Hollywood has a long tradition of the “body transformation” role—that particular obsession, probably best exemplified by Christian Bale’s emaciated frame in The Machinist, where performers massively distort the shape and size of their bodies to blatantly unnatural proportions in order to capture the proper look for a character/the applause of people who like to confuse massive weight loss with “acting.” (It’s a distant cousin to the “C’mon, makeup people, destroy my beautiful face” school of Oscar acquisition strategies.)
Now we can add Simon Pegg to the list of famous folks who’ve succumbed to the siren song of those twin devils—intense dieting and exercise—in order to get disturbingly jacked for a part. Pegg’s personal trainer posted a picture of him yesterday, showing the physical changes he’s made for an upcoming role in Vaughn Stein’s thriller Inheritance, and well, hey, there’s no need for us to pre-editorialize. Take a look:
Fulfilling a promise he made to The Rock lo these many years ago—back when the idea of the guy from Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead being a blockbuster action star was just starting to be slightly less ridiculous—Pegg is, indeed, now totally ripped, in a kind of visually upsetting way. Not that Simon Pegg needs to accommodate us when choosing his latest look, of course, but it’s still the sort of thing where looking at it causes phrases like “cursed image” to float, unbidden, into your brain. Still, hey, at least he’s happy.