"I Was Too Overweight To Play The Part Of Myself": 27 Disgustingly Cruel Comments Famous Women Heard About Their Bodies

This post mentions eating disorders, addiction, and other mental health topics.

If you've been on the internet for more than three seconds in the last few years, you've probably seen that "skinny is back" — aka, all the forward momentum the body positivity movement made in the 2010s is seemingly eroding. Instead of being encouraged to accept ourselves as we are, we're faced with ads for weight-loss drugs everywhere from social media to the Super Bowl .

And the thing is, yes, you should make your own choices about your body, but the ever-evolving beauty standards will never let anyone be "thin enough." Even the most perfect-looking Hollywood star you can imagine has probably been told she still needs to lose weight.

Here are 27 famous women who were told they needed to lose weight for Hollywood:

1. In 2026, Margot Robbie told Complex's GOAT Talk , "Very, very early in my career, an actor I worked with — a male actor — gave me a book called Why French Women Don't Get Fat . It was essentially a book telling you to eat less. I was like, 'Woah, fuck you, dude.' He essentially gave me a book to let me know that I should lose weight. ... That was a very long [time ago]. I have no idea where he would even be now. Really back in the day."

And sadly, that wasn't the last time someone in the industry pressured Margot to lose weight! The producers of The Legend of Tarzan wanted her to diet for her role as Jane, but she refused. In 2016, she told Australia's TV Weekly , "It was my first time living in London properly, and I wanted to try every pub ... It's the 19th century [in the film] – if she's got a bit of weight on her, it's probably a good thing. I'm not going to look thin just for the sake of it."

2. In 2025, model Brooks Nader told Bustle , "If I didn't get a job, I would say to [my old agency], 'Can we get feedback from the client?' The direct feedback was I needed to lose 30 pounds. I didn't shed one tear over it. I don't feel bad for myself. I just say, 'The facts are they want me to lose weight. How can I achieve that?' The facts are that when I started GLP-1, my career took off. I'm not saying it's OK. I'm not saying it's right. I think everybody is different — but I lost 30 pounds, and I booked all the jobs."

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On Love Thy Nader , she increased her GLP-1 dose because she wanted "to be extra snatched" for her Maxim cover shoot, despite admitting that "the symptoms of the weight loss drug, they've gotten a lot worse recently." After a workout class, her sisters — who claimed she also "didn't eat last night and she didn't eat anything today" — found her close to unconsciousness in the tub. They were so concerned that they staged an intervention.

Brooks told the psychologist they brought in, "Why do you think I'm on GLP-1? Because every job I do, it's like you have to fit into a certain standard and a certain measurement, and they're straight up measuring my hips for all these new fashion jobs I'm getting into in Paris and Milan. There's requirements I don't meet. And I know how vapid this industry is, and if I say no to it, they're just going to pick someone else."

She also told Bustle , "The thing that I was so shocked about with the show was that I had so many people reach out to me saying, 'I'm also addicted to GLP-1.' I'm ashamed to talk about it because there's such a stigma around it. It's a crutch for me. I'm still on it. It's a crutch for me, too. It's not healthy. I should get off it; I'll be honest about that."

3. In 2021, Jordana Brewster told the Retaility , "Ten years ago, I was so concerned about, 'How does my stomach look? How does my butt look?' I call it the Maxim era and the FHM era of, 'Yes, you have to be talented, but you also have to be a certain size and not too fat and not too skinny.' There was so much pressure on actresses to look a certain way, and that's exhausting and such a waste of energy because instead of reading or focusing on your character, you're focused on 'How do I look right now, and is it perfect enough?' … I used to get notes, 'They're asking you to lose some weight,' and I would carry that for years, because how could you not?"

She added, "When I watch TV, I'm like, 'Wow. It's so refreshing that the women can wear stuff that's not [revealing].' They're not being treated as sex symbols unless that's important to their character. That's awesome, and it's reflecting life a little bit more. I think we're going in the right direction."

