LETO: 'DALLAS BUYERS CLUB WEIGHT LOSS IS INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS'

Jared Leto showed just how much weight he had lost for the role in a photo shoot with Terry Richardson. Credit: Terry Richardson

The usually photogenic McConaughey lost a frankly ridiculous three and half stone to play redneck AIDS sufferer Ron Woodruff in new film ‘Dallas Buyers Club’.

Hi co-star shed two and half stone to play fellow AIDS victim Rayon – a transgender woman - and ended up weighing just eight stone.

READ: Jared Leto loses eyebrows for 'Dallas Buyers Club'

As you can see from our before-and-after photos below, they look radically different from their days appearing in rubbish rom-coms/selling out stadiums. They look really ill.

Jared Leto shed two and a half stone to play AIDS victim Rayon. Credit: Instagram/Pinnacle Films

Yahoo Movies UK caught up with the duo to talk about the health implications of losing so much weight for a movie role - something Tom Hanks reckoned gave him diabetes.

"I wouldn’t do it at the drop of a hat, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone and I think it can be incredibly dangerous” said Leto. “But it depends what your putting into your body and taking out of it as well."

PICS: Dramatic weight transformations

“I think people get concerned when you lose a lot of weight because you appear really ill and you’re fragile, and that’s always concerning to the people who are close to you. But it was a necessity,” he added. The actor “went method” and was in character throughout the whole shoot.

Matthew McConaughey also lost a lot of weight for his role in 'Dallas Buyers Club'. Credit: Roadshow Films/Pinnacle Films

McConaughey didn’t seem as bothered. “I did it in as healthy a way as possible, I worked with a nutritionist and gave myself four months to do it. I didn’t do it in 20 days. I did in four months and so I gradually lost weight,”

“I think it would be more dangerous to put on 50 pounds, than to lose 50 pounds. Ask me in ten years how it affected me. It’s taken a long time to come back, the coming back is more dangerous than the losing.”

PICS: What happens when method acting goes too far?

Losing so much weight also stopped Leto enjoying food after the film finished. “Your stomach gets so small that you can only eat a few tablespoons of something and you're full already. So you can’t go out and gorge, it doesn’t work like that. It would be fun to maybe at the end eat an entire pie, but you end up just looking at it.”

McConaughey didn’t have these issues. “I went and ate the ultimate cheeseburger. It was good.”

Orlando Parfitt writes for Yahoo Movies UK