Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was a genius when it came to lots of things. Turns out eating wasn’t one of them.
While preparing to play the tech mogul in Friday’s “Jobs,” Ashton Kutcher decided to get into character a bit too much.
The real Jobs had been known to follow a wacky fruitarian diet that consisted almost entirely of fruit, as well as some nuts and seeds mixed in. Sometimes he would eat nothing but two foods, such as apples and carrots, for weeks straight.
Kutcher did the same, and it landed him in the hospital.
“My insulin levels got pretty messed up and my pancreas kind of went into some crazy — I don’t know — the levels were really off and it was really painful,” Kutcher said at a New York press conference last week.
“I didn’t know what was wrong. And we figured out that my insulin levels were really off.”
Ultimately, the actor shed about 16 pounds, hoping to increase his likeness to the tall, lanky Jobs.
And Kutcher is hardly alone. While once upon a time, actors were endlessly celebrated and quizzed about their weight gains (see Robert De Niro packing on 60 pounds for “Raging Bull”), getting skeletal is now the gimmick du jour.
This actor lost 20 pounds! That one lost 40! That one put himself in a coma and may not walk again! Someone better have the doctor inject adrenaline directly into their heart and start preparing their awards-season speech now.
One potential upcoming Oscar contender offers a double shot of extreme manorexia. “Dallas Buyers Club,” opening in December, is based on the true story of an HIV-positive Texas man who, in the 1980s, rejected taking his prescribed AZT in favor of alternative medicines that were illegal in the US.
To play the lead, Matthew McConaughey shed more than 40 pounds off his 6 ft frame, dropping to 135. The actor, appearing on “Larry King” last summer, said, “It’s a bit of a spiritual cleanse, mental cleanse.”
McConaughey’s co-star is Jared Leto, who plays a transsexual AIDS patient. The actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman dropped 30 pounds, going to a gaunt 116.
“I think the role demanded that commitment,” Leto, who is 5 ft. 9’, told E! Online.
“It was about how does that effect how I walk, how I talked, who I am, how I feel. You know, you feel very fragile and delicate and unsafe.”
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While shooting the movie, Leto reportedly showed up on the red carpets at various events and went unrecognized because of his thin frame.
Earlier this year, one-time “Downton Abbey” hunk Dan Stevens shocked fans by turning up at events looking thin and hollow. Turns out it had nothing to do with a night out with Lindsay Lohan. Stevens had lost 30 pounds — or as he joked, “three chins” — for an upcoming role.
Not that going skinny is always the way to earn attention.
In a bid for respectability, 50 Cent shed an insane 54 pounds for his role as a cancer patient in 2011’s “All Things Fall Apart.”
The movie ended up airing on BET.
reed.tucker@nypost.com