4. In 2023, Florence Pugh told Time that, when she filmed Fighting With My Family in LA, "The person I came back to was a female wrestler with muscles and big thighs who made her own name as a champion. I quite liked that because the last time I'd been there, I was told I needed to lose weight — it was just so not the person I wanted to be."

She continued to prioritize her own well-being over any film studio's ideas of what she should look be — even when she landed her Marvel role. In 2020, she told Elle UK , "When I got the job, I wanted to know what the regime was. I wanted to know whether it was them or me calling the shots. That was a big deal for me. I didn't want to be part of something where I was constantly checked on. And people making sure I was in the 'right' shape. That's not me at all."

5. In 2024, Sarah Snook told the Times that, early in her career, she heard these harsh words from a casting agent: "We don't really want you because you're a nobody, but the director and the writer think you're good for the role. So what we'll do is change all of you so that you're marketable: we'll whiten your teeth, darken your hair, we'll give you a personal trainer so you can lose weight and look the part."

She went along with it, thinking she had "to be all the things that aren't" her. One day on set, she "had the tiniest bit of chocolate cake," prompting a producer to lecture her in front of everyone. A costume designer stood up for her, but she was still "dying inside." She said, "The infantilizing of women, to not be able to make their own decisions, why would we do that to women?"

6. Amber Riley has dealt with suggestions from multiple directors at auditions to lose weight, but early in her career, she decided that, not only would she refuse to change her size, but she'd also decline roles that depicted plus-size women negatively. On a 2012 episode of MTV's This Is How I Made It , she said, "Hollywood is a very hard place to be in. It really is. Being the person I am, you know, the size I am, being a woman, being a Black woman, there's not a lot of roles for us. ... I couldn't understand why people couldn't accept me for who I was, and the rejection started wearing on my self-esteem. That's when my mom and I decided to stop. I'm not gonna conform and hurt myself and do something crazy to be a size two."

7. In her pre- Friends days, Jennifer Aniston was instructed to wear tights and a leotard to a callback. The day before, her agent told her he'd been "meaning to talk to" her about her body, and he discussed her figure as if he was talking about a car. In 1996, she told Rolling Stone , "My agent gave it to me straight. Nicest thing he ever did…. The disgusting thing of Hollywood – I wasn't getting lots of jobs 'cause I was too heavy."

She then lost 30 pounds on Nutrisystem, which she promoted on The Howard Stern Show .

8. In 2021, Alicia Witt told Page Six that, in '90s Hollywood, "It was expected and accepted that women could be spoken to and of in a certain way. It was considered no big deal to tell a woman, 'You should lose 15 pounds, you should lose 20 pounds.'"

She "can't even count" how many times she'd been advised to lose weight. She said, "It started when I was a young teenager, and coming from sources as seemingly innocuous as friends. The phrase 'the camera puts on 10 pounds' was something that women would say to their daughters and their sisters. ... I don't believe in labels or rules because they set you up for failure. And I know from my own story and my experience with food, my relationship with being in front of the camera and, and body image and all of those things that go back and forth from one extreme to the other just doesn't work."

9. In 2022, Jennifer Lawrence told Variety's Actors on Actors , "In Hunger Games , it was an awesome responsibility. Those books were huge, and I knew that the audience was children. I remember the biggest conversation was, 'How much weight are you going to lose?' Along with me being young and growing and not able to be on a diet, I don't know if I want all of the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can't because they're not a certain weight. And I can't let that seep into my brain either."

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Even winning an Oscar for Best Actress in 2013 didn't change the pressure she faced in the industry. She told Harper's Bazaar UK , "Somebody told me I was fat, that I was going to get fired if I didn't lose a certain amount of weight. They brought in pictures of me where I was basically naked, and told me to use them as motivation for my diet. It was just that. ... They thought that because of the way my career had gone, it wouldn't still hurt me. That somehow, after I won an Oscar, I'm above it all. 'You really still care about that?' Yeah. I was a little girl. I was hurt. ... If anybody even tries to whisper the word 'diet', I'm like, 'You can go fuck yourself.'"

