Actor Brandon Sklenar is opening up about struggling with body dysmorphia from a young age and how the experience inspired his performance in the upcoming sports drama “Iron Jane.”
The “1923” star, 36, explained his personal connection to his next project, which also stars Eiza González, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “Iron Jane” tells the story of a woman (González) who undergoes an intense transformation to become a competitive bodybuilder following a difficult childhood. Sklenar plays the former champion who guides her.
Sklenar told the magazine he was intrigued by the film after previously working in an underground bodybuilding gym.
“I personally was drawn to it because I grew up in northern New Jersey working in an underground bodybuilding gym. When I was 15, I was cleaning the floors, and by 18, I was a trainer, training everybody and running the whole gym,” he shared. “There was an MMA gym upstairs, and I would just train MMA all day and then train other people. I started doing martial arts when I was really little, like six.”
Since he used to work and train in that world, he saw firsthand the posing, diets and steroids that are involved.
Sklenar noted, “There is an element of ‘Iron Jane’ that really goes into body image and body dysmorphia, which is something that I just really feel needs to be talked about more, especially in this age of social media and fitness influencers.”
“This is something I’ve struggled with, so we really wanted to translate that, and (director Lissette Feliciano) was really open to working with me on getting across (my character) Josh’s dysmorphia and what he goes through,” he added.
“The Housemaid” star shared more details about his past struggles, revealing that they began when he was a child.
“I was a little kid — short, chunky. I swam in a T-shirt and got made fun of. Then I had a growth spurt and became really lanky, and I got made fun of for that,” he recalled. “So I started training a lot and got obsessed with working out, like, ‘I’ll show them.’”
The desire to prove them wrong turned into “a kind of obsession,” he said.
“It becomes a very weird thing, where you see yourself completely differently than pretty much anybody else does, and usually in not a good way,” he explained.
Sklenar said he is still tackling his body image issues.
“Therapy helps for sure. If you look at me now as a 36-year-old man, you’d never guess it, but I still very much feel like that 12-year-old chunky kid — that sense of nothing is ever good enough,” he revealed. “You have to find a way to check your self-talk, because that’s really where it begins and ends — but it’s easier said than done.”
He said that working on “Iron Jane” allowed him to confront some of his insecurities. He shared details of one scene that includes a full-body shot as he poses.
“I’ve been pretty much naked in a film before, but it’s a whole different thing to literally be posing and have the camera panning up and down your body, detailing everything. When I was shooting that scene, I was so uncomfortable. Dealing with my issues, it was very challenging to work through that,” he pointed out.
But, Sklenar said he reminded himself that González had to shoot that same type of scene repeatedly throughout filming.
“Eiza trained her a** off, and she got in incredible shape for this film. I just have so much respect for her,” he praised.
“Iron Jane,” which marks Sklenar’s first producer credit under his Vista Lane Pictures banner, is expected to debut at festivals next year.
