Many of our favorite movie stars may be using steroids in order to fit the characters that they play and we’ve got the pictures of their shocking body transformations to prove it.

In the world of Hollywood, reality and realism are often cast to the side in favor of entertainment and suspense. Machine gun-wielding men are often shown being taken out by an unarmed martial artist, secret agents drive fancy cars that are mounted with missile launchers, and ordinary people are suddenly transformed into heroes that are capable of taking on the world.

Even the movie stars themselves can create illusions in real life. They can create the image of being happily married when they are, in fact, in a miserable sham marriage where they’re constantly cheating on their significant other. They can also pretend that they don’t experience the same troubles and anxieties that average people go through on an everyday basis. And often, the actors and actresses that live these lies get away with it because they can hide behind their smiles, agents, and public images for years and years.

But one illusion that movie stars can’t mask is that of a dramatic body transformation. We’ve all seen the situation where an actor is practically a stick figure for one role then all of the sudden, a year later, they’re 40 or 50 pounds heavier and most of the weight gain is pure muscle. There’s no hiding a change like this but many people fail to question it because their mind becomes lost within the persona that the actor has taken on.

If an actor is supposed to be a pencil-necked scientist in one movie and then a buff, action hero for the next flick, most people don’t worry about how he went from skinnk geek to muscle-bound stud, because they are more worried about watching the show. But, if you really stop and think for a second, you’ll realize that such changes can be very, very suspicious. Even so suspicious that a person might start to wonder if the actors who are making these incredible muscular gains are taking steroids.

The thing is that very few people really think of their favorite stars as juicers. Maybe because the mainstream media strays away from suggesting that icons such as Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, or Sylvester Stallone would ever do something illegal to get ready for a film like use steroids.

But with the hectic schedules that actors have to run through during the filming of a movie, it’s almost impossible to believe that they aren’t using something to keep the physique that they might need during certain pictures. After all, they’ve got to read scripts, practice lines, go from location to location, get makeup applied, and go through take after take in the actual shooting of the movie.

With this type of routine, who has time to put on lots of muscle and maintain it the natural way during filming? Over-the-counter supplements, weight training, and eating lots of food just isn’t going to get the job done. Going beyond the brutal schedules that actors have to survive, even better evidence of possible juicing by movie stars might come from simply looking at the changes in their bodies from movie to movie.

One of the most recent questionable body transformations that I’ve seen is that of Hugh Jackman in “X-Men: The Last Stand”. While Jackman’s weight has fluctuated throughout most of his career depending on the role he has played, the change in his physique never seemed so dramatic as in The Last Stand.

You see, ever since Jackman first landed the role of Wolverine in the first X-Men film, he’s had to fit into a kind of roughneck persona. And it’s not easy for the man who is continually voted one of the world’s 50 sexiest men to slip into being the shaggy-haired, super rugged mutant that best describes Marvel Comic’s Wolverine character. Besides having to grow a mountain of facial hair, Hugh Jackman has also had to grow a mountain of muscle as well in order to match up to the comic book version of Wolverine.

This third and final installment to the X-Men series, which began shooting just a couple of months after Jackman was on the London set of the Woody Allen-directed comedy “Scoop”, saw Jackman have to make his biggest physique change yet. In the romantic comedy/murder mystery “Scoop”, Jackman actually has more of an average build that fits the suave, British aristocrat image of his character.

But a mere two months later at the set of X-Men 3, Hugh is the ripped, muscle-bound maniac that perfectly portrays the Wolverine character. While I won’t resort to making any accusations about how Jackman got from point A to point B in such a short of time, I will say that it is a little difficult to believe that he could make it there without an extra boost to his workout routine.

Going back a little further to 2005, an even more incredible display of muscular weight gain by an actor was when Christian Bale put on around 100 pounds in just one year in order to fill the Batsuit for the 2005 movie “Batman Begins”. This was revealed in an interview on The Charlie Rose Show when Bale explained how he had dropped 63 pounds for his role in the 2004 psychological thriller “The Machinist”.

Bale said that after reading the script for the movie, he felt that he needed to shed this abnormally large number of pounds in order to satisfy the look of his character, Trevor Reznik, who hasn’t slept in over a year and who has lost a ton of weight. When you see the pictures of Christian Bale in The Machinist, you can truly get a sense that he is telling the truth about losing 63 pounds.

However, the whole truth may not have been dished out with regards to his weight gain for Batman Begins as he was never really questioned any further about it by Charlie Rose in their interview. Bale not only gained 100 pounds in order to play Bruce Wayne, but he looked very fit throughout the entire movie after doing so.

And he was able to do this all in a year’s time between the shooting of The Machinist and Batman Begins. The common, naïve excuse that many give for such a huge increase in Bale’s muscle mass is the fact that he was so under his natural body weight that it would be easy to gain it all back and this is true to an extent. But to gain all of the weight back and then gain an extra 37 pounds over his previous weight in just a year, all while maintaining a very good build and not using any steroids... now that’s a bit difficult to believe.

The fact of the matter remains though that I don’t have any syringes from Hugh Jackman lying in my car or a bottle of Deca with Christian Bale’s name on it. I’m merely making observations and bringing up reasonable questions. However, there are plenty of other examples throughout the years of big-time actors like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Nicholas Cage, and Sylvester Stallone suspiciously packing on lots of muscle in a short amount of time so they can play different roles.

And all of this brings to mind an important thought: Why are athletes, as well as normal, everyday bodybuilders so viciously hunted for their use of steroids while the media and public turn a blind eye to the possibility that our big screen idols are, at times, using roids as well.

The truth may lie in the different feelings people have towards sports as opposed to the film-making industry. The majority of lawmakers have determined that steroid use in sports is cheating and creates an uneven playing field as opposed to the movie world where an ability to fit into a character role perfectly is what sets one person apart from another. Steroids are just looked at as an afterthought that helps the actor who has already won a part reach the look that he needs.

Plus, most people probably don’t care if an actor like Brad Pitt used something on the side to become an extremely tough badass as long as he can act and is able to entertain viewers. But it is almost impossible to deny the fact that juicing does go on in Hollywood as a necessity to achieve a level of muscularity in a certain short time frame. If you’re a movie fan, watch for any major body transformations by actors in the upcoming months and ask yourself: Are they using steroids?And then let\'s discuss it on the EliteFitness.com Bodybuilding Forums. Here\'s a few other discussion threads you might want to take a look at: