Mark Wahlberg was extremely committed to his latest film role.
In the new drama, “Father Stu,” Wahlberg, 50, packed on the pounds to play the lead character in a true story based on Father Stuart Long, a boxer who became a priest.
A boxer, sure, as Wahlberg has been a famously fit workout fiend with Boston tough guy roots. And his Catholic upbringing should work easily into the role of a priest.
The surprise for fans though will be Wahlberg’s added heft. "I had six weeks to put on about 30 pounds," he told Entertainment Tonight. "I started with 7,000 calories for the first two weeks and then 11,000 calories for the final four weeks."
"None of it was fun,” he continued about the weight-gaining regime. “Except for the first meal was amazing, because I hadn't eaten anything up until that point. But after that, when you're already full and you have to eat again, and at my age it's just not a healthy thing to do, to try to put on that kind of weight in that amount of time."
In case you think being paid to sit around and eat and gain weight sounds kind of awesome, the “Joe Bell” star disclosed the kinds of things he actually had to eat, and how much.
"I wasn't eating anything that you would think, 'Oh my God, I get to sit on the couch and eat ice cream and pizzas,'" he said. "It was a dozen eggs and a dozen pieces of bacon, two baked potatoes, a Porterhouse steak, two bowls of white rice, and a glass of olive oil. The first two weeks were high proteins. The second two weeks were a lot of carbs. The last two weeks starches, and then sodium, just to kind of get as bloated as possible. So, not a lot of fun."
“They’re so many foods that I had to eat,” he concluded, “that I’d be happy if I never had them again.”
His dietary regime started at 3 a.m. every day with a four egg pre-breakfast, and he ate every three hours after that. How did the family take the intense schedule?
As Entertainment Tonight reported, he said wife Rhea Durham was “fantastic.” “I mean she always thinks I’m a little too extreme,” Wahlberg admitted, "but she was so supportive… The kids call me a try hard, but you know, I gotta A. – do my job, do what I say I’m gonna do – and I wanna be an example too.
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And what an example he was to his four kids – Grace, 12, Brendan, 13, Michael, 16, and Ella, 18. Whalberg being Wahlberg, he somehow, even with all that eating, still did some of his usual workout routine. And even that played into gaining weight.
"I had to get up the appetite,” Wahlberg explained, “so I would go in there and try to lift as heavy as possible just to get hungry. And then I'd have the weight gainer shakes as well and all that stuff."
Fans can see Wahlberg's physical transformation for themselves when "Father Stu" hits theaters April 13.
Get tickets to see "Father Stu" in theaters from Fandango.
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