Lisa Marie Sole, better known by her wrestling monikers of Victoria (WWE) and Tara (TNA) was one of those brutal in-ring strikers that makes you question if she's intentionally trying to hurt her opponents. From Backbreakers to hair-pulling Gory Specials to top rope Superplexes, Tara was and still is known for leaving a pile of broken bodies in the ring after a clean three-count. Sole is a truly fundamentally-sound wrestler that can do it all. She has amazing strength, balance, and poise when she decides to take things aerial. Tara has several signature moves including the Black Widow, A-Rack-Naphobia, Gorilla Press Gutbuster, Spider's Web, and Widow's Peak that are a true testament to her strength alone.
Following a successful bodybuilding career and meeting Chyna, Sole decided to pursue a career in pro-wrestling in 2000. After making an appearance at WrestleMania 2000, Sole's WWE career didn't take off until two years later in 2002. Victoria, at the time, was able to rack up two WWE Women's Championship victories during her tenure on the WWE roster which came to an end in 2009. Her peak popularity came as a member of the TNA roster where she wrestled as Tara where she would become a 5x TNA Women's Knockout Champion and 1x TNA Knockouts Tag Team Champion. This year, Sole announced that she would be retiring from in-ring action but will continue to make appearances at various events.
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.