However, she dieted for her role in Red Sparrow . In 2018, Jennifer told Vanity Fair , "I've always wondered what it would take to get me to really diet, to really be hungry, because I've never done it for a movie. For Hunger Games, they told me to lose weight, and then I discovered Jack in the Box. Red Sparrow was the first time that I was really hungry and disciplined. I can't be in character as an ex-ballerina and not feel like an ex-ballerina."

But after her dance sequences were filmed, she stopped dieting.

She said, "I can't work on a diet. I'm hungry. I'm standing on my feet. I need more energy. I remember having a meltdown, freaking out that I had eaten five banana chips."

10. Ballet prodigy Misty Copeland joined the American Ballet Theatre after high school. In her 2014 memoir Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina , she wrote, "When my second year in the corps came, I had another obstacle in my way: I was not the same ballerina that ABT had known before. I had finally had my first period and gained 10 pounds. Where there had been buds that could barely fill a bra, my breasts became full and voluptuous. They were so foreign to me that they were uncomfortably heavy, and I was startled when I looked in the mirror. My body had completely changed. Like myself, I soon realized that ABT, too, was searching for the little girl that I had been."

"In the corps, you're constantly switching and sharing costumes with other dancers in up to three different casts of the same ballets. There isn't time or money for the company to have costumes tailored to each individual dancer and body. That year, I was to perform in  Giselle  and  Swan Lake . But the costumes I was given, handed down from other dancers with their boy-like frames, were too tight in the chest. The wardrobe department would have to let a seam out here, another seam there, to make them fit. I was bewildered and embarrassed — I could feel my confidence start to slip away," she said.

She continued, "Finally, ABT's artistic staff called me in to tell me that I needed to lose weight, though those were not the words they used. Telling already-thin women to slim down might cause legal problems. Instead, the more polite word, ubiquitous in ballet, was lengthening . 'You need to lengthen, Misty,' a staffer said. 'Just so you don't lose your classical line.' I was five feet two and just over a hundred pounds. They suggested a nutritionist, but the company wouldn't pay for it... I was trying to survive on a corps member's salary — $679 a week — in New York , the most expensive of cities. And now I had this additional pressure to try and hire a specialist to help me lose weight."

She continued, "Like so many things that came late in my life — my introduction to ballet, a more mature body — I was also starting to feel another emotion most young people experience years earlier, often while they're still in high school: rebellion. 'Who do they think they're talking to?' I would mumble to myself after a long, stressful day. 'I have so much talent. Why do I have to be stick-thin?' My backup plan was to outdance everyone, to be so technically perfect and unbelievably lyrical in my movements that all anyone would be able to see was my talent, not my breasts or curves or the color of my skin."

"... It never crossed my mind to starve myself or purge what I had eaten. And gradually, I began to find my balance. It was far from instantaneous — in fact, I think it took me roughly five years to truly understand my body. I had breasts and muscles, but, yes, I was still a ballerina. And ABT, seeing how hard I had worked and how well I was performing, eventually stopped asking me to lengthen. They came to see things my way, that my curves are part of who I am as a dancer, not something I need to lose in order to become one," she said.

11. Carrie Fisher was told to lose 35 pounds for a role at age 60. In 2015, she told Good Housekeeping , "They don't want to hire all of me — only about three-quarters! Nothing changes: it's an appearance-driven thing. I'm in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say get younger, because that's how easy it is. ... I did it the same way everybody has to — don't eat and exercise more! There is no other way to do it. I have a harder time eating properly than I do exercising. It's easier for me to add an activity than to deny myself something. And when I do lose the weight, I don't like that it makes me feel good about myself. It's not who I am. My problem is they talk to me like an actress, but I hear them like a writer."

"We treat beauty like an accomplishment, and that is insane. Everyone in LA says, 'Oh you look good,' and you listen for them to say you've lost weight. It's never, 'How are you?' or 'You seem happy!'" she added.

