400lb Actor Ethan Suplee ‘Got Fat’ to Get Work–Now He’s Lost Over 200lb & Gained Tons of Muscle

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From the archives: This story was last updated in January 2020.

To those who are familiar with actor Ethan Suplee, the image that comes to mind is probably of a loveable obese character from films like “Remember the Titans” and “American History X” or the sitcom “My Name is Earl.” But as much as fans loved his overweight screen presence in those roles, they probably wouldn’t recognize the actor now after he lost more than 200 pounds (approx. 91 kg).

How the young actor achieved this feat is a story worth telling.

Now, Suplee is shocking the entertainment world with his dramatic weight transformation and has created a podcast called “American Glutton,“ which will take listeners ”on his journey from obese to svelte and back again, examining what worked and what made him gain everything back plus 50 pounds.”

Suplee’s most recent transformation, having lost so much weight and put on tons of muscle, isn’t the first in his life. In fact, the 43-year-old actor estimates that he has gained and lost and gained and lost again over 1,000 pounds (approx. 454 kg) in the course of his life. Suplee explained in his introduction to American Glutton that he has had issues with food and weight since he was 5 years old.

As the actor said, “Outside of acting, my favorite things to do are diet and eat—I have a very complicated relationship with food.” When Suplee visited his grandparents in Vermont as a kindergartner in the early 1980s, they were surprised to see how big he was and immediately started to regulate his food and make him exercise.

“They weighed me and they were just shocked. I have no idea what the numbers were but their response was not good and they started limiting my food,” he recounts. “It became something that I was withholding from people.” Thus began his clandestine love affair with food, sneaking into the kitchen when no one was around.

After being put on diets by his parents that ultimately failed and resulted in massive weight loss and then gain, Suplee went on to become massively obese as a teenager and young adult. “Health wasn’t something I ever thought about,” he said on American Glutton. He also turned to drinking and drugs to help fill the void inside him that food could only ever momentarily cover over.

Actor Ethan Suplee in Hollywood, California, in 2002 ©Getty Images | David Klein

Unfortunately, his acting career didn’t encourage Suplee to stay healthy—in fact, it was the opposite. Becoming identified for big-bodied characters, each time he took a new role, he would gain back whatever weight he had lost. Suplee gives the example of his weight after “My Name Is Earl” ended in 2009, which went from over 400 pounds (approx. 181 kg) when he was Randy Hickey to 220 pounds (approx. 100 kg) after he discovered cycling as a hobby.

Wanting to get back into acting, he realized that his new, lower weight might be a problem. “At some point I was like, ‘Well f---, I’m just gonna get fat again because maybe it’ll be better for work,’” he said. The sad truth was that he was right.

Even more recently in 2017, Suplee told Entertainment Weekly’s “What to Watch” podcast that he nearly missed out on the role of D in the Hulu show “Chance” because “apparently [the producers] had proposed me a bunch of times, but the casting directors were like, ‘No, he’s too thin now,’” he said.

These days, Suplee isn’t working for any TV show, but rather, for himself. “I have my vain goal,” he said. “I’m going after that. I want to deadlift twice my weight.” With his new podcast and conversations with dieticians, dieters, and exercise professionals, Suplee hopes to make a space for discussion about food and weight, as America fights a nationwide obesity crisis.

As he posted on Instagram after the New Year, “There is no better time than right now to set some personal goals and attack those things that bar the way. Today is and will always be better than tomorrow.”