Anne Hathaway’s extreme starvation diet for Les Mis revealed: Hummus and radishes

Anne Hathaway’s body has suffered a lot for her art lately. First she had to get lithe but toned to don a Catwoman suit for The Dark Knight Rises, and then she had to get shockingly frail to play a dying prostitute in Les Miserables.

There have been rumors that 29-year-old Anne subsisted on on 500 calories a day to play Fantine In Les Miserables, a character that’s suffering from tuberculosis. Although her reps denied that she was only eating 500 calories a day, Anne has now spoken out about the extreme dieting she had to endure.

She told Allure magazine that she literally had to live at the gym for 10 months in order to fit into the Catwoman suit (which was a “psychological terrorist” for her.) At the time of the Allure interview, Anne was on a 6-day “detox” diet for Les Mis that consisted of “hummus and radishes.” She said the diet was making her skin break-out, and that she was told to lose as much weight as she possible could “without getting sick.”

This type of extreme dieting sounds a lot like what Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis had to go through for Black Swan. Both of the already slender women lost about 20 pounds each from their slender frames by eating a reported 800-1200 calories a day, and dancing for almost 16 hours each day. That type of diet, especially combined with extreme exercise can put the body into starvation mode, which can slow or change the body’s metabolism. Mila resumed a healthy diet after filming stopped, and returned to a healthy weight, but she noticed that the weight loss and gain had changed her body. She told Harper’s Bizaar last month “When I gained it [the weight] back, it went to completely different areas.”

Extreme dieting for roles is a pretty common practice for Hollywood actresses AND actors. They often lose extreme amounts of weight to play people who are sick, addicted to drugs, (or dancers,) and although they probably are closely monitored by a doctor, it still can be unhealthy, and extremely uncomfortable. Natalie Portman has said that while she was starving for Black Swan, some nights she felt like she would “die.”