“Shallow Hal” led to tough times for the woman who played Gwyneth Paltrow’s body

CNN
—

Ivy Snitzer shares how her appearance in “Shallow Hal” led to some dark days for her.

in interview with the Guardian newspaper, Snitzer spoke of being an aspiring 20-year-old actress when she acted as Gwyneth Paltrow’s character double in the 2001 film in which Paltrow portrayed an obese woman.

While Snitzer said the cast and crew “treated me like I was really VIP, like they couldn’t make the movie without me” and that she felt “really comfortable”, she said, “I never thought the movie would be seen by millions of people.”

“It was as if the worst parts about obesity had been exaggerated,” Snitzer said of the film’s release. “And no one ever told me I was funny.”

She said that what followed was people accusing her of promoting obesity and approaching her on the street.

“I was really scared,” she recalls. “I was saying: Maybe I’m done with the concept of fame, maybe I don’t want to be an actor. Maybe I’ll do something else.”

After leaving Los Angeles and returning home to New York City to live with her parents, Snitzer said that within two years she was “starving to death”.

After gastric band surgery in 2003, Snitzer said, her band slid, “and she twisted — like dogs do and then die.”

She said she is unable to eat anything of substance without vomiting, and said she survives on sports drinks and diluted nutritional shakes.

“I was so thin you could see my teeth through my face, and my skin was all gray,” Snitzer said. “And I was very feisty all the time. I kind of alienated a lot of my friends. And my mother was dying too; it was bleak. Humans should not experience the bleakness of that particular period of my life.

Snitzer said her malnutrition meant doctors were unable to perform corrective surgery and further complications meant she had to undergo a gastric bypass, which now leaves her only able to eat very small portions.

Although having weight-loss surgery was more about the doctor telling her it would save her life than appearing in Shallow Hal, she now says that at the time of filming she felt insecure and insecure.

“I wasn’t body positive, because it didn’t really exist that way,” she said. “I was kind of ‘I’m positive’, because I was like, ‘I’m funny,’ and that’s good enough!”