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Jonah Hill has never shied away from discussing how much fame and public opinion have affected his body image.
“The media has been really cruel about my weight,” the two-time Oscar nominee said in the 2022 documentary Stutz. “It was a bit of a game for everyone to hit me where it hurts. It made me so defensive – I’m so angry, almost like I’m expecting someone to say something.
The actor has dropped 40 pounds. In 2011, he overhauled his diet and by “running physically instead of running emotionally,” he told Kidd Craddick that morning.
More than a decade later, Hill made headlines again when she was spotted filming the comedy Cutoff in October 2025.
From transforming for movie roles to learning self-acceptance, here’s everything Jonah Hill said about his weight and health.
Hill was told to lose weight as a child
Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank
Hill became vulnerable with Stotz, telling therapist Phil Stotz that he had held a lot of shame about his weight since he was a child.
“When I was a kid, exercise and diet were framed to me as, ‘There’s something wrong with the way you look,'” he said in the documentary. “But from a mental health standpoint, there was never a time when they didn’t give me exercise or diet suggestions.”
Hill also sat down in the film with his mother, Sharon Feldstein, and opened up about how being told to lose weight as a child made him feel unacceptable. He later added that he no longer blamed her for those feelings and that it helped open up their relationship.
He’s previously transformed his body for a role
©Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection
After he gained weight for his role in War Dogs, Hill asked his 21 Jump Street co-stars for advice on how to “get in better shape.”
“I called Channing Tatum and said, ‘Hey, if I eat less and go to the trainer, will I be in better shape?’ “He said it when he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in August 2016. “And he said, ‘Yes, you make fun of Motherf—-, you of course, it’s the simplest thing in the whole world.’
Hill kept a daily food journal (and accidentally sent it to Drake)
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Heeding Tatum’s blunt advice in 2016, Hill started working with a nutritionist, who asked her to keep a food log. One night, the actor accidentally shot off an email to the wrong recipient.
“He didn’t return the email, so I looked back at the message that was sent about an hour later. It must have been DR because it was a doctor. ‘So Drake, I don’t really know, I met him once. He got an email from me that said something like, ‘Yogurt, salad, chicken.’ And then there’s just “Yonah” at the end of it. ”
He added that Drake didn’t respond to emails and joked that the rapper was “on people’s laundry lists.”
He did 100 push-ups a day in 2011
Taylor Hill/Film Magic
In a September 2011 interview with Kidd Kraddick on Morning, the Superbad star revealed that a friend encouraged him to do 100 push-ups a day.
“I started at 10 and then I like working my way and now I do 100 every day,” Hill said.
The actor told GQ in August 2021 that he started practicing jiu-jitsu in his mid-30s and surfs every day.
Hill said she struggles with body image issues
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Hill has opened up about facing body criticism since entering Hollywood at a young age. When appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in October 2018, the Maniac actor read an excerpt from his magazine, Inner Children.
“I truly believe that everyone has a snapshot of themselves from an embarrassing young age,” Hill continued. “To me, it’s a 14-year-old overweight, unattractive kid who listened to hip-hop and wanted to be accepted so badly by this community of skaters.”
He added, “Honestly, it took me a long time, until now, to come out as a way to speak to the world in a way that represents who I am as a person, an artist, a heart, what I represent, how I want to speak, who I am as opposed to me actually trying to do something that I’m not.”
He opened up about learning to ‘love and accept’ himself in 2021
Taylor Hill/Film Magic
In a since-deleted Instagram post, Hill opened up about how his journey to self-acceptance was “made worse” by “years of public mockery” at the hands of “press and interviewers.”
“I don’t think I took my shirt off in a pool until I was in my mid-30s, even in front of family and friends,” he wrote in February 2021.
The Superbad actor pointed out that even the media posting photos of him wearing clothes on the beach can “take that smile” off his face.
Then in August, he got a shoulder tattoo that included the words “Body Love.”
