Hefty Parts Sometimes Pigging Out Is Only Way For Actors To Fill The Shoes Of Full-Bodied Characters

Robert De Niro must have had a feeling of deja vu when he arrived on the set of “Cop Land” and saw Sylvester Stallone stuffing himself with French toast, pancakes and cheesecake. Stallone’s method of gaining 31 pounds to play a beefy sheriff in “Cop Land” was almost identical to De Niro’s when he put on 55 pounds for “Raging Bull” in 1980.

The only difference: Where Stallone piled whipped cream on his breakfasts, De Niro washed his down with chocolate milkshakes.

Fat chance that there would be yet another actor working on “Cop Land” who had porked up for a previous role. But there was.

Robert Patrick added 20 pounds to his usually lean frame for the 1993 film “Fire in the Sky.”

Patrick says he did it to “try to hide the fact that I was the same guy who had just been in ‘Terminator 2.”’ His diet: “pasta, ice cream, anything sweet and fattening.”

Usually there’s a hefty reason for an actor to put on this kind of weight. The role calls for a degree of realism that padding or computer enhancement can’t provide.

Eddie Murphy was a riot in “The Nutty Professor,” but nobody believed that he really was obese.

De Niro’s goal in “Raging Bull” was to transform himself into an ex-middleweight champion gone to seed in his later years. His face got so puffed up he was no longer recognizable.

Director James Mangold felt the sheriff in “Cop Land” wouldn’t be believable as a milquetoast if Stallone was his usual buff self with a 31-inch waist and 18-inch arms. Mangold especially wanted to see the weight in his star’s face, so he wouldn’t have “that amazing heroic gaunt look” of the “Rambo” movies.

Seeing his body turn to flab was “real hard,” Stallone says.

“I didn’t realize how immense a psychological crutch it was for me to be fit,” he says. “It was a lot deeper than I thought. It was like my security blanket.”

For Elle Macpherson, being lithe offers more than security; it’s her livelihood. One of the world’s best-known models, Macpherson has to be thin to look good in those swimsuits in which she’s been famously photographed.

Yet she agreed to gain 20 pounds to play an artist’s model in the 1994 “Sirens,” working with a trainer twice a day to put on bulk as well as pounds.

Looking at paintings from the ‘30s, the period “Sirens” is set in, she saw the models were “very voluptuous. I knew it was just not going to be believable unless I was that big,” says Macpherson, who gamely agreed to nude scenes showing all of her newly zaftig body.

When Marisa Tomei added 18 pounds for “The Perez Family” two years ago, she bragged about not adding any cellulite.

“I’m not a cellulite gal,” she said at the time. “I hate to toot my own horn. I have good genes. My mom doesn’t have any cellulite - and she’s 50.”

To play the plain-Jane heroine of “Circle of Friends” two years ago, Minnie Driver had to put on 30 pounds.

“I wasn’t really happy being that heavy,” she acknowledged then. But she thought it was important that audiences be surprised when the best-looking guy at her school (Chris O’Donnell) falls for her character. The experience forced her to “get rid of the vanity you have when you’re thin.”

Because American audiences had never seen the British-born actress in anything before, many people assumed that she really was that big. So it has been a revelation to see Driver as the sexy girlfriend in “Big Night” and “Grosse Pointe Blank.”

Toni Collette couldn’t wait to shed the 50 pounds she put on for her ugly-duckling role in “Muriel’s Wedding” in 1994. She wanted moviegoers to see her as she really is: thin and confident. So far, however, she’s played a clumsy, ungainly character in “Emma.”

Another movie, “Cosi,” in which she looked svelte, was never released. Collette is said to be in top shape as a temporary office worker in the forthcoming “Clockwatchers.”

These actors all got the extra pounds off, but it was an ordeal. It took Patrick five years to get back to his fighting weight of 155 pounds.

Stallone is back at 173 pounds, the result of restricting himself to one meal a day and putting in a lot of time on the treadmill.

He needs to stay in shape at least until March. After all, when De Niro gained all that weight, he was rewarded with an Oscar.