I almost starved to death

Ivy Snitzer had all the time joked about her dimension, however when it was magnified on the massive display screen, her insecurities ballooned — and it proved near-fatal.

Snitzer was solid as Gwyneth Paltrow’s physique double within the 2001 flick “Shallow Hal,” that includes Jack Black because the titular character who’s hypnotized to fall head-over-heels for a girl’s inside magnificence moderately than her outward look.

Whereas Paltrow, who performs the function of the obese love curiosity named Rosemary, wore a fats swimsuit within the movie, Snitzer, now 42, appeared in close-ups of the character’s physique.

She was by no means offended by the script’s makes an attempt to poke enjoyable at her look — partially because of the truth she, too, cracked related jokes — and mentioned the solid “handled me like I actually mattered, like they couldn’t make the film with out me,” she instructed Amelia Tait for her newsletter The Waiting Room.

“It was so thrilling. It was simply enjoyable to be a part of a film – there are so few individuals who truly get to do this.”

Paltrow was “very nice” and Black “a pleasant individual,” and the starlet lastly felt seen for her persona — mockingly, the plot line of the movie — after preventing “actually exhausting to be seen as a persona and never simply my dimension.”

However the movie’s seemingly progressive storyline – that the “overweight” character wasn’t a “villain,” however moderately a “cool,” “standard” woman — as a substitute welcomed an onslaught of body-shamers who zeroed in on Snitzer’s weight.

It was then that Snitzer’s style of the limelight soured.

Strangers on the road expressed their outrage, others claimed she was selling weight problems — and one individual even went as far as to mail her fat burners.

“I acquired actually scared,” she mentioned. “I used to be, like: Possibly I’m accomplished with the idea of fame, perhaps I don’t need to be an actor. Possibly I’ll do one thing else.”

She trekked again to New York and moved in along with her mother and father, juggling varied jobs — bartender, cater waiter, comic — and whereas casting administrators supplied her roles, they have been “imply,” she recalled.

It was the alternative of why the burgeoning starlet ventured to Hollywood within the first place: “I simply need to make individuals chuckle; I don’t need to make individuals unhappy.”

Life after her short-lived stardom was not all glitz and glamour — lower than two years after the film’s launch, she practically died as a result of weight reduction.

She was “technically ravenous to demise” after a gastric band surgical procedure had gone unsuitable.

Coupled with extreme train and slipping again into disordered consuming habits inherited from her youth, Snitzer’s band slipped and he or she “acquired a torsion,” a doubtlessly deadly abdomen complication.

However her lack of medical health insurance pressured her right into a temp job in Beverly Hills, the place she needed to wait out the three-month probation interval and will solely drink liquids the consistency of water.

“I used to be so skinny, you may see my enamel via my face and my pores and skin was all grey,” she mentioned, including that her “bitchy” angle meant she “alienated” lots of her pals.

In actual fact, she was so malnourished that by the point she might search correct medical care, they couldn’t take away her gastric band, she claimed. As a substitute, she acquired IV fluids every evening to “not die” and finally underwent a gastric bypass process to take away a part of her abdomen.

When reflecting on her determination to go below the knife initially, she mentioned she felt like she “was imagined to.”

“When you’re fats, you’re imagined to attempt to not be,” mentioned Snitzer, who now works as an insurance coverage company proprietor in Philadelphia.

Whereas she initially claimed the “Shallow Hal” scrutiny wasn’t tied to her weight-loss surgical procedure — it was merely a coincidence, she mentioned, that her physician’s stark warning about her weight prompted the process on the time — she admitted that maybe it was linked subconsciously.

“I’m positive I needed to be small and never seen,” she mentioned. “I’m positive that’s there, however I don’t ever bear in mind consciously eager about it.”

Nevertheless, Snitzer regrets neither the surgical procedure nor her time on set, regardless of the tumultuous aftermath.

In actual fact, it’s a “cool factor” she did “one time,” she declared — in different phrases, an excellent story to inform at events.

“It didn’t make me really feel dangerous about myself,” she mentioned of the movie. “Till, you realize, different individuals began telling me I in all probability ought to have felt dangerous about myself.”