Speaking at the 2024 Hay Festival , her friend James Blunt said, "I was with her the day before she died, when she came down to my house. And she'd been really mistreating her body, and she'd just got the job again of being Princess Leia in a new Star Wars movie. So she was really on a high and a positive, but they had applied a lot of pressure on her to be thin. She spoke about the difficulties that women have in the industry, how men are allowed to grow old, and women are certainly not in film and TV. And she really put a lot of pressure on herself, started using drugs again, and by the time she got on the plane, she had effectively killed herself. They say it was heart failure of some kind, but she had taken enough drugs to have a really good party."

Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson and Lucasfilm did not respond to the Independent 's request for comment at the time.

12. In 2024, Bryce Dallas Howard told People , "I've retired talking about my body. My focus is on what my body is doing, what my body is capable of. ... What I found was best is to just be in communication with folks early in the hiring process. What I would say is that, 'If you want to cast me, awesome. But if you think you want to cast me, but 20 pounds less me or 40 pounds less me, that's actually another actor. That's not me, and I'm not going to shame you in this moment about this. We need to have a real conversation here, because if you're hiring me, you're hiring me.'"

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"I had that conversation with Matthew [Vaughn, who directed Argylle ]. And Matthew, was like, 'Yeah, I'm hiring you .' ... I was even stronger because of it. I was able to do more because of it," she said.

13. Before Christina Hendricks was an actor, she pursued modeling. When she was 25 and a UK size 8 (a US size 4), her agent told her to lose weight. In 2011, she told the Guardian , "I thought, well, you might see curves there, but that's just a bone, so even if I lose weight, that's not going to change anything. That's how I look. That's my shape. Do the math."

She didn't lose weight, and in 2012, she was voted Esquire's "sexiest woman alive." A few months later, she told British GQ , "I've never quite felt like I fitted in. It's as if I was invisible before Mad Men . Now people come up and say, 'God, I love the show, I'm so-and-so,' and I'm like, 'I know, I had dinner with you three years ago.'"

14. In 2015, Margaret Cho told the Hollywood Reporter , "Sometimes we were told we were too Asian; sometimes we weren't Asian enough, which I never really got, and that I was too overweight to play the part of myself [on her sitcom All-American Girl] . I ended up hospitalized with kidney failure from not eating."

Then, appearing on the podcast How to Fail in 2026, she said, "I had always been fat, and I kind of accepted that. But being a comedian, I thought it didn't matter. You could sort of be fat, and it wouldn't make a difference. But I was shocked when suddenly, it did make a difference, and that I had to lose a lot of weight." For years, she took diet drugs, but eventually, she stopped and entered therapy and a 12-step recovery program, which helped.

15. In 2010, Amanda Seyfried told Glamour , "If I didn't run and work out, there's no way I would be this thin.... But I have to stay in shape because I'm an actress. It's fucked up, and it's twisted, but I wouldn't get the roles otherwise. If I'd been a bit bigger, I don't think they would have cast me for Mamma Mia! "

Then, in 2014, she tweeted , "Fun fact: I almost lost out on several roles in my career because I was overweight. Wrong, America."

16. In 2021, Casey Wilson told USA Today that, near the start of her career, a woman she worked for advised her to attend food addiction meetings. She said, "As sort of a gift, I really got very, very far in life before I even really realized that there are these standards of beauty for women, and so I just had a very free relationship with food and with eating. Ultimately, I was a bit shocked when my boss who – also it's just so inappropriate to weigh in on your employee's weight – when she commented, but I could even realize, at that time, it was her projecting her own food issues on me, which I think a lot of people do."

