Ben Affleck’s sidekick in ‘Live by Night’ gained 40 pounds for the role
Chris Messina plays a fit, handsome doctor on 'The Mindy Project,' but he packed on the weight for Ben Affleck's newest film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jMSMLN11i4
Actor Chris Messina is a classic “that guy” kind of actor—a face you may know but whose name you may not. He’s held supporting roles in Argo and The Newsroom, and he’s perhaps most recognized for playing Cambridge native Mindy Kaling’s frenemy/occasional love interest Danny Castellano on The Mindy Project. But Messina is almost completely unrecognizable in Ben Affleck’s newest film Live By Night because, as he told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show Wednesday, he gained a good amount of weight for the role.
“I put on 40 pounds,” Messina told Colbert. “It was fun, it was a lot of fun.”
Live By Night, based on the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name, stars Affleck (who also wrote and directed the film) as Joe Coughlin, a small-time criminal who runs afoul of the Italian and Irish mobs and his police chief father in 1920s Boston.
In the novel, Lehane describes Messina’s character, Coughlin’s right-hand man Dion Bartolo, as “round,” so Messina pounded bagels and beer for months to prepare for the film.
“I would have a beer by the bedside table,” Messina said. “And when I woke up in the middle of the night, I would just chug the beer.”
Live By Night hits theaters January 13.
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