50 cent

50 Cent

When Curtis Jackson, better known as rapper 50 Cent, decided to make "Things Fall Apart," a movie about his childhood friend's cancer battle, he committed to getting as skinny as possible.

"I had so much muscle on me that it was hard for me to lose definition even as I got lighter and slimmer," he told Parade magazine. "I started running to suppress my appetite. Toward the end it was really difficult. It was like, if I don't get close enough to what my best friend looked like to me at that point before he passed, then I'm not doing the story any justice."

When the going got tough, he took to the Internet to read how actors like Christian Bale and Tom Hanks lost weight for their own projects.

"I actually got on the computer," he told the Associated Press. "When it started getting difficult, I was looking to see what their experience was like, and I got a chance to see all the interviews they had at different time periods when they were doing promotion for the projects."