10+ Times Actors Criticized Hollywood For Coercing Into Losing Weight Or Only Casting Them As The “Funny Fat Friend”
Fat characters are often included in Movies for humorous purposes. They appear as supporting characters, in the role of the main characters’ friend in most cases. Well, the audience has good feelings or loves them more than the leading ones.
In several movies, a fat character becomes more complex, so it’s essential to cast a talented actor to portray the part. For example, Brendan Fraser took on the portrayal of Charlie and appeared beneath folds of photorealistic prosthetic fat. Both the actor and makeup artist Adrien Morot, who was responsible for his transformation took to the stage to collect their Oscars.
Apart from Brendan Fraser, other plus-size actors desire to play complex and nuanced roles or characters who are treated like people rather than punchlines.
Here are 10+ times actors called out anti-fat storylines and typecasting in their roles.
#1. Rebel Wilson
Source: Universal Pictures
Rebel Wilson portrayed Fat Amy in the Pitch Perfect franchise. On the Call Her Daddy podcast, she shared, “You have to kind of stay at the weight. It’s in your contract. But I had been thinking for a while, like, Oh, I want to get healthier.
#2. Jennifer Lawrence
Before starting filming The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence was required to lose weight to fit her role. However, she refused because she didn’t “want all of the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can't because they're not a certain weight.”
#3. Mindy Kaling
Source: NBCUniversal / Getty Images
One cast member of The Office suggested in the writing room that their character tell Kelly Kapoor, played by Mindy Kaling, that she could lose 15 pounds as a “joke.” For the actress, it was “really devasting” because it was “greatest insecurity, and someone just called it out.”
In an interview with Good Morning America, she said, “I had a reckoning where I'm like, ‘People are scrutinizing [me], and not only are they scrutinizing [me], they're verbalizing their displeasure with how I look because I don't look a certain way. That kind of dissonance has really affected so much of what I write about [and] the kind of characters I play.”
#4. David DeLuise
Source: Ron Tom / Getty Images
On the Wizards of Waverly Pod podcast, the actor hated the filmmaker making the fat jokes about his character, Jerry Russo, “I lost all this weight, and then they kept making fat jokes. I didn't like that.”
#5. Melanie Lynskey
Throughout her career, the actress was only cast as the fat friend or the jokey kind of fat person, including a script “where the person had a candy bar in every scene.”
She said to the New York Times, “I very much want to be onscreen representing an interesting person who’s not paying attention to what her tummy looks like. ... If there were more people who look like me [on TV], then I wouldn’t have to talk about it as much.”
#6. Melanie Lynskey
Source: George De Sota / Getty Images
Lynskey had to cope with body shaming from the production team while filming Coyote Ugly. The actress was forced to transform her appearance to fit their beauty standards. She was put on a weight loss "regimen" and forced to wear "a lot of Spanx."
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, she shared, “…really intense feedback about my physicality, my body, people doing my makeup and being like, ‘I’m just going to help you out by giving you a bit more of a jawline and stuff.’”
#7. Chris Pratt
Earlier in his career, Chris Pratt “had gotten used to the idea of making a living as an actor by playing the fat friend who makes you laugh.” However, he “saw that if [he] wanted to have a serious career and play serious characters, [he] needed to get into shape.” After losing weight, he was called into Marvel's offices, where they held up a selfie he took while training for Zero Dark Thirty and told him, “You're too fat for Star-Lord.”
#8. Sean Astin
Source: Courtesy Everett Collection
The Lord of the Rings star really hated to play the role of fat guy or friend all his life. He told the Guardian, “What I am aiming for and what I hope will happen is that I will be able to carry a picture.”
#9. Margaret Cho
Source: Courtesy Everett Collection
While preparing for All-American Girl, Margaret Cho had to drop weight. However, she went into kidney failure while on set after losing a significant amount of weight in a very short amount of time.
She told the Guardian, “I have a lot of regrets because I did not appreciate how beautiful I was. I just thought I was fat and ugly, and I was so angry about the way I looked.”
#10. Amber Riley
For a long time in her career, Amber Riley was only offered like “the girl who sits in the corner and eats all day” and “the girl who wanted to commit suicide because she was fat.” The actress was in a black mood for that.
She told MTV's This Is How I Made It, “Being the size that I am, being a woman, being a Black woman, there's not a lot of roles for us,"
#11. Brittany Murphy
The actress’ friend, Melanie Lynskey revealed that Brittany Murphy “was perfect just as she was, but people were trying to cast her as, like, 'the fat one,' because when she was a very young teenager, her cheeks were a little bit round.”
If you know more, leave some names in our comments. We’d glad to see them.