Timothy Spall Looks Amazingly Slim At Venice Premiere

Timothy Spall looked impressively trim – not to mention seriously dapper – while appearing at a photocall for his latest movie ‘The Journey’ at the Venice Film Festival yesterday.

The 59-year-old ‘Harry Potter’ star was at the event with his latest movie ‘The Journey’, starring opposite Irish actor Colm Meaney.

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In it, he plays the late loyalist firebrand Ian Paisley to Meaney’s deputy first minister Martin McGuinness.

The movie charts the unlikely friendship between the two opposing politicians during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and how they later became firm friends despite their differences.

Spall has changed his lifestyle considerably in recent years, cutting down on alcohol and a previously rich diet.

He said in 2014: “’I was a glutton. I loved food. I still do. But I didn’t have a thing in my mind that told me when to stop eating.

“There’s something of a chunky gene in the Spall side of the family. I was always chubby, then I got fat.”

That same year, he also won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in Mike Leigh’s ‘Mr. Turner’, though an Oscar nomination somehow evaded him.

Spall also changed his lifestyle back in 1996, when he was diagnosed with leukaemia, at one point being so sick that he was given just days to live.

He has been in remission ever since.

Spall is also currently promoting another new movie, ‘Denial’, in which he plays the author and historian David Irving.

The film tells the true story of Irving’s court battle with the writer Deborah Lipstadt (played by Rachel Weisz), who Irving sued for libel after she called him a ‘holocaust denier’.

As the burden of proof is placed on the accused, it meant that Lipstadt had to prove in court that the holocaust did actually happen in order to escape the libel charges.

The film is based on her book ‘History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier’, and is due out in February, 2017.

‘The Journey’ has no UK release date as yet.

Image credits: Reuters/Rex Features