Ivy Snitzer, the actor who played Gwyneth Paltrow's body double in the 2001 film Shallow Hal, has revealed that she developed an eating disorder after the film's release.
The film follows Hal Larson (Jack Black), a superficial misogynist who only dates women he deems ‘attractive’. After he is hypnotised to see women's ‘inner beauty’ on the outside, he falls for Rosemary Shanahan (Paltrow), who is a kind, smart woman, who weighs 300 pounds. In the real world, Rosemary is a fat woman. But in Hal's eyes, she looks like Gwyneth Paltrow.
For most of the film, Paltrow wore a 25-pound fatsuit and prosthetics modelled on Snitzer. But for the parts of the film where you can't see Paltrow's face – and instead, are met with close-ups on specific parts of Rosemary's body – Snitzer was employed as the real-life body double.
Speaking to the Guardian, Snitzer – who was a 20-year-old aspiring actor and comedian at the time – has revealed the lasting impact the film had on her mental health. During filming, Snitzer was pleased that Rosemary was portrayed as someone who “was cool, popular and had friends”, feeling like it was a breath of fresh air at the time. “At that point, if you saw someone obese in a movie, they were a villain,” she says.
But things changed after the film's release. “It didn’t occur to me that the film would be seen by millions of people,” she says. “It was like the worst parts about being fat were magnified. And no one was telling me I was funny. It is not the worst thing in the world to be fat. I got really scared.
“I was like: maybe I’m done with the concept of fame, maybe I don’t want to be an actor. Maybe I’ll do something else. I just want to make people laugh; I don’t want to make people sad.”
Snitzer was harassed and ridiculed. She was accused of ‘promoting obesity’. She received diet pills sent to her home. By 2003, she'd developed an eating disorder and was “technically starving to death”.
“I was so thin you could see my teeth through my face and my skin was all grey,” Snitzer says. “Humans shouldn’t have to experience how very bleak that particular time in my life was.”
The same year, she underwent gastric band surgery to reduce the size of stomach. But after spending time in hospital for depression and malnutrition, Snitzer eventually got her mental and physical health back on track. She met her husband of 13 years and began seeing her friends again.
To hear what Snitzer went through following Shallow Hal's release should come as no surprise. The film is almost two hours of incessant fat jokes. Rosemary's only purpose in the film is to be ridiculed, and to facilitate Hal's personal development. She is stripped entirely of any autonomy as a fat woman.
Shallow Hal was, regrettably, released 22 years ago. Yet fatphobia still runs rampant in 2023. We still live in a society that sees fatness as a condition to be mocked and ridiculed. One study found that overweight people face ‘universal bigotry’, with 9 in 10 experiencing weight stigma from their family, while another study found that 62% Britons think people are likely to discriminate against someone who is overweight.
For Snitzer to endure such relentless bullying because of her size – on such a global stage as Hollywood – would cause immeasurable suffering to anyone. It is hardly surprising that her main goal became to shrink herself by any means necessary. It shows the very real and very dangerous consequences of a fatphobic society that still sees fatness as nothing more than the butt of the joke.
