Donnie Wahlberg For The Sixth Sense
Donnie Wahlberg was a far cry from his New Kids On The Block bod in the M. Night Shyamalan classic, The Sixth Sense. The actor dropped 43 pounds in a mere 5 weeks to play Vincent Grey, a disturbed mental patient. Although he was only in a few scenes, Wahlberg was almost unrecognizable in the film, providing a powerful and haunting performance.
The part was originally written for someone in their early teens, not their late 20s, so part of the weight loss was to appear younger and more frail. Wahlberg said the reasoning behind his slimming down was he loved the script so much that he didn’t want to give Shyamalan any possible reason to replace him. The loss worked wonders not just for the film, but for Wahlberg’s career, as it turned him from a singer trying to act into a bonafide actor.