A lot of the youngsters reading the name Otto Graham so high up on the list are probably scratching their heads right now and that's ok. Otto Graham played during an era of football where proper head protection was inadequate and the shoulder pad technology wasn't the greatest. However, that didn't stop Graham from being one of the most dominant athletes in professional football throughout the 1940s and '50s. The 6'1 quarterback from Waukegan, Illinois attend Northwestern University of a basketball scholarship but also played football for the private college as well from 1941 to 1943. While in school, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and Graham signed up for the United States Coast Guard all the while setting a single-season Big Ten Conference record for completions with 89 in 1942. Prior to playing professional football, Graham also played pro basketball as a member of the Rochester Royals in the National Basketball League (NBL).
After being discharged by the Navy in 1946, Otto Graham reported to the Cleveland Browns training camp. In his first season as a starter, Graham led the Browns to a 12-2 record and defeated the New York Yankees in the AAFC Championship. From 1946 to 1949, Graham and the Browns won four consecutive AAFC Championships and even went undefeated in the 1948 season. After the AAFC dissolved in 1949, the Cleveland Browns merged into the NFL and played their first season in the league in 1950. Instantaneously, the Browns came into the league and won their first championship against the Los Angeles Rams. Graham would lead the Browns to three more consecutive championship games but wouldn't another until 1954 and 1955. The 6x Pro Bowler and 3x NFL MVP (1951, 1953, and 1955) called it quits on the game after the 1955 season. Otto Graham passed away at the age of 82 in September 2003, he will always be remembered for dominating the game during his time as a pro football player.
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.