The Celebrity Truth

One of the biggest hits on the web this week was 50 Cent’s dramatic weight loss photos, with the rapper dropping 54 pounds to play a character who battles cancer in the movie Things Fall Apart.  50′s come out and explained the process and how the role was motivated by a friend’s battle with the disease.

“It’s myself, Mario Van Peebles, Ray Liotta, Lynn Whitfield, and it’s a project that I wrote, produced and financed myself,” 50 explained. “It’s about a Heisman hopeful who could possibly be going to the league and everyone is assuming he’s gonna make it, and then he’s hit with an illness. I had a friend of mine who actually experienced cancer, and it’s what motivated me to write this screenplay. You don’t have to make everything personal, but that project was. That’s why I committed to playing a role where I lost 54 pounds. I had to discipline myself enough until I achieved it but … I got it.”

Because the movie was produced by his own film company, it gave him the freedom to stop production to drop the weight via a liquid diet and daily treadmill sessions.

“There’s not a whole lot of actual situations where a studio will break for four months to allow the talent to make the transition they allowed Tom Hanks to make in Philadelphia,” he said. “You gotta be Tom Hanks for that to happen.”

Photos: ThisIs50.com.

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