Richard Joseph Gannon is one of those anomalies that is seldom ever seen in the NFL. Most of Rich Gannon's success came at the end of his career after he had failed to find a secure starting job or home as a backup quarterback. This experience would discourage many athletes, but Rich Gannon rose to the occasion and became one of the most respected quarterbacks around the league and during his era in the early 2000s. Gannon attended the University of Delaware from 1984 to 1986 where he began his football career as a punter before switching to quarterback his sophomore season. Despite not being a true quarterback Gannon broke a total of twenty-one school records including passing yards in a single season (5,927) and completions (462) in a single season. In his final year with the Fightin' Blue Hens, Gannon was named Yankee Conference Offensive Player of the Year.
The 6'3, 210lb quarterback was selected 98th overall in the fourth round of the 1987 NFL Draft by the Minnesota Vikings where he played the first six seasons of his NFL career. As a third-string quarterback, Gannon saw limited time on the field until he won the starting job his final three seasons with the Vikings. Rich Gannon also played short stints with the Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs before finding a home with the Oakland Raiders in 1999 where he would become a dominant force in the NFL close to half a decade. Gannon went on to go to four straight Pro Bowls (1999-2002), earn an NFL MVP Award (2002), and lead the Raiders to a Super Bowl (XXXVII) appearance in 2003. While he wasn't able to secure a championship with the Raiders, he's a legend to this very day in Oakland.
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.