Utah native, Merlin Olsen might have gone to the Pro Bowl a total of fourteen times, but he didn't leave an impact on the league the same way Steve Young did. The 6'0 quarterback from Salt Lake City was never afraid to slang that thing, his willingness to make daring passes that were perfectly executed is the reason why he has become a Hall of Fame quarterback. Young attended Bingham Young University in Provo, Utah where he completed a total of 592 passes for 7,733 and 56 touchdowns.
His performance at BYU led him to the Supplemental Draft where he signed a record-setting ten-year, $40 million contract with the Los Angeles Express of the USFL in March 1984. After the league tanked in 1986, Young signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but his career didn't take off until he arrived in San Francisco in 1987 where he would lead the team to three Super Bowl victories and be dubbed the Super Bowl MVP ifor his performance in Super Bowl XXIX. Young led the league in passing touchdowns four times (1992, 1993, 1994, 1998), became a 7x Pro Bowler, and 6x NFL passer rating leader. There wasn't a pass that Steve Young ever regretted in his entire career and it paid off in rings.
Celebrities are no strangers to changing their looks for a role. And in some instances, they have to get pretty extreme. From 500-calorie-a-day diets to drinking pints of ice cream, Actors and actresses know what it takes to change their bodies in preparation for a new film.
Charlize Theron is no stranger to gaining and losing weight for movie roles, as we remember her transformation in Monster. Charlize Theron gained close to 50 pounds for her role as Marlo in Tully. Theron said that “for the first time in my life I was eating so much processed foods and I drank way too much sugar. … I remember having to set my alarm in the middle of the night in order to just maintain the weight.”
You’re used Chris Hemsworth's hulk-like figure in Thor, but In the Heart of the Sea required a totally different diet. The movie required the cast members lose a ton of weight to make their stuck-at-sea plight more believable. Chris Hemsworth said there were days when all he ate was one boiled egg, a couple of crackers, and a celery stick.
Anne Hathaway wanted to get serious for her role in Les Misérables, as she was playing Fantine, a starving prostitute with tuberculosis. So Anne Hathaway went on a diet of “rabbit food” to drop 25 pounds. Hathaway explained her diet was essentially just starving herself, but she didn’t want to give details, as she doesn’t want to encourage anyone to copy her emaciated look. She did note that she “just had to stop eating for a total of 13 days shooting,” however. And at one point, her bones became so frail that she reportedly broke her arm.
Matthew McConaughey's portrayal of Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club, a man with HIV/AIDS, was spot-on, earning him the title of best actor at the Oscars. But it also required a serious physical transformation. Matthew McConaughey said he lost 38 pounds for the role. During filming, he said he lost a lot of energy from eating so little — and he hit plenty of plateaus along the way. Finally, with a strict diet, he got down to 143 pounds. And while he did cardio to help with the weight loss, he said it was 90% what he was eating and portion size.
Hilary Swank had to put on 23 pounds of pure muscle for her role as a boxer in Million Dollar Baby. The process doesn’t sound easy, however. “I started working out five hours a day — I had to eat 210 grams of protein a day,” Swank said. She also mentioned that she had to consume 60 egg whites per day, and when that proved too difficult, she had to drink them. And to keep the muscle on, she would get up and drink protein shakes in the middle of the night.