Daniel Radcliffe Literally Starved Himself For a Role in $2 Million Survival Movie
It was the actor's most physically demanding role.
A poet, a corpse, a man with horns – these are the roles that Daniel Radcliffe did accept in order to finally dispel the image of a wizard boy in the eyes of his fans.
The movie Jungle was no exception – this time the actor put on the skin of a naive tourist who found himself face to face with wilderness.
The protagonist, Yossi Ghinsberg, is an accomplished traveler who spends most of his free time wandering exotic lands in search of adventure.
On a trip to Bolivia, Yossi meets a teacher and his friend and joins forces with them to travel together.
Then they meet an experienced jungle explorer who decides to take tourists on an adventure into the Amazonian forest in search of unknown tribes.
One of the main reasons to watch Jungle is Daniel Radcliffe's acting. After the Harry Potter movies that brought him fame, the actor moved into small indie projects, where he was able to noticeably hone his skills.
Ironically, this is the second Ghinsberg he's played – the first was Allen Ginsberg in the 2013 movie Kill Your Darlings.
And if the last time Radcliffe played a life-drunk beatnik, the actor had to work beyond hard for the role in Jungle.
Everyone remembers and knows well the crazy physical transformations of Christian Bale, and especially his extreme weight loss for the movie The Machinist, but the sacrifices made by Daniel Radcliffe are no less impressive.
The actor wanted to completely immerse himself in the state of his character, and in preparation for filming he ate an egg a day, then went on a complete hunger strike, which made his friends and relatives worry about the actor's health.
In the images from the movie, you can see the exhaustion that Daniel has brought upon himself.
The actor also admitted that one day he was expecting to finally eat a steak and a big bar of chocolate, but he got the news that the river had flooded and the set was washed away.
So he had to put his steak dream on hold for almost a week.
But that was not the only test. The actor nearly drowned while recreating Ghinsberg's experience crossing the river. This scene alone took two days to shoot.
Based on true events, Greg McLean's movie is a testament to the great acting talent of Radcliffe, who plays with real pain and anguish a man who, by the will of fate, has found himself far beyond the boundaries of civilization and his own mind.