We’ve heard the stories of Hollywood actors losing a lot of weight for roles before. From Christian Bale’s The Machinist transformation to Joaquin Phoenix’s weight loss for the Joker movies. The latest example of this is through Orlando Bloom’s role in The Cut. But rather than it being like most boxing movies, that are all about the big and thrilling fights, the latest of 2025 movie releases focuses purely on a boxer’s desperate attempt to make weight in time to fight for a championship title.
Audiences go on a grueling journey with Bloom’s character as he tries everything to make the cut. Knowing the actor had gone through a mentally exhausting effort to lose the weight for the role, I had to ask what the first thing he ate once he was no longer on a diet. But, as Bloom explained, moving into cheat meals, gaining back weight and resuming life sans his diet was absolutely part of the challenge of starring in The Cut. As he answered:
Yeah, good question. Anything and everything. Actually, I came to set at my lightest weight. So we filmed the movie in reverse chronological order, in order that I could do anything because I came to the set at my lightest weight, which was about 30 pounds off my regular weight. And I could hardly function.
While The Cut tracks Orlando Bloom’s boxer character as he loses 30 pounds to make his championship fight, Bloom got into the shape he needed to be by the end of the movie. Then, he worked backwards on set.
On the one hand, he could eat whatever he wanted on the set, but as he described, it wasn’t a pleasant experience by any means. He continued with these words:
My brain capacity was limited at best, and I was having intrusive thoughts. And then, in order to capture those moments, and then once we got all the shirtless and we had a nutritionist really assigned to it. He was in connection with the production all the time. I had to start gorging food. I think I had a steak, veg and potatoes was my first thing.
Bloom lost the weight he needed to in the matter of three months, which meant dropping about 2.5 pounds a week when a safe and healthy pace when on a diet to lose that kind of weight is expected to take about twice as long. While the conversation around celebrity weight loss tends to focus on the process of going down in weight itself, I found it interesting to hear Bloom open up about getting back to normalcy was just as difficult.
But, then it was like, in order to have an enough of a weight loss and look dramatically, I mean, water does a huge amount, but it was like ice cream in the shakes. It was desserts. It was everything. It was just constantly eating. And it was almost, after doing this insane weight loss, it was almost worse adding the calories back in such a major fast way. And it really messes with your hormones. It messes with everything, honestly.
In The Cut, he ends up working with a boxing coach, played by Severance’s John Turturro, who offers some unorthodox and rather unhealthy ways to make sure he can make the fight in the small amount of time he wants to make weight. What happens in the movie directed by Sean Ellis ends up being a tense, psychological thriller, rather than your typical boxing movie, that brings up the extremes that can come with this aspect of the profession. As Bloom also told us:
I was surprised. I mean, I'm kind of getting back, I’m back I would say now, but it was a lot of stress on the body and mind. And, I sort of still have a bit of PTSD to be honest when I think about it and see the film.
Orlando Bloom really gave his all for The Cut, and it’s great to see him being honest about what the experience was truly like behind the scenes. It’s among the movies that are joining your options to see in theaters this Friday, September 5.
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