are either lies, or an indication of steroid use. A non-roided lifter cannot devote 4 hours per day every day in the gym and have good results. If you are using roids, then all the extra workout time and more calories will benefit you - roids enhance the body’s ability to increase protein uptake and recovery time.

There are some ways to cheat the appearance - people appear to have a more impressive physique if they have broad shoulders, a wide back, and a narrow waist, so working for reduced mid-section fat while working shoulders and back heavily has a good effect.

Just losing a lot of fat, through cardio, fasting, or clenbuterol will have the effect of making a person look more muscular - a ripped look on camera is more impressive looking than a blocky physique. Brad Pitt looked impressive in Fight Club and undoubtedly lifted hard but much of the impact of that physique was by losing fat, not gaining muscle.

Genetics help as well. Pitt looks like one of those guys who naturally has defined abs if he watches his diet a bit. He was skinny in Thelma and Louise but his abs really popped out. Again, that comes primarily from keeping a low body fat rate, ab work doesn’t have much to do with it. The young Iggy Pop had a similar natural build.

Filmmakers usually will pick a target date for filming the shirtless scenes in a movie early in the shooting schedule, as well, and the actor and his trainer will work to peak for that date. The scenes where the actor can wear a shirt are then filmed later, and the actor can go back to a more normal diet and reduced gym schedule. When the scene is shot, he will pump up before the shot with heavy, hi-rep sets to engorge the muscles with blood just before shooting and will have drastically dieted down. Tricks like using red wine and glycerine to increase vascularity before the shirtless shot, or following a ketonic diet (manipulating protein and carb intake to flush the muscles) to peak before the shot (like bodybuilders do before competition night) are also used. Actors don’t maintain that level of condition throughout the shoot, it’s next to impossible.

Ultimately, actors stand to make a lot of money for a short period of heavy training, and if they look impressive shirtless on camera, are likely to improve their sex lives for years afterwards - young women or men will always remember how they looked in those scenes. Many actors are willing to use any number of other drugs in their personal lives as well, so why should they balk at using performance-enhaning drugs to get a part and make more money?

15

I don’t know why they wouldn’t.

16

Their testes shrinking to the size of peas?

17

Funny you should mention that:
John Krasinski when he was on The Office.
John Krasinski from 13 Hours.
This is another 2x a day, 5x a week, for ‘several weeks’ story. Of course, he could have started training months (or even years) ahead of time and only did a final push in the weeks leading up to it after he landed the role and he might have lost a good chunk of it right after the he was done shooting (as I think tends to be the case with Chris Pratt who says he prefers being fat).
And of course there’s lighting and makeup to help define the muscles.
Also, I read that for Magic Mike the actors would lift weights between takes to so they’d be nice and ‘swole’ for the camera (but that was mostly with body builders to begin with).

18

John Krasinski is someone who has previously auditioned for other action hero roles like Captain America. He looks decent but doesn’t look in peak shape in that beach picture, but I’m guessing it was part of his career plan to stay in shape enough that if an action role came around it wouldn’t be impossible for him to get ready. And I don’t know exactly how the audition process works, but I’d think part of it is that the actor seems like or proves that they can get in the needed shape.

And lighting and makeup can do wonders. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there was also some CGI used to enhance things in many cases. There was an article I read about the CGI used to make an actor look like his younger self in a movie recently, and how CGI is not just being used for story reasons like that, but also to just make people prettier, although the source couldn’t name names that it’s been used on.

19

While I don’t doubt that Krasinski did a lot of work for 13 Hours, it looks to me much more like he lost every ounce of body fat and then some, rather than putting on a whole lot of muscle.

20

It’s been said by you, and basically said upthread, so I’m not really doing much more than just agreeing, but I think this is a lot of the case.

None of these guys were that particularly big to begin with, so really is was more along the lines of just removing the fat, and the muscle is going to show because it’s bigger than before, but there’s nothing covering it.

They also, because they weren’t fat to begin with, don’t have the problem of the excess skin. As a wrestling fan I see that a lot in guys who used to be linemen in football and transition to the ring. They usually look great in the arms and have decent shoulders, but their chest and stomach look bad because they went from being fit 300 pound linemen to stronger 250 pound wrestlers.