The shirtless scene is apparently a contractual obligation when it comes to any actor playing a superhero in a big budget blockbuster, which is understandable on the talent’s part when they’ve put in months of hard work to get into the best physical condition possible, so they’re well within their rights to want to show it off.
It’s difficult to think of any major action hero in the last decade who hasn’t whipped their top off for a gratuitous close-up, but the sacrifices are a lot more extreme than you might think. Hugh Jackman was famed for his ripped Wolverine physique, one that required an intense training regimen to acquire in the first place, and the actor has revealed the dangerous methods he adopted when it came to flaunting it on camera.
36 hours before shooting shirtless scenes, Jackman would stop drinking any liquids at all to lose water weight, and it takes roughly 100 hours for someone to die without hydrating. The star would bring his body over a third of the way to literal death to get the footage, but Dwayne Johnson isn’t taking things quite as far for Black Adam. The 49 year-old has been a huge dude for his entire life, though in a recent social media post, he revealed that it still takes a man of his dimensions 48 hours to get his body the way he needs it to look on screen, while stressing that the diet is key, too.
This diet is a real science. Have a big scene this week for Black Adam that requires my shirt off. As many of you know, in the comic mythology, in the beginning, Teth Adam was blessed by the gods as “The Champion” (before his rage turned his soul black). Training hard, dieting down while pulling all sodium and every ounce of water and food is measured.”
It certainly requires a lot of dedication to starve and dehydrate yourself for what will probably only amount to a few minutes of screen time at the most, but Black Adam has been a passion project of Johnson’s for fifteen years, so it’s not surprising that he’s pulling out all the stops.
