INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Why Tom Hanks Is Calling Himself ‘An Idiot’: Actor Gets Candid About Diabetes

By Niki Cruz
Published on: 12:04 PST, May 18, 2016

Tom Hanks was once known for his extreme weight loss and weight gain on the big screen. Hanks was even awarded for his dedication, but now years later the Academy Award winner has regretted the risk he took with his body.

As the Inquisitr reported, Hanks revealed some time ago that he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2013. If left untreated, Type 2 can come with a series of serious complications, including the loss of limbs via amputation, blindness, hypoglycemia, and more.

In a recent interview with Radio Times, Tom Hanks opened up about his diagnosis and attributed having Type 2 diabetes to the risks he took with his weight. “I’m part of the lazy American generation that has blindly kept dancing through the party and now finds ourselves with a malady.”

He continued, “I was heavy. You’ve seen me in movies, you know what I looked like. I was a total idiot.”

Hanks went on to say that his diet wasn’t exactly stellar. “I thought I could avoid it by removing the buns from my cheeseburgers. Well, it takes a little bit more than that.”

That said, Hanks revealed that if he takes care of himself, he won’t have to live with diabetes forever, a fate that not all have once diagnosed.

As stated, back in 2013 Hanks revealed on the Late Night Show with David Letterman that he had diabetes. He attended the show to talk about his upcoming role in Captain Philips, but his appearance took on somewhat of a serious tone during the segment when he spoke about his diagnosis.

“I went to the doctor and he said, ‘You know those high blood sugar numbers you’ve been dealing with since you were 36? Well, you’ve graduated. You’ve got Type 2 diabetes, young man.’ And I said to (the doctor), ‘Well I’m gonna have Type 2 diabetes, because there is no way I was gonna weigh what I weighed in high school…. I weighed 96 pounds in high school.”

Extreme weight fluctuation for a role isn’t new, and it’s unlikely that Hanks was the first or will be the last person to tackle this. As we know, stars like Christian Bale, Jared Leto, Matthew McConaughey, Chris Hemsworth, and Jake Gyllenhaal have all gone through extreme weight fluctuations for roles, and some have even gone on to win awards for that kind of dedication.

In fact, Hanks was such an expert in losing weight and gaining it back that Matthew McConaughey asked the actor for advice when he got the role in Dallas Buyers Club.

That said, as exemplified by Tom Hanks, a lot of these huge risks come with repercussions. As universally praised as Christian Bale was, the actor admitted that losing 62 pounds for The Machinist and then putting it back on to play Batman wasn’t healthy. Most actors hire a nutritionist to monitor themselves when they undergo body transformations. For Bale’s look in the 2004 film, his diet consisted of a cup of coffee and an apple or a can of tuna.

For Leto, in order to play HIV positive Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club, he lost 40 pounds and then he stopped counting. Of the weight loss Leto told the Guardian, “It provides you with a certain amount of fragility, it changes the way you walk and talk and think and move. It changes you inside and out.”

[Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images]

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