From playing the responsible big brother Charlie on Party of Five to playing the steadfast leader Dr. Jack Shephard on Lost, Matthew Fox is known for his small screen good guy image, despite his real-life flaws. Now Matt is giving us a glimpse at his dark side in the Alex Cross reboot and he takes it all very seriously. Not only did he drop 30 pounds for the role in the film, he dove deep into the minds of mass murderers to get prepared to play a sociopathic killer. In our recent interview with the actor he told us he watched documentaries on Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy to help him understand their disturbing motives better and “figure out how they justify it in their minds.”
Like Matt, many stars have gone to extremes with their weight like, Christian Bale in The Machinist, Natalie Portman in Black Swan and Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, while other actors have done even more unusual and risky things in all in the name of a role.
Most notably Martin Sheen pushed himself so far filming Apocalypse Now, he ended up having a heart attack at just 36-years-old, while still in production . He also got so wasted in the film’s standout opening scene he put his fist through a mirror but kept acting despite gushing blood. Looking back at that time Marty says, “I really had a very close call…I just knew that if I wanted to live it was my choice, If I wanted to die, that was my choice too. There wasn’t even any fear, the fear only came when I realized how close I came to the end.”
Shia LaBeouf recently announced he was giving up on the genre of blockbusters that
helped make his name, to peruse more fulfilling endeavours. So how far will the Transformers star go for his art? Pretty darn far, considering he admitted to dropping acid for his upcoming role in The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, and he now says he’s willing to go all the way for the on-screen sex scenes in Lars Von Trier’s upcoming Nymphomaniac. Shia explains, ” The whole movie is about the difference between love and sex and when you’re zeroing in on that target and that’s your bulls-eye, you’ve got to go to some pretty extreme places.”
Now, from pulling out teeth to nearly going blind, find out what other actors have taken a role too far in the video below!
