Daniel Radcliffe reveals the 'unsafe' way he lost weight for Jungle movie

Daniel Radcliffe dropped a stack of weight for his role in the upcoming survival movie ‘Jungle’, and by his own admission, did so in a pretty daft manner.

Speaking on the ‘Lorraine’ show on ITV (via the Daily Mirror), he revealed that he did not – as has been reported – eat just one egg per day to get himself prepared.

But what he did do wasn’t much better.

“I ate just one chicken breast and a protein bar for two weeks before the shoot in order to look thin,” he said.

“It’s not recommended, it’s a really unsafe way to use weight. It was horrible but it was worth it for the meal afterwards.”

It was unsafe for both the body and the mind, it turns out, as Radcliffe also revealed that he suffered from hallucinations brought on by hunger, believing that he would often be accompanied by a woman on set, who he would sleep alongside at night.

Seemingly this companion, who wasn’t actually there, kept him going through the tough shooting days.

“I’m not a method actor, but it would seem weird if I was playing this guy stuck in the jungle and going home, having a lovely steak dinner at the end of the day,” he continued.

There were other perils too in shooting the movie in the Columbian rainforests.

Radcliffe said there were monsoon floods, roaming wild boar, poisonous snakes and stinging fire ants, which on one occasion he shook onto his face from a tree deliberately to take the pain away from his feet.

He also says that he had to scare off a jaguar using an aerosol mosquito spray and a lighter to make a make-shift flamethrower, a tip he picked up from the Bond film ‘Live and Let Die’.

In the movie, he plays the Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg, who trekked into an uncharted section of the Amazon rainforest in Bolivia in 1981 and was lost for three weeks without a map, a knife, or any kind of survival equipment.

His exploits – and near death – were detailed in his memoir ‘Back from Tuichi: The Harrowing Life-and-Death Story of Survival in the Amazon Rainforest’, published in 1999.

The movie is out across the UK from October 20.

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