'I was chubby but I wasn't unhappy': Rafe Spall on losing weight to land leading man roles

'I was chubby but I wasn't unhappy': Rafe Spall on losing weight to land leading man roles

He might have acting in his genes but Rafe Spall is the first to admit he hasn’t always been your typical dashing leading man.

A chubby teenager, he was a self-confessed glutton who didn’t know when to stop eating.

His weight slowly increased until, at the age of 20, he had ballooned to 18-and-a-half stone.

“I had weight issues in so much that I was fat,” he says matter-of-factly.

Now he has dropped nearly six stone and is slim, svelte and confident.

His reinvention as a romantic lead has been so total the 29-year-old is even being hailed as the new Hugh Grant.

He says: “I was always a chubby kid and then I got to about 20 and I just decided to change it.

"It wasn’t a case that I was fat and unhappy and now I am thin and happy because that is a dangerous message to send out.

"The only reason I did it was to broaden the range of parts I was playing.

“You need an impetus and a goal and mine was that I wanted to be considered for lead parts.”

Chubbier: Rafe in Shaun of the Dead

His new film I Give It A Year, in which he plays a laid-back writer who marries a career-driven executive in haste and then begins to repent at leisure, made him tone up even more.

The offbeat rom-com, