Mark Wahlberg’s Lips Went Blue Due To Strict Liquid Diet For ‘The Gambler’ Movie Role

Mark Wahlberg lost an astonishing 60 pounds for his role in the upcoming new movie thriller The Gambler, the most weight the actor has ever needed to lose for a film.

Us Magazine caught up with Wahlberg at the AFI Fest premiere of the film in Hollywood on Monday, where he shared with them some of his weight loss secrets.

“I went from 197 to — the lightest I’d ever been in a movie was in ‘Boogie Nights,’ I was 138 — so I wanted to beat that. I beat it by a pound, so 137. I was losing weight while we were shooting the movie too so continuity kind of went out of the window.”

Of course, producers of the new movie were thrilled that Mark Wahlberg was able to lose weight so fast and fit the role perfectly, although they weren’t too pleased about the fact that his lips looked a permanent shade of blue while on set, Wahlberg shared.

“No energy, no nutrition, and the studio, there was a complaint about that, that my lips were always looking blue. What the f**k do you want me to do? I haven’t eaten anything! If you make them red, I’m going to look weird, like I’ve got lipstick on, so it is what it is.”

Seeing as Wahlberg only had four months to drop all the weight for the movie, he needed to take on a drastic diet and workout plan, as he told Us, “Once I get into it I can’t stop, so it’s a 24 hour, 7 days a week thing. I stopped eating food for the first 6 weeks and just had small liquids throughout the day, then I was exercising two or three times a day.”

Even though the movie producers were happy with Wahlberg’s radical and rapid weight loss, his wife and kids were not happy at all.

“They didn’t like it,” he admitted. “My wife was a little freaked out I was losing so much weight. I’m training now for this other thing and my daughter’s like ‘You should quit your job, you should become a bodybuilder.'”