Dave Bautista Is Nearly Unrecognizable After 100lb Weight Loss

Dave Bautista debuted a brand new, slimmed-down look over the past few months, and it's been enough to turn heads as it's left him rather unrecognizable both to WWE fans and those who became familiar with him through his role as Drax in Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" series. Many are wondering if his massive muscle mass loss is due to something more complex than his desire to be thinner. The wrestler-turned-actor spoke out about those public misconceptions in a recent interview, and it turns out that his new look is 100% his choice.

The actor has explained in recent interviews why he's lost some muscle mass, and it all has to do with bulking up for another film. "I started trimming down for a particular reason. I started trimming down because I just got fat." When interviewer and YouTuber Chris Van Vliet protested Bautista's self-castigation, the actor replied, "I just got really big for a role. Uncomfortably big. For 'Knock at the Cabin' I got really big. I was around 315 pounds." He added that while he was bigger during his wrestling career, having to quickly bulk up by eating fast food led to a discomforting feeling. 

After adding that M. Night Shyamalan later told him that he wasn't looking for a power-lifter look out of Bautista in "Knock at the Cabin" in the end, just for him to be large and bulky, the actor reflected further on his time working on the film. "I put the weight on really fast and I put on an uncomfortable amount of weight and it took forever to shed it out," he said. The slimmer look, it seems, suits his role in the upcoming action-comedy-romance "The Killer's Game" — and Bautista seems to feel very positive about his change in body type.

It turns out that the more muscle mass Dave Bautista lost, the happier he was with his physical presentation — both with how he felt and looked. Since he's a very tall man, he still tends to be the tallest person in the room in many of his films, so anything that makes him look less like a hulking giant next to his smaller co-stars is helpful for him as an actor.

Bautista also addressed the negative rumors about his shape due to his de-bulking and denied rumors he has an eating disorder. "People say 'god, you're skinny.' you even saw online that some people were worried about my health," he noted to Chris Van Vliet. "And when I say out loud to people, I'm 6'4" and 240 pounds. When you say that out loud, you'd say I'm a big person. I'm just a large person [...] next to your typical actor, I look like a gorilla and it's distracting. I'll probably lose a few more pounds. I'm basically killing myself to be this trim. I'm training hard." 

Bautista noted that he fasts intermittently, has a 2,500-calorie-a-day diet, and eats sparingly, though he's not starving himself to maintain his newly trim figure. 

Aside from his slimmer physique, there's another element of Dave Bautista's appearance that's changed since "Knock at the Cabin," and it's that he's been letting his beard go gray. He admitted to Chris Van Vliet that going the natural route might be among the reasons why wrestling fans might not recognize him from his in-ring days. "I've aged and I'm not as jacked and I have gray hair and a bald head now," he said.

"Most of the people who come up to me and recognize me are wrestling fans," Bautista also confessed. Why is that so? He thinks it's because he's heavily made up in his most famous on-screen roles. 

It's clear that Bautista has been changed forever by entering the acting game — but in a very positive way. Fans will find out how much of a change "The Killer's Game" is for the actor when it opens on September 13.