Liam Hemsworth Covers Men’s Health UK: Lost Weight To Play Gale Hawthorne
April 4, 2012 by Hollywoodite
Liam Hemsworth covers Men’s Health UK May 2012 (and, yes, that’s his brother Chris as Thor inset bottom left, for The Avengers Collectors Edition when it’s The Hunger Games Hemsworth brother featured on the cover).
Hemsworth, 22, is the boyfriend of Miley Cyrus and he’s heavily featured on the promotional trail for The Hunger Games in which he plays Gale Hawthorne. He’s promoting at least as much, if not more so, than Josh Hutcherson who has far, far more than Hemsworth’s meager minutes of screen-time.
Despite only being in the film for minutes, most of which is close-up reaction shots, Hemsworth says he lost a lot of weight to play the role. He already told Conan similar, noting that his brother texted upon learning of his weight gain to say “Hey, fatty, it’s called The Hunger Games not The Eating Games” (he’s repeating this anecdote in every interview). Moreover, the time he auditioned and won the role would have been only months after losing the role of Thor to his brother so he could have already been built for that too.
Conversely, to Jennifer Lawrence being called “too fat” to play Katniss Everdeen, Hemsworth’s appearance mostly escaped criticism. Although his character is a hunter who’s also not supposed to be as emaciated as his neighbours, it’s apparent neither he nor anyone else in his district has gone without a meal for some time. Except Hemsworth was depriving himself at the time of filming, and he tells Men’s Health UK about his training. Then he devolves to sharing the Details Magazine/ Conan squirrel anecdote, this time explaining he’s not an obsessed simpleton.
On losing weight and why he lost weight: “My brother Chris texted me about a month before shooting and said, ‘Remember, it’s called Hunger Games, not Eating Games.’ I lost quite a bit of weight for the role. My character lives in (the dystopian, impoverished) District 12 in the film, which is basically like living in the Depression. He’s hunting for his food everyday and trying to provide for himself and his family. He’s not eating a lot. He doesn’t have a lot of money to buy food. I wanted to get a good sense of what it’s like to be hungry. I was training five or six days a week, and eating a lot less. When we started shooting, I wasn’t training as much, but I was eating only very minimally. For the month leading up to shooting, it was very clean, healthy food. When we started shooting, I would have one meal a day. It wasn’t that it was even very healthy. It was whatever I could get, and not a lot of it.”
On his training of archery, climbing, rappelling and yoga: “I was training with an ex- Navy SEAL. He kept me in the gym every day for an hour or so and he would just completely destroy me. It was very high-intensity. I’d work out for an hour and have to lay down for 20 minutes or half an hour before I’d drive anywhere because I’d pass out. He’d get me to lift various things or take me out to the car park and we’d get a sled kind of thing and he’d load it up with weights and I’d have to push it for 50 meters and then run 50 meters and then pick up two-deep kettle bells and walk those 50 meters. It was just about destroying me for an hour everyday.”
On why he’s so excited by squirrels: “It’s weird. I made a comment in an interview once that I found squirrels comedic. We don’t have squirrels in Australia, so I was in a meeting in Hollywood the first time I saw one, and I found them amusing. Somehow, I’m now obsessed with squirrels.” – via Men’s Health UK Magazine.
IMAGE CREDIT – MEN’S HEALTH UK MAGAZINE
