
And then I'd walk in, and they were, like, 'Well, uh… you're totally different.' I was, like, 'Yeah, but you've got headshots.
Shrinkit cast how to#
Not too many people know how to take 508 pounds who's now a 173-pound guy, and go, 'Oh, yeah, he was the fat guy, but now he's this.' So they'd pitch me to casting directors who knew my name, but they didn't know what I looked like. I tried different managements and different agents, and it was a hard sell. "I literally had to start repitching and promoting myself, and I didn't really know how…. "Just because I had the credits mean the doors going to swing open," he says. The high-profile work he'd done no longer seemed to matter: After losing such a massive amount of weight, the industry didn't see him as the same actor. How many people get to say that?'"Īfter lounging in "retirement" for about three years, Lester decided to get back into the acting game, but he was surprised to find it wasn't as easy as he thought it would be. I'm going, 'I'm in retirement this is cool. "I was doing pretty much anything and everything I could do that the former fat guy couldn't. "I went on these little binges of spending because now I can buy new clothes, and I was taking different trips, and I was scuba-diving," he remembers. The actor had plenty of cash, thanks to his successful acting jobs, and he decided to take the opportunity to enjoy life. Popular was cancelled at the end of its second season, and Lester took time off. "That was it, that was the whole, 'Okay, we've got to Ron losing weight.'" Bryce Johnson had to come up and go, 'Yo, Sug! You losing weight? You look good!'" Lester chuckles at the memory. "I came back for the second season of Popular, and I only lost, like, 100 pounds, but it was enough for them to have to write in this one cheesy little line.

He underwent an experimental form of gastric bypass surgery, in which most of his stomach was removed. At the end of the show's first season, the actor's concern for his health and future happiness prompted him to decide to lose weight. He was about 460 pounds during the filming of Varsity Blues, and he topped out at more than 500 pounds on Popular. As his career started to take flight, he found himself gaining more and more weight.


The actor was on the rise, thanks to his crowd-pleasing roles as loveable overweight kids. Not so long ago, Lester was carving out his own niche in the Hollywood landscape. And he's basically had to rebuild his once red-hot acting career from square one. The actor has dropped almost 350 pounds since his Popular days. Still, it's no exaggeration to say these days he looks like a completely different person.
Shrinkit cast tv#
His sweet engaging smile recalls wannabe rapper Sugar Daddy, his character on The WB's cult TV show Popular. His amiable Southern drawl is reminiscent of the good ol' boy football player he portrayed in Varsity Blues. Ron Lester still has the same natural charisma that made him a hit in the late 1990s.
