Bill Skarsgard got in great shape for his lead role in Lionsgate's The Crow, and he revealed some of his intense diet and workout regimen for the role.
He filmed the indie action movie Boy Kills World, in which he plays a mute, brutal fighter with some John Wick-style moves, right before The Crow, so he's already put on a lot of muscle. He's maintained the same restrictive, protein-heavy diet and workout plan to stay in shape before The Crow.
“I would invite Bill over for dinner. I would always order him food because I knew what he ate,” said Rupert Sanders, director of The Crow. diverse At the film's New York premiere Tuesday night. “It was beef tartare and raw eggs. He went to the gym a lot. He ate very healthy and made us all feel ashamed when we were eating burgers and hot dogs and working late at night in the summer of the Czech Republic.”
Skarsgård plays Eric Draven, also known as the supernatural hero The Crow, in Lionsgate's remake of the 1994 classic, which starred the late Brandon Lee. After Eric and his girlfriend Shelley (FKA Twigs) are brutally murdered, he is brought back to life by a mysterious crow entity seeking revenge. When Skarsgård transforms into The Crow later in the film, his full muscular transformation is finally revealed.
“I had been training for a long time. My trainer and I kept adding a little bit of weight to what I was already, but I didn’t want to be too bulky either,” Skarsgård said. “It was hard, because they wanted Raven to be ripped, but Eric’s character shouldn’t be. I didn’t feel like the character should be skinny, but you can’t just break it down over six months, like in ‘Raging Bull.’ So we did a lot of weight training and a lot of protein.”
In one intense scene, Skarsgård's Crowe infiltrates an opera house and slaughters dozens of his henchmen to get to the man who orchestrated his murder. Sanders described the scene as “the craziest day of filming.”
“There were a lot of complicated stunts, and Bill did a lot of them himself,” he said. “As you can see, he’s an incredibly physical person. His body in the movie is incredible. When he’s in shape, he’s a real wrecking machine, but he also plays these incredible moments of grace and empathy, which really gives the action sequences a much greater emotional connection, which is why I think people really respond to it. It’s not just gratuitous violence. You really feel like you’re there with the character.”
Once filming was over, Skarsgård celebrated the end of his diet by drinking beer.
“I really liked what I was eating, so I didn’t feel like I had to cheat,” he said. “I didn’t eat sugar, but I’m not a sweet person. I think the biggest cheat I ever did was have an alcoholic beer. I celebrated after the shoot.”
Meanwhile, Twiggs, who plays Eric's girlfriend Shelley and the catalyst behind his quest for bloody revenge, has been following a very different workout routine.
“I didn’t do any stunts, so I went to Prague for a dance party, and I immersed myself in the Prague subcultures for my physical training,” she said. “I was doing stunts, I was on the dance floor. I think Bill did something completely different.”
