Secrets of the silver screen stars
This year’s red carpet events are bound to open up the same old can of worms about who is the best or worst dressed celebrity. The fascination we have with the fashion world will, as always, spill over to the subject of whose body resembles an emaciated child’s or shock horror, who has gained a few pounds since last year.
Unfortunately the focus of 2012, like most other years, will be on the skinny celebs rather than those promoting a healthy body image. We are bound to see a much greater coverage of the waif like Nicole Kidman than the healthy and full-figured Scarlett Johansson.
And perhaps even more disconcerting is the probability that some A-list actor or actress will see fit to boast about the extreme eating regime they followed to achieve a transformed figure for a film role. Just cast your mind back to Renee Zellwegger and Charlize Theron.
They both followed dangerously unhealthy eating plans to drastically reshape their bodies for Bridget Jones Diary and Monster respectively. By gaining over 2 stone for the film and losing it in time for the Oscars, Charlize unintentionally managed to send a dangerous message to young women that drastic dieting ranging from binging on calorific junk food to surviving on salads and fruit is an effective method of changing your body shape quickly.
When Renée Zellweger converted herself from wispy all-American girl to plump British singleton in Bridget Jones's Diary, she did so by eating a precarious diet of pizza, fettuccine Alfredo and French bread. She lost the weight even more quickly than she gained it; this type of wildly fluctuating dieting is bound to play havoc with her metabolism.
It is terrifying to imagine how many impressionable young women will be fooled into thinking they can “pull a Renee or Charlize”. When you're an Oscar-nominated actress, you have the money to hire a personal trainer, nutritionist and an on-call chef to look nothing short of phenomenal, should you have the chance to actually receive the Oscar. For the every day Joe soap, often the only personal trainer available is a pair of trainers, and unfortunately (or should that be fortunately!),we don’t have Oscar night to motivate a vigorous weight loss attempt.
It is not just the females who are promoting faddy diets through their eating and exercise claims. Christian Bale placed himself on a crash diet before the filming of the Machinist. He dropped a startling 4 stone in a matter of months. This dramatic weight loss puts him at all types of health risks. The effects of such eating habits may not be immediately obvious but it is impossible to know what types of future health problems he will encounter.
The list of celebs that gained or lost weight for film roles is endless. These individuals appear a few months after their films at awards ceremonies such as the Oscars looking svelte and beautiful. They are happy to chat with reporters about the horrifying measures taken to achieve their morphed body shape. But yet what the public see is these people sitting smugly in all their finery, looking every inch the starlet.
Many celebrities are dismissive of the amount of work it takes to get in shape for their films. Be assured - whether aiming to lose or gain large amounts of weight, the process is never quite as simple as it looks!
By all means read the inevitable post-awards reviews with red carpet photos, but instead of cursing your mundane job and wishing you were a famous actor count your blessings that your career will never require you to lose 2 stone in a week!
