Mark Wahlberg Reveals Huge Weight-Loss For The Gambler

The first official photos from ‘The Gambler’ have been released showing Mark Wahlberg looking leaner than we’ve ever seen him before.

The star lost 60lbs to play Jim Bennett, a professor whose gambling addiction spirals out of control. Wahlberg dropped from 197lbs to 137lbs after shooting ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ on a “medically supervised liquid diet’ says USA Today.

"Losing 60 pounds was not fun. I was never a happy guy being deprived of food," says Wahlberg. "I like to eat six or seven meals a day. But we had to get rid of that stuff."

The dramatic weightloss caught the eye of his ‘Transformers’ director Michael Bay who apparently assumed Wahlberg was “deathly ill”.

Above: Wahlberg looking stacked in ‘Transformers 4’

The gaunt star had to take regular rests on the set of ‘The Gambler’ due to the lack of calorific energy he was consuming, but the star says it will all be worth it.

"My character is in every scene, but during the 12-hour days over six months I was on fire," says Wahlberg. "You prepare your whole life for a part like this. I was living on adrenaline."

'The Gambler' is a remake of the 1974 James Caan film of the same name, directed by Rupert Wyatt the British film-maker responsible for Fox's 2011 'Apes' reboot 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes', and is coming to cinemas in 2015.

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Image credit: USA Today/Paramount