Alyson Stoner, the former child and teen actor from “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “Camp Rock” who also had an acclaimed career as a dancer in the “Step Up” movies and various Missy Elliot music videos, is publishing a memoir this month about the highs and lows of her Hollywood career. In a new excerpt published by Vanity Fair, she reveals the brutal diet and exercise regimen she inflicted on herself amid an eating disorder to win the role of Katniss Everdeen in “The Hunger Games.”
“Katniss was the ultimate role and the ultimate strong female lead: purpose-driven, sharp, athletic, and, thankfully, a heroine whose capacities were more important than physical beauty. But the role was playing with fire for me,” Stoner writes. “Katniss was characteristically thin — not starving, but small enough to reflect growing up in an underfed district — and muscular from hunting and archery. If I was going to devote myself to checking every box of the character description, I had to commit to strenuous training without fully succumbing to my eating disorder.”
Stoner admits as a former Disney teen star that headlining “The Hunger Games” was a “long shot,” but she held onto hope because it wasn’t too “unrealistic for a director to pluck an unexpected person from the crowd and make them a star, either.”
At 17 years old, Stoner got approved to attend “a world-renowned medical weight loss camp” to help her get into Katniss Everdeen shape even though she was already drastically underweight. The program consisted of “two weeks of seven hours of daily exercise on a calorie deficit.”
“I didn’t recognize the irrational exceptions that doctors (and society) made for Hollywood, because it was all I knew,” Stoner writes. “Even at 10 years old, I had to get a medical physical before flying to film ‘Cheaper by the Dozen,’ and an industry-referred doctor discovered a heart murmur. Upon sharing that I had dizzy spells and blackouts, he didn’t mark anything on my file because it ‘might stop the production company from letting you work.’ I followed the doctor’s orders and ignored the murmur like he did, deducing that Hollywood must exist above medicine, above the law, and even above common sense.”
“Doctors and trainers should’ve never permitted an underweight minor to do seven hours of fourteen-mile hikes, heavy lifting, and high-intensity cardio,” she continued about her “Hunger Games” audition prep. “But all I had to say was that I was training for an acting role. They assessed me as mentally stable and opened the door. Then, on off days, I took myself (and all my mental stability) bouldering in a nearby forest to build tactical prowess like Katniss.”
The brutal prep process Stoner put herself through backfired when she did not land the role. She reveals in the memoir that she was the last actor to audition for Katniss. While she was told to prepare three scenes from the script, one got cut in the audition room. She was quickly hurried out of the room with no feedback after she finished reading and waited days for the news to arrive as her “body entered starvation mode and screamed for calories.”
“After a week [of waiting to find out], I teetered past the edge of deprivation into a full-body emergency alarm for food,” Stoner writes. “I willed myself to slowly approach the pantry. I spread a modest amount of peanut butter on saltine crackers. 350 calories will be all right to add. But I was famished. An hour later, I rationed out a packet of sugar-free instant oatmeal and added protein powder. This should be enough. My stomach growled for more.”
Stoner ended up going into a full binge, downing a “pint of ice cream from the back of the freezer” and “wolfing down chips, popcorn, chocolate bars, and whatever was within reach until my jaw was too sore to chew. With pants unbuttoned, I completed the biggest binge of my life and faded into delirium on the couch.”
“Twelve hours later, I awoke to a revolting migraine and lethargy. Somehow, I was still craving sugar. But before I could think about spoiling another day, I had to face the self-inflicted damage of the night before,” she continues. “You’re probably up three pounds, but it’s your fault and you’re going to have to fix it. When I stepped onto the scale, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. What the hell? I gained back every single pound I lost over two months? In a few hours?! It was my worst nightmare. My body had held on to every morsel of food and liquid ounce, unsure when it would be fed again. All my progress was erased.”
Soon after the call came in from “The Hunger Games” team informing Stoner that she was not getting the role of Katniss Everdeen. She concluded: “I sat on my bed with vacant eyes and a distant mind. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
Stoner’s memoir, “Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything,” publishes Aug. 12. Head over to Vanity Fair’s website to read “The Hunger Games” excerpt in its entirety.
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