In a recent interview withThe Guardian, Ivy Snitzer, the woman who playedGwyneth Paltrow’sbody double inShallow Hal, opened up about her experience working on the film and revealed how the Jack Black comedy almost broke her.
The 2001romantic comedyShallow Halwas written and directed by the Farrelly brothersand starred Black as superficial man named Hal who is hypnotized into only seeing someone’s inner beauty. This leads to Hal falling for a 300-pound woman named Rosemary (played by Paltrow).
TheIron Manactor donned a fat suit for scenes that showed her face. However, Snitzer was the person who was used for close-up shots of the character’s body.
While chatting about her experience getting cast and working onShallow Hal, Snitzer noted that it wasn’t until after the film was released that she began to have negative experiences. Snitzer said:
“It didn’t occur to me that the film would be seen by millions of people. It was like the worst parts about being fat were magnified. And no one was telling me I was funny. It is not the worst thing in the world to be fat. I got really scared. I was like: maybe I’m done with the concept of fame, maybe I don’t want to be an actor. Maybe I’ll do something else. I just want to make people laugh; I don’t want to make people sad.”
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She added, “Out of all of the fat people in the world that they could have hired for that job, they hired me, because of my personality. Before, I had to fight really hard to be seen as a personality and not just my size. I wasn’t body positive, because it didn’t really exist that way. I was kind of ‘me positive,’ because I was like: I’m funny, that’s good enough! I hated my body the way I was supposed to. I ate a lot of salads. I had eating disorders that I was very proud of.”
Snitzer finished speaking about her experiencing working onShallow Halby saying, “I love that it’s a cool thing I did one time. It didn’t make me feel bad about myself. Until you know, other people started telling me I probably should have felt bad about myself. I wanted to be small and not seen. I’m sure that’s there, but I don’t ever remember consciously thinking about it. I was always my personality. I’ve always been a personality in this body.”
The outlet noted that in 2003, Snitzer had gastric band surgery and later experienced complications from the weight loss surgery. As a result, doctors were forced to perform an operation to remove parts of her stomach. Due to the complications, Snitzer is now only able to consume “weird tiny portions” and isn’t able to eat and drink at the same time.
In the past,Paltrow has also spoken about her experience filmingShallow Hal.At the time, theShakespeare in Lovestar said, “The first day I tried the fat suit on, I was in the Tribeca Grand and I walked through the lobby. It was so sad. It was so disturbing. No one would make eye contact with me because I was obese. I felt humiliated.”
