In "The Cut", Orlando Bloom portrays a retired boxer who wants to return to the ring. His character undergoes not only exhausting training but also an extreme diet - all in order to prepare for a fight in Las Vegas within an impossibly short timeframe. During the film's promotion, the actor spoke about his preparations.
Orlando Bloom on His Transformation for the Role of a Boxer
For the role, Orlando Bloom committed to a three-month training regimen accompanied by an extremely low-calorie diet. As he explained, he lost nearly 30% of his body weight during the preparation:
I literally stopped eating three months before we started shooting, that’s when I was at my lightest. I dropped 52 pounds [about 23.5 kilograms] and weighed around 185 pounds [about 84 kilograms] when we began filming. I lost a lot of weight, but it was also mentally challenging
- Bloom said in an interview with Variety at the Toronto Film Festival.
I was very hungry. During the last three weeks in London before we started filming, I only ate tuna and cucumbers. I honestly thought I was going to die. It was also difficult for my whole family
- Orlando Bloom admitted.
The shoot was a challenge not only for the actor but also for the entire crew. The story of The Boxer (his name is never revealed in the film) and his preparations for the fight is, in fact, a tale of severe eating disorders and body dysmorphia, conditions the character has struggled with for years. The film includes shocking scenes where Bloom’s character vomits, starves himself, recalls his troubled past, and physically punishes himself. He also attempts the impossible—his character is supposed to lose around 15 kilograms in a week (the boxer he replaces in the ring died from dehydration, the quickest and most dangerous method of weight loss for competitions).
"He looked like a dried raisin" - recalled Caitriona Balfe, who plays the Boxer’s partner in "The Cut"
The production was filmed in reverse - completed within a short 25-day schedule, but they started with the end of the story. In an interview with Deadline at the Toronto Festival, Orlando Bloom explained that this approach was advised by the nutritionists on set:
We shot the film backward. I started at my lowest weight - a dietitian told us we had to do it this way because by the end, I wouldn’t be able to function. So, we filmed it in reverse, and by the end, I could eat normal desserts and such.
It was an additional challenge for the entire crew - filming in reverse, compared to the usual script flow, required the director and actors to think differently about the characters:
Normally, when you shoot a film, your characters are progressing toward something. Here, we had to reverse that process, which was a challenge
- said director Sean Ellis. The film does not yet have distribution or a release date in Poland.