17. Rebel Wilson initially "wanted to be a Dame Judi Dench-type." After winning a scholarship from Nicole Kidman, she decided to pursue comedy, but she was quickly pigeonholed. In 2022, she told the Hollywood Reporter , "I was very much stereotyped into playing the fat funny girl, which I loved and which I played into and made millions of dollars doing. To me, that was not a negative whatsoever, but sometimes, when you transform yourself physically, it can make people look at you in a slightly different way. There can be benefits to that and people look at you and say, 'Oh, she's different now, maybe we should cast her in different projects.' Unfortunately, in Hollywood, people need to see you differently in order to cast you differently or give you new opportunities."

"There are always some directors who are not like that, and they can imagine a comedic actress being a serious actress, but others need to see it first. The physical transformation helped with that, for me, but it's too early to tell still," she said.

Then, in 2025, she told SiriusXM , "When I lost a lot of weight in 2020 — I lost, like, 70, 80 pounds — and from that point, I started getting offered more serious roles. And I did this British indie movie that was really serious about traumatic brain injury, and then now I'm playing Lady Capulet. So I think I kind of un-typecast myself by losing weight. I mean, I loved being the bigger, funny girl, loved playing Fat Amy in the Pitch Perfect movies. It was so cool, and that still is me in so many respects, but I guess people...started to see me a bit differently."

18. In 2013, Monica Potter told the Hollywood Reporter 's Emmy Roundtable about losing out on a role because of her postpartum body. She said, "I'd just had my last kid, Molly. She's 7 now. And my agents were like, 'OK, let's get out there again!' And it takes me a couple years to lose the baby chub. It just does. I gain about 60 or 70 pounds while pregnant. I'm not one of these girls hitting the yoga mat. I like to eat Cheetos, I'm not going to lie. And after I have the kid, I like to have some drinks. ... I was pushing like 180 pounds at the time. I'm like, 'You guys, I just don't feel physically fit yet.' I had my Spanx on and looked like a damn sausage, but I went in and thought I did a really good job."

"I got home and get the call from my agents. I'm like, 'I did good, right?' And they say, 'You did great. The problem is you're just…' 'I'm too fat.' 'Yeah, we're just going to wait a little bit.' I said, 'I already told you this!' The weight thing is a crappy thing in this town, you know? So I just ate some Cheez Whiz," she said.

19. In 2011, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley told Elle UK , "When I started modelling, I was definitely heavier. I was quite voluptuous in fact. I had a real baby face and baby fat. But I was a baby! I was told I had to get into better shape, but I'm quite stubborn, so I didn't … I can't remember a time where I really battled with my body, but I can remember being asked to lose weight and battling with the advice. It hurt me. Especially as my baby fat naturally melted away as I got older."

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20. Director Michael Bay allegedly told Kate Beckinsale that she'd have to lose weight if she booked Pearl Harbor . In 2016, she told The Graham Norton Show , "I don't think I fit the type of actress Michael Bay had met before. I think he was baffled by me because my boobs weren't bigger than my head and I wasn't blonde. ... I'd just had my daughter and had lost weight but was told that if I got the part, I'd have to work out. And I just didn't understand why a 1940s nurse would do that."

She added, "When we were promoting the film, Michael was asked why he had chosen Ben [Affleck] and Josh [Hartnett], and he said, 'I have worked with Ben before, and I love him, and Josh is so manly and a wonderful actor.' Then when he was asked about me, he'd say, 'Kate wasn't so attractive that she would alienate the female audience.'"

21. In 2016, Ashley Benson told Ocean Drive , "I was just told I was too fat for a part. I'm a size 2! I cried for 30 minutes, but then you have to let it roll off your shoulders, or it could cause a serious eating disorder. A lot of people in this industry hear they need to lose weight more times than they should. It does make you stronger, though. Because if you let that affect you, you can't be in this industry — you'd go crazy."

22. On the Hollywood Reporter 's 2019 Drama Actress Roundtable, Patricia Arquette said, "As I was getting older, there was still this pressure to look a certain way. I had an argument with one of the producers on Medium , who told me I should lose weight. I was like, 'This lady is a mother, she's married, she's got three kids. No.' But there's that expectation of being beautiful, of looking a certain way. Like, 'OK, you could be 40, but you've got to be a 40 who looks 30.' So, when I started to work on Escape at Dannemora and then again with The Act , I definitely felt some pushback."

