Chris Hemsworth said he went to extreme measures to prepare for his role in The Heart of the Sea.
The actor revealed that he lost around 15 pounds during production for his role.
Now granted, it’s not that much of a transformation compared to Christian Bale’s famous transformation in 2004’s The Machinist or Jared Leto as Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club, but it’s still enough.
Especially considering Hemsworth had already lost several pounds to star in his other film Black Hat.
“When I started, I was leaner than my Thor weight, anyway, because I’d been on Michael’s film,” the Australian tells EW. “When you’re already starting off lean, it’s brutal to chew through that kind of weight. Every pound feels like a kilogram.”
The Heart of the Sea, based on real events, sees Hemsworth playing a 19th-century seaman named Owen Chase. Chase is the first mate of the whaling ship the Essex, whose captain, George Pollard, Jr. is played by Benjamin Walker.
After a whale destroys their ship, Pollard, Chase and the rest of the crew have to surviv the earthly elements and lack of food, in a tiny lifeboat-sized boat.
To convincingly depict starving men, the cast members’ diets were steadily reduced over the course of the production. By the time Howard & co. decamped from London’s Leavesden studios to shoot on the open sea around the Canary Islands the actors were consuming just 500 calories a day.
“We kind of went insane, weighing ourselves every day,” says Hemsworth. “We all felt like a bunch of supermodels, trying to get down in weight for a show, or something. That’s all we spoke about. You’ve got 15 burly blokes on the sea and all we talked about was our diet, and who’d lost more weight, and who’s looking really skinny. It’s ridiculous!”
The Heart of the Sea hits theaters December 11, 2015.
