Look at some of the most iconic celebrity transformations and you’ll see a pattern. Actors, athletes, and musicians all seem to reach peak physical form in record time, often with a celebrity trainer in their corner. Take Brad Pitt, for example. His six-pack during Fight Club became legendary and had plenty of guys wondering how he did it in just a few months. And if you’ve tried to replicate it in your own gym, welcome to the club.
But here’s the thing. While sub-10 percent body fat is impressive, and the heroin-thin ’90s look was a goal for plenty of guys, most modern-day trainers aren’t trying to grind you down to nothing. That type of physique isn’t sustainable anyway.
“Whether there are celebrities meeting a deadline or somebody getting ready for their wedding, it’s really the same type of sprint,” says celebrity trainer Roy Chan, NASM-CPT and founder of the concierge fitness company Roydian. “I think the mistake that people make going into it is that they don’t respect that the body needs this sort of balance and end up burning out.”
Trainers like Chan, who recently prepped Austin Butler for Enemies, take a smarter, more holistic approach to getting stars movie-ready. No starving, no crash diets, no magic supplements. The goal is a body that looks insane on camera but actually works in real life—a physique that can perform, recover, and still handle a burger or two once the shoot wraps.
“If it’s a very short sprint, like with Austin, we had 14 weeks,” he says. “We knew going into that that we were going to go into a little bit more of an extreme approach with the fitness, nutrition, and recovery. So that’s the thing that I do better than a lot of people, we really try to take a more holistic approach. It’s considered the whole context of healthy living and trying to manipulate those variables to get them to their desired physique.”
Chan also emphasizes that, when it comes to the celeb transformations people see in the media, those stars aren’t starting from zero. Most celebrities have been training for years, and the intense prep phase is temporary. After the deadline, they shift into a maintenance phase that’s sustainable and healthier for their bodies, allowing them to generally keep the look without burning out.
“After our initial sprint, we let them know that you’re now back on a maintenance phase,” he says. “We dial back some of the fitness, we dial up some of the nutrition, and we dial up more of the recovery.”
What most people don’t see is that the extreme phase is temporary, a push for the role or the red carpet. The real flex is what happens after, the maintenance, the recovery, the balance that keeps it sustainable. Because building a great body isn’t just about looking the part for a few months, it’s about being strong for the challenges real life throws at you.
