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An actor’s physicality is “one of the many strange things” about a career in performance, as Jesse Plemons says, and it’s not a quality he may try to manipulate any time soon.
In a recent profile with The Independent, the star of Netflix‘s Zero Day reflected on having gained weight for 2015’s Black Mass, in which he portrayed a real-life mobster, admitting that he’s not sure the toll it took on him would be worth repeating.
“I never imagined getting to play a part like that,” he said. “[Gaining weight] was a decision I made at that age, given that opportunity for that director — and I was playing a real person. I don’t regret it. But it was very easy to put the weight on, and much more difficult taking it off. I don’t know if it’s something I would do again — because it did mess me up a bit.”
The Breaking Bad alum implied that his subsequent look then led him to be pigeonholed into certain roles: “I felt like that decision I made sort of dictated the types of parts I was being asked to play, and then started to seep into my own identity … which wasn’t necessarily who I was before that.” (Since the biographical crime drama, Plemons has been in films like Bridge of Spies, The Post, Game Night, The Irishman, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, The Power of the Dog and Killers of the Flower Moon.)
Plemons said getting cast in Alex Garland’s Civil War, in which he briefly features as a bone-chilling, violent soldier in a dystopian U.S. society, spurred him to make a change.
“Being asked to play that character and being unable to see him at my current weight … that kind of snapped me out of it,” the Oscar nominee said. “As well as having young kids. And I just got a handle on it again. Having lost the weight, aside from feeling better, it does feel like I’ve opened another door to potential parts I can play.”
The Kinds of Kindness actor previously opened up to the Los Angeles Times last year about his transformation, adding that he was aware of the speculation it would cause. “It’s really unfortunate that I decided to get healthy when everyone decided to take Ozempic,” he said at the time. “It doesn’t matter, everyone’s going to think I took Ozempic anyways. But what it was was getting older and — I hate even getting specific because then it turns into a whole thing, but there was a part that I did [Civil War] that in my mind I could not imagine him as the size that I was. Several people talked to me about intermittent fasting and I just gave it a shot and [was] surprised at how quickly it was effective. So I lost a little bit before I did that part and then felt like I was in the rhythm, I was feeling better, and something shifted in my head. I just sort of got a handle on it.”
