In the Sean Ellis film “The Cut,” Orlando Bloom plays a boxer on the brink of a total breakdown as he races against the clock to drop weight before a fight. Under the guidance of a shady coach, played by John Turturro, Bloom will do anything to shed pounds, even as it threatens his life.
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Bloom himself lost a whopping 52 pounds in three months in preparation for the movie, which also stars Caitríona Balfe. He discussed his eye-popping physical transformation at Variety ‘s Toronto Film Festival Studio, sponsored by J.Crew and SharkNinja.
“I basically tiered down the food over a three-month period until just before filming, [when] I was at my lightest. I dropped 52 pounds, and I was about 185 when I started,” Bloom said . “So I dropped quite a lot of weight, and I was very mentally challenged as well. You feed somebody tuna and cucumber long enough…”
Since the film follows the boxer on an often disturbing journey to making a lower weight class, Ellis shot “The Cut” in reverse chronological order, meaning Bloom was actually bulking up during production.
“Your brain is starved of calories, basically,” Ellis said to Bloom. “It was going to be impossible for him to work while dieting. So, he came to us at his lightest, and then he starts to eat. So that meant that we had to shoot the film [with] the ending first and the beginning of the movie at the end. … Over the 25 days that we were shooting, he was putting on the calories. And then it’s edited in reverse.”
Bloom adding the physical transformation was more “exciting” than “daunting.”
“I was more surprised about the mental aspect of [it], like the sleep deprivation, and not the depleted calories,” he said. “There’s a lot going on in your brain … living in that headspace for a while was very challenging.”
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Audiences looking for a straight-forward boxing movie may be surprised, however, as “The Cut” plays out more like a body horror. It’s set mostly in a hotel room as the boxer drains blood, takes diuretics and manipulates his body before the all important weigh-in. Some of the more intense scenes shocked the crowd at the film’s world premiere on Thursday night.
“Somebody in my row passed out!” Bloom said. Ellis concurred: “Yeah, we had a fainter. I think we’ve got to put that on the film poster.”
Balfe, who plays Bloom’s character’s wife, said of seeing “The Cut” with an audience for the first time, “You can read something on the page and it sounds one way, but to see it, it’s so visceral. And I think the way it was shot and the way it was performed, it’s a tough watch. A good watch, but…”
On a lighter note, Bloom weighed in (no pun intended) on the upcoming album from Katy Perry, his fiancée with whom he shares a daughter.
“They just get better as they go along,” he said of the “Teenage Dream” singer’s albums. “She’s a powerhouse, and I sort of marvel at her ability to keep knocking it out in such a major way, and bringing so much joy and gusto and joie de vivre to life. It’s always so impressive. But, yeah, ‘143’ baby!”
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