Joe Montana's biography is something out of an unrealistic, cheesy sports movie. Young Montana grew up in a blue-collar, rugged coal mining city with big dreams of making it big in sports one day. Young Montana goes off to college where he becomes extremely successful than off to the pros to become an undefeated champion wreaking havoc on whoever got into his way. While this may sound unbelievable and somewhat far-fetched, it's 100% true and he's undeniably one of the best players to ever strap up their pads and pick up a football. Hailing from New Eagle, Pennsylvania, Joe Montana AKA 'The Comeback Kid' played his collegiate football at the University of Notre Dame from 1974 to 1978. Montana wouldn't see any major playing time until his sophomore season but would eventually lead the prestigious football program to two Cotton Bowl victories in 1977 and 1978.
Somehow in the 1979 NFL Draft, Joe Montana was selected 82nd overall in the third round by the San Francisco 49ers where he would play fourteen out of the sixteen seasons of his NFL career. As a rookie, Montana played in all sixteen regular-season NBA games but only attempted twenty-three passes. It wasn't until the 1980 season, Montana would become the team's official starting quarterback and he would begin his reign of terror on the entire league. Montana would lead the Niners to the playoffs a total of nine times, making four Super Bowl appearances and winning every single one (XVI, XIX, XXIII, and XXIV). Montana was the first player ever to win three Super Bowl MVP honors (XVI, XIX, and XXIV). The Comeback Kid currently holds Super Bowl records for most pass attempts without an interception (122) and all-time highest passer rating (127.8). Montana played his final two NFL seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs and led the team to its first-ever AFC Championship game in 1994 before officially retiring.
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.