Andra Day didn’t win an Oscar for her role as Billie Holiday in The United States Vs. Billie Holiday, but the actress and singer totally owned the red carpet on Sunday night. The Grammy-nominated musician showed up at the 93rd Academy Awards in a gorgeous gold lamé dress that showcased her toned abs and super long legs.
But Andra, who lost 40 pounds to play Holiday, has made it clear that she had to go to extreme measures to lose weight—and she wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. “This is my first movie, so I don’t know that I could speak to young actors, but I don’t want to suggest that to them,” she told W Magazine of her “drastic weight loss.”
“At first, I started by just shrinking my caloric intake, of course, and then exercising as well,” she says. “But honestly, I did kind of starve myself a bit when I was on set.”
The “Rise Up” songstress again stressed that she doesn’t “recommend it” and that she did this to play a character. “I didn’t want my body to look like a gym body of 2020,” Andra said. “It had to look like loose skin and parts. That, for me, was important: having a body true to that period.”
Andra said that her extreme measures made her “very weak” on set and “slowed” her down. She also forced herself to take up smoking, which also slowed her down. “When I had to do scenes where I was high on heroin, it really helped my physical body to nod in a way where I could focus on the emotion, and my body was reacting the way I wanted it to,” she said. “It helped to slow me down, and it helped, when I did have to be high, to drop me into those places. I needed to feel it in my body to believe it, I guess.”
While Andra didn’t take home the Oscar Sunday night—all that hard work and dedication to her craft did pay off in garnering her a Golden Globe.
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