Photo credit: Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock.com

We guess it’s true what they say, people really do suffer for their art. And that’s exactly how Charlize Theron felt when she had to pile on the pounds for her latest film role.

The actress put on 50lbs to play the role of an overweight and unhappy mother in new film Tully – and while many people might think that skipping the gym and eating whatever you want would be a blessing, Charlize Theron assured everyone that it was very much a curse…

“The first three weeks are always fun because you’re like a kid in a candy store,” she told Entertainment Tonight.

“And then after three weeks, it’s not fun anymore. All of a sudden you’re just done eating that amount and it becomes a job.

“I would literally wake up at two in the morning and I’d have a cup of cold macaroni and cheese just next to me. I would wake up and I would just eat it… I would just, like, shove it in my throat. It’s hard to maintain that weight.”

Charlize Theron explained that her new diet – which consisted of burgers and milkshakes for breakfast – made her extremely depressed, even affecting her mood on the set…

“I got hit pretty hard in the face with depression,” she explained.

“For the first time in my life I was eating so much processed food and I ate too much sugar. I was not fun to be around on this film.”

And as you can imagine, losing the weight wasn’t easy either. According to Charlize, it took over a year for her to get her enviable body back, describing the whole process as “hell.”

“There’s nothing fun about that. It took about a year and a half. It was a long journey, very long journey,” she added.

We hope that all of her hard work pays off and the film is a huge box office success! Tully hits theatres on May 4.