# Is the extreme starvation that Christian Bales did for a movie role dangerous?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-extreme-starvation-that-christian-bales-did-for-a-movie-role-dangerous/270595
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 22, 2004, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-extreme-starvation-that-christian-bales-did-for-a-movie-role-dangerous/270595 "2004-10-22T14:13:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2004, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-extreme-starvation-that-christian-bales-did-for-a-movie-role-dangerous/270595/1 "2004-10-22T14:13:38Z")
This is (IMO) a heath question, not a movie question which is why I have put it here.
[Re his new movie “The Machinist”](http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2004/10/22/machinist/index.html). Does extreme starvation have long term effects even if it was just for few months?
> [@](#):
>
> Part of Bale’s appeal, when he’s at his normal weight, is his robust boyishness. Bale lost 63 pounds to play this role, and the first time we see him, he’s barely recognizable as the actor we know – even his skull seems to have been whittled into a new shape. When he turns his back to the camera in a semi-nude scene, he resembles photographs of concentration camp victims. The bones on his shoulders stick out in sharp pagoda points. His skin barely seems to cover his vertebrae – his back looks like the fossil of some long-dead animal.
>
> Bale is a consistently fine and, I think, underrated actor. He’s soulful and open, and here, particularly in his scenes with Jennifer Jason Leigh, as a call girl who has fallen in love with him, and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, as the lunch-counter waitress he has a crush on, he conveys a haunted desperation that’s very affecting. His eyes are almost invisible in his sockets – it’s as if they’re retreating into his skull.
[Some film clips (bottom left)](http://www.filmaxinternational.com/fichas/1100.htm#)
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [October 22, 2004, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-extreme-starvation-that-christian-bales-did-for-a-movie-role-dangerous/270595/2 "2004-10-22T15:02:54Z")
Well, speaking from some small experience at serious fast and drastic weight loss [went in at 145, 2 weeks later came out at 94 lbs, call it the toxemia diet?] the doctors were not _too_ worried as it was a shock to my system, other than toxemia I was very healthy normally, none of my organs came anywhere close to kissing off, and I did regain the weight in about 3 months so I wasnt doing the anorexia/bulemia thing of either eating a totally useless diet [like nothing but iceberg lettuce and celery with water] or enema/laxative/vomiting over a long period of time so I was getting the usual assortment of nutrients.
I would make the assumption that the actor did a combination of medically supervised fasting, certain nutritional suppliments[vitamins, aminos, protein powder] to maintain health, and as soon as the movie was in the can gained back the weight…so there would be minimal problems. I would see more problem if this was for a play that might run for years, but short term drastic weight loss without anorexia/bulemia there shouldn’t be too much problem. Now if he turns into Karen Carpenter, then we have to start worrying…
IANAD, but the human body is oddly durable when it comes to short term drastic changes…