Her team was scared that she'd "lose work." She added, "And in fairness, they'll have those conversations. 'What does she look like now?' 'Why don't you send us a picture of what she looks like right now?'"

23. Director Sofia Coppola suggested that her frequent collaborator Kirsten Dunst lose weight for her role in The Beguiled . However, when the actor declined, Sofia was understanding. In 2017, Kirsten told Variety , "It's so much harder when you're 35 and hate working out... I'm eating fried chicken and McDonald's before work [while filming in rural Louisiana]. So I'm like, 'We have no options! I'm sorry I can't lose weight for this role.'"

24. In 2016, Amy Schumer told The Jonathan Ross Show , "It was explained to me before I did [ Trainwreck ] that if you weigh over 140 pounds as a woman in Hollywood, if you're on the screen, it will hurt people's eyes. ... I didn't know that, so I lost some weight to do that, but never again."

However, in 2022, Amy went on the weight-loss drug Ozempic, which left her "bedridden" and "vomiting." On Howard Stern's SiriusXM show, she said , "I lost 30 pounds so quick. I looked great, but I couldn't lift my head off the pillow. So what's the point?"

Then, in a 2025 Instagram video , she shared that she was "having a really good experience" with a different weight-loss drug, Mounjaro.

25. In 2020, Tyra Banks told Us Weekly , "I think a lot of it had to do with my mother. You know, me being really, really skinny and awkward at one time and feeling unhappy about that. Her helping me to get through that and saying that my whole worth is not this skinny body, and one day it will gain some weight, and you know, everything's gonna be okay. And then me gaining weight, and then the fashion industry saying that was too big, and her being there and saying, 'They will not define you. You will not lose weight for these people. Let's figure out a different clientele. Let's figure out somebody that can appreciate who you are and who you're becoming.'"

26. While Hayley Atwell was filming Brideshead Revisited , Miramax execs allegedly told her to lose weight. However, a seasoned costar set them straight. In 2008, she told First Post , "I went round to Emma [Thompson]'s one night, and she was getting very angry that I wasn't eating all the food she was giving me. I told her why, and she hit the roof."

Furious, Emma phoned the producers the next day, threatening to quit if they made Hayley diet. So, they agreed to back down.

27. And finally, in 2017, Ashley Graham told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that, when she was scouted by a modeling agent at her local mall, he told her she should lose weight. She said, "The really hard moment was when my dad said, 'Honey, if an agent is telling you to lose weight, then maybe you should lose weight.' I was 15, standing in our living room, having a moment I will never forget. I never had a parent tell me to lose weight, and it hurt. Of course, he was thinking like a businessman. It's not that my father didn't love me. He wanted me to succeed."

However, her mom's words of wisdom challenged that advice: "You're like all of the women in our family. You're like so many women in the world." But unfortunately, Ashley still felt pressure to shrink herself. She said, "I had so many agents tell me that at size 18, I would never work or work again. I heard, 'Go home and lose some weight.' I tried every diet, from living on cabbage soup to fasting to Weight Watchers, and then came the frozen meals and the shakes. I realized that the more I took care of my body, eating what was good for me, then I felt happy and whole. It doesn't matter what size your hips are when you measure them. It's about, 'Do you feel good and healthy in those hips?'"

She also said, "Never before have you seen the fashion industry embrace so many types of people. There's the curvy girl, the short girl, the freckled girl, the girls with piercings and tats. It's fantastic. It used to be that in high school, girls would feel like, 'No one looks like me, talks like me, acts like me.' Now, different is in. You can be who you are. There is still a long way to go, but there is a movement toward acceptance."

The National Eating Disorders Association helpline is 1-800-931-2237; for 24/7 crisis support, text "NEDA" to 741741.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.

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