Aussie movie star Guy Pearce didn't have to struggle to get into shape for new action film Lockout - he was a teenage bodybuilding champion.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert star admits he became gym obsessed in his mid-teens and started wowing with his muscles.
He says, "I entered a competition and I won. I was 16 and it was the Australian bodybuilding championships... My mom used to go to the gym because she would do aerobics and swim, so I would go with her and do a bit of weights.
"The gym was owned by former Miss Universe Beth Lopez, who was a Miss Australia winner in bodybuilding, and when this competition was coming up, her husband Joe suggested I enter because I was quite a thin kid, so if I put on any muscle, you can see it... I entered and I won. I was meant to go into the nationals but we had already booked a holiday to Fiji so I went on that instead. I wouldn't have won.
"I don't think I would've really followed a bodybuilding path. But I was actually fascinated in a creative way, the fact that you can change the shape of your muscle was fascinating to me; it was like sculpture."
And the muscle memory came back very quickly when he had to bulk up to play an action man in Lockout: "When we decided the character Snow should be buff and more manly than I look, I was able to draw on past training regimes.
"A month before filming I hit the gym and through the course of the film, I was working out as well four or five days a week after shooting. I buffed up quite a bit. I put on 20 pounds."
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