Denzel Washington, an action star, has lost more than 30 pounds in the blink of an eye, and sources say his friends are concerned that the ageing, two-time Oscar winner is wasting away in a desperate attempt to regain his hunky looks from his youth.
RadarOnline.com can reveal that the 6-foot-1 star, who celebrates his 70th birthday on December 28, gained 35 pounds by eating cake and milkshakes in preparation for his role as a pot-bellied sheriff in the 2021 film The Little Things, and the flab stuck, according to a pal.
“Denzel found that at his age, his metabolism has slowed, and those pounds stuck around for like forever” , a friend said.
“But he seems to have melted it away overnight and he is not telling how he did it.”
A friend said that the actor’s desire to look good for Shakespeare’s noir-romance play Othello this spring on Broadway, which is about a jealous Moor warrior who thinks his young wife has cheated on him. This is what caused him to gain weight so quickly.
“Doing movies, you can use the trick of the cameras for how you look, but on a live stage, it is all laid bare,” he said.
“Denzel has an actor’s ego and he could not stand the thought of people looking at him like he is a fat old man when they come to see him!”
A well-known dietitian in New York, Stuart Fischer, told Washington that he might be putting his health at risk by losing weight so quickly.
“Roller-coaster dieting is just not good for the human body,” said Dr. Fischer, who has not treated Washington. “Neither is using quick-fix weight loss treatments.”
Denzel slimmed down, which seems like a good thing, but he needs to be careful about how he stays at a healthy weight in the future.
But one person said they thought the weight loss was due to ego: “He wants to be seen as the handsome leading man he is been for 35 years!”