While the Detroit Lions aren't considered a top tier NFL franchise they have had some of the greatest NFL talent put on their jersey every Sunday and pull off some amazing feats. The most amazing Detroit Lions athlete ever to grace the football field has to be one, Barry Sanders. Standing at just 5'8, Sanders is one of the most elusive and creative running backs to ever play the game. If he was able to get to outside of the field, he was nearly impossible to catch. Breakaway speed and excellent field vision allowed him to become the Hall of Famer he is today.
During his tenure as a member of the Oklahoma State Cowboys he won the 1988 Heisman Trophy in his junior year racking up 2,850 yards and 42 touchdowns. His collegiate performance at Oklahoma State led him tobeing picked 3rd overall in the 1989 NFL Draft by the Detriot Lions where he would play all ten seasons of his NFL career (1989-1998). Sanders went on to be invited to the Pro Bowl every season he played (10x) and was named NFL MVP in 1997. Sanders currently holds the third place rushing yards record with 15,269 and is ranked tenth in rushing touchdowns with 99. Though he's had a Hall of Fame career, Barry Sanders is regarded as the best player ever to not have played in a Super Bowl.
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.