Jonah Hill has opened up about his drastic weight loss. Photo / Getty Images
Jonah Hill has opened up about his drastic weight loss. Photo / Getty Images
Growing up as an overweight teenager appears to have been a tormenting time for Jonah Hill.
The actor is on a promotional campaign in support of his latest film titled Mid90s, a passion project which explores Jonah's childhood.
And though he's now able to demand a whopping salary for the films he participates in, life wasn't all that easy for the 34-year-old who dealt with bullies and critics throughout his childhood and well into his early years as an actor in Hollywood.
In an episode on The Ellen Degeneres Show on Friday, the 21 Jump Street star publicly acknowledged his struggle coming to terms with his own identity from an early age.
"I came up in goofy comedies and this kind of curly haired, overweight kid and everyone had their own opinion on what I should be," Jonah told the talk show host as he read an excerpt of his free of charge Inner Children magazine.
"How they could speak to me, how they could treat me…"
The California native went on to mention that he hadn't understood the severity of the hurtful actions of others and how it had affected him until he started filming his latest film.
"I became famous in my late teens and then spent most of my young adult life listening to people say that I was fat and gross and unattractive," he recalled in front of the studio audience.
"And it's only in the last four years writing and directing my movie, Mid90s, that I've started to understand how much that hurt had got into my head."
Speaking further on his weight gain struggle, Jonah tells Ellen that he thinks everyone has a particular past they wouldn't necessarily want to remember.
In saying that, however, his darkest moments were caused upon people who made him feel anything but the outgoing teenager who loved skating and listening to hip hop music.
"I really believe everyone has a snapshot of themselves from a time when they were young that they're ashamed of," the MTV Movie Award winner added.
"For me, it's that 14-year-old overweight and unattractive who felt ugly to the world, who listened to hip hop and wanted so badly to be accepted by this community of skaters."
Jonah's directorial film – based in the '90s – sees a 13-year-old boy navigate his way through Los Angeles while growing up in a toxic household and befriending a group of friends at a skate park.
He recently told Slate that his inclusion of sometimes profane and offensive language was key to getting the movie right.
"I think people who grew up in that time period are having to unlearn a lot of messed-up lessons that were learned back then," he told the publication.
"We're talking about language that is ugly, behavior that is ugly. I felt it was more important to tell the truth and have that be the lesson, and show it in its ugliness, than to go back and change history."
