Ethan Suplee claims to have lost 141kg after an 'awful' encounter in a plane. Photos / Supplied, Instagram
Ethan Suplee claims to have lost 141kg after an 'awful' encounter in a plane. Photos / Supplied, Instagram
Ethan Suplee, one of the stars of the critically-acclaimed 2000 film Remember the Titans, has undergone a stunning body transformation, dropping over 90kg.
In the classic sports film, Suplee plays an overweight member of the college football team from TC Williams High School, dealing with racial integration of schools and particularly in its football team.
Suplee played a player named Louie Lastik, and is remembered primarily for the locker room scene when he sings Ain't No Mountain High Enough.
The now 43-year-old Suplee is also known for performances in American History X and playing Randy in My Name Is Earl as well as Martin Scorsese's 2013 comedy Wolf of Wall Street, with his large physique having made him easily recognisable.
Today, Suplee looks completely different to the chubby actor from 20 years ago, and recently showed off his incredibly ripped body on Instagram.
Suplee's weight has seesawed over the years, with the actor losing plenty of weight several years ago by cycling and entering races - only to be left with saggy skin on his body.
Since then, Suplee has been bulking, and the work has undeniably paid off.
It tracks the star from when he was an aspiring plus size model and sets out to look at the current obesity crisis, talking with experts to regular people as well as the diets he's been on over the past two decades with his seesawing waistline.
In his debut episode, Suplee said he had been overweight his entire life, put on his first diet at the age of five after his grandparents were "shocked at the state of me".
But not understanding, he learned to sneak extra food and began to hate exercise after being taken on a walk every morning, bringing the habits he'd learned back to his life in California.
He passed 90kg by the age of 10 and went on a diet but his mother pulled him off it —and his weight ballooned again.
Ethan Suplee passed 90kg by the age of 10. Photo / Supplied
Asked about being teased about his weight early in his life, Suplee said if he was bullied, he'd fight his way out of it.
"I do have one memory to this day of being 10 or 11 and walking past a preschool and having little kids — who obviously I couldn't fight — saying 'oh my god he's fat'," he said.
"But I only have one single memory of that coming from little three or four year old kids who were off limits of punching."
Suplee tried several different diets but it came down to a meeting with actor Jim Caviezel on a plane, who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.
Suplee said he was "getting really strange vibes" from Caviezel who came over at some point.
"He started talking to me about he and his life emulates Jesus Christ and if you don't do that, you're going to go to hell and the gist of it was that I was not emulating Jesus Christ," he said.
"It was the first conversation of that nature that I've ever had. No one had ever talked to me like that, no one had ever said 'look at yourself, you're going to hell'.
"He wasn't mean but it was a thing I had not experienced. I remember landing and going 'that was an awful experience'.
"I was so knocked on my a*** by this conversation that I was like 'I don't want to ever allow someone to feel like they can talk to me that way again'. He was probably coming from a place of love, I feel no ill will towards him and the f***ing conversation worked because I then went on a diet."
It paid off as he had lost 60 pounds (27kg) and trying every diet under the sun, saying he went from 530 pounds (240kg) to 220 pounds (99kg)
In 2017, Suplee told Entertainment Weekly he started riding a bicycle "six to eight hours a day, six days", riding up to 160km a day, but he was soon snapped out of it.
"My wife said 'this isn't a job'," he told the podcast.
"My Name is Earl had been cancelled and I thought 'I'm just going to ride my bike now'. "And after a couple of years of that, she said 'you have to go work, we're not rich people, you need to get a job'.
"I kind of went back and people said 'we don't know who you are, you're not what we were enjoying before'."
He then bulked up before putting the weight back on in order to get more work.
Now he's dropped the weight again, with the star saying he has gained and dropped "about 1000 pounds (450kg)" in his life.
