George Clooney won the Best Actor Academy Award for his role as a CIA operative in ‘Syriana’ (2005), yet he endured more pain than he had ever known while filming it. In one of the stunts he performed, something went wrong. A spinal injury left him in excruciating pain. Clooney was lying in a hospital bed completely immobilized, and suffering headaches on par with that of a stroke.
The injury kept him from the publicity rounds for ‘Ocean’s Twelve’, released in 2004. In the end, surgery was able to correct the injury, but he still gets headaches occasionally. To prepare for the role of agent Robert Barnes, Clooney shaved back his hairline to age himself. He doesn’t look back fondly on filming the Oscar-winning role. “It wasn’t the fault of the film or director”, he explained. “It’s just that everybody has that year where you age a decade, and this was that one for me.”
Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley, who said he was timid about getting the role of Gandhi, also said he had little time to prepare for it. “I was offered the role in September, left for India in October and started shooting in November,” Kingsley recalls. Once he arrived at the land of the Mahatma, he completely immersed himself. “I practiced yoga in the morning...In the evenings I did my shoots and, in the night, I took spinning classes,” Kingsley explained.
Learning to spin thread with an authentic wooden spinning machine, Kingsley thought, would be better than trying to fake it on automated spinning machines. Beyond those efforts, Kingsley shaved his head and lost 20 pounds, authentically, by abiding by Gandhi’s vegetarian diet. He also practiced meditation and studied yoga. These great efforts are what eventually won him an Oscar for Best Actor.
J.K. Simmons
J.K. Simmons’s career includes playing characters in films as well as TV. His face may be familiar to you if you’ve watched Justice League, Law & Order, Oz, and Whiplash, which was by far one of his best moments on screen.
J.K Simmons took home more than an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 'Whiplash', playing an abusive music teacher with unorthodox methods of bringing the best out of an ambitious student.
Matt Damon
Award winning actor Matt Damon was first noticed by film critics and cinema fans when he starred in Good Will Hunting. He co-wrote the film with Ben Affleck and went on to win an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for it.
Damon portrayed the title character in the film and stepped into the shoes of Will Hunting, a math wiz taken under the wing of a university professor and subsequently learns to better cope with his circumstances and the people in his life.
Matthew McConaughey
Alright, alright, alright... Matthew McConaughey doesn't need much introduction, so we're gonna go ahead and and talk about one of his best performances in the last few years. Ron Woodroof is a Texas AIDS patient given 30 days to live, in the brilliant film 'Dallas Buyers' Club'. To look like a man emaciated from HIV, he not only cut his caloric intake but also burned 1,800 additional calories a day with heavy exercise.
To make sure his weight loss was as healthy as possible, he met up with a nutritionist. His incredible performance won him both an Oscar and a Golden Globe, as well as many other awards and nominations.