Actors Who Got Ridiculously Buff for Movie Roles

There’s Method acting, and then there’s physically transforming yourself into an almost unrecognizable person for a movie role. Actors are getting beefier now that action movies and superhero flicks have turned the simple act of “playing a character” into a sport, and getting a personal trainer and a dietician and hitting the gym for three to six months before production starts has become the norm across the industry.

There are some actors who have gone even further to achieve their impressive physiques, getting so bulky in order to play certain roles that seeing their ripped bods becomes the main reason to go see the movie. From boxers to superheroes to supervillains to alien-fighting super-soldiers, celebs have done it all, hulking out for the purposes of art and inspiring hundreds of “How to Work Out Like Wolverine” articles in the process.

But none of that happens overnight. Attaining this kind of muscle mass is hard work, and everyone has a different system for getting the kind of shape that makes their inevitable post-workout Instagram posts go viral. For this list, we looked at the most impressive and mind-boggling transformations actors have made to go from zero to hero and inspire the rest of us to maybe hit the gym once in a while. Because we’re focusing on wild transformations, we did not include celebs who were already famously ripped (sorry Arnold). And please do not try this at home—no one gets the Star-Lord bod without a lot of Hollywood movie magic.

READ MORE: Actors Who Returned to Iconic Roles Decades Later