Orlando Bloom talks to Yahoo about his drastic diet for The Cut and what he learned about himself physically and mentally. (Photo illustration: Aïda Amer for Yahoo News; photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage)If you're looking for the Orlando Bloom you remember - clean-cut, grinning, Teen People's "sexiest guy ever" - he's nowhere to be found in his new movie. Instead, the man onscreen is almost unrecognizable: gritty and haunted, a fighter who looks like he's been to hell and back, because in many ways, he has.
In The Cut, in theaters now, Bloom plays a washed-up boxer chasing a second shot at glory. It's a role that pushed him to his limits, both physically and mentally. To disappear into the character, Bloom lost 60 pounds, surviving on little more than cucumbers and tuna. The extreme transformation left him exhausted, vulnerable and at times, almost unrecognizable, even to himself.
The English actor looks much more reminiscent of his Pirates of the Caribbean days right now than the emotionally wrecked boxer audiences meet in film. It's been two years since he put his body through "extensive" trauma for this role, and it's clear that talking about it now, the experience still lingers.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"I really just wanted to burn the barn down and take the brakes off and really swing for the fences and go for this one," Bloom tells Yahoo.
Bloom, stripped downHe describes the personal and physical toll of embodying this character, known only as the Boxer, in blunt, matter-of-fact terms."We are built for sleep, food and water. When you take all three of those away - because you don't really sleep when you're that hungry..." he trails off. "I was sleeping a few hours a night. I literally had no mental or physical capacity. I was lying on the floor between takes and then getting up to work."Bloom sheds 60 pounds for The Cut. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for UNICEF USA, Republic Pictures)To accommodate his dramatic weight loss, Bloom says production began when he was at his lightest, shooting the movie in reverse chronological order. The very first scene they filmed required him to be completely bare, physically, standing on a scale. (What happens at the end of the weigh-in will make your jaw drop.)AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhen I ask Bloom about that day on set, he credits the cast and crew for making him feel "so safe" because he felt a sense of community. He says that support allowed him to embrace the sheer exposure the moment demanded, even as the physical toll was staggering."I hadn't really drunk water because I was trying to get this really crazy dehydrated [look]. I was really restricting the water, and all of that made it just way harder than I had imagined," he says, remembering a "feeling of vulnerability - and the feeling of starvation" that took place over three days.
To make sure his body could withstand this kind of drastic transformation, Bloom worked with Philip Goglia, a nutritionist who has guided other actors through extreme roles, including Christian Bale. He went down from three meals a day to one."[Goglia] was in lockstep with production to make sure we timed everything out," Bloom says. But even with expert supervision, the process was grueling. "I couldn't get past 162 pounds; I was stuck at this weight. I photographed my scale every morning and sent it to him. Then just before filming, he said, 'I want you to get in a hot bath.'"Bloom details his physical transformation for The Cut. (Photo illustration: Aïda Amer for Yahoo News; photo: Hoda Davaine/Getty Images)Goglia had Bloom fill a tub with water and 25 pounds of Epsom salt. He had to soak in it, then drink 2 liters of water before going to bed. "I did it - do not do [this] at home - and I dropped 10 pounds overnight. I got down to the weight. It was crazy."AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe effects were as shocking as the method. "Your body just lets go after that process. That's how I got that very dry and not-pretty look."The whiplash of rebuildingWhile filming The Cut, Bloom says, he was "not a lot of fun to be around.""I didn't feel very good - angry and hungry," he says. The physical deprivation triggered more than just mood swings: Bloom says he grew paranoid and struggled to quiet his mind. There was practically "no acting involved," he explains, because his shaky mental state mirrored that of his character."The feelings, the emotions, the intrusive thoughts in the mind, the physical exhaustion, the physicality - it all kind of came to fruition," Bloom says.
Bloom in a scene from The Cut. (Republic Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)If getting down to fighting weight was extreme, what happened next was almost as jarring. As soon as those shirtless scenes at his lowest weight were in the can, Bloom had to rapidly put pounds back on.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"I was just gorging food," he