For Jennifer Garner, the set of ‘Dallas Buyers Club‘ was not just a place of brilliant acting. It was a front-row seat to what she calls a painful and harrowing transformation of her co-stars that left her deeply disturbed.
In a series of candid interviews, Garner has opened up about the brutal physical toll the 2013 film took on Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. The pair won Academy Awards for their roles, but Garner revealed the dark reality behind their acclaimed performances.
Matthew McConaughey Starvation Diet and 500 Calories a Day
Garner talked about everything from 500-calorie-a-day diets to Leto’s unusual coping mechanism of going to Whole Foods just to smell the food. “It reminds me how much I loathed watching Matthew and Jared waste away,” Garner told reporters. “Ugh, this was a painful movie to make. God, I had a front row seat to some incredible performances.”
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The actress shared the grueling details of McConaughey’s starvation diet. He dropped from 185 pounds down to a skeletal 135 pounds. “Matthew had done a very disciplined diet that was maybe 500 calories a day or something, but it started with tapioca in the morning, and then he would have a can of tuna kind of broken up,” Garner explained. “But it was very specific, and it was truly awful to see, especially because there was no money. So craft service was like a box of donuts, and you could smell them.”
Garner’s maternal instincts kicked in on set. “I just remember being like, ‘Somebody move the donuts away from these guys,‘” she recalled.
Jared Leto Went to Whole Foods Just to Smell Food
The actress also had equal concern for Leto, who played a transgender woman with AIDS in the film. “I remember walking out of the hair and makeup trailer and waiting for Jared to come down the stairs of the trailer because I just wanted to be there in case he passed out on the way down,” Garner said.
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To cope with his extreme hunger, Leto developed a heartbreaking ritual. “He was going to Whole Foods after work and smelling broccoli,” Garner revealed. “I don’t know how he did it. He just didn’t eat.”
‘Dallas Buyers Club’ Oscar Wins and Garner Final Thoughts
Despite the dark and difficult filming process, the film became a critical and commercial success. It won McConaughey and Leto their first Academy Awards.
For Garner, the memory remains a mix of artistic admiration and deep personal distress. “They didn’t eat. Jared looked like he was going to blow over in the wind,” she told Jimmy Kimmel, adding with her characteristic humor, “[And then] Matthew just ate a few hundred calories a day.“
In the end, ‘Dallas Buyers Club‘ gave the world two of the most searing performances of the decade. But for Jennifer Garner, it will always be the film where she stood at the bottom of a staircase, praying her co-star wouldn’t pass out on the way down, and where the smell of donuts and the scent of broccoli became symbols of just how far artists will go to disappear into a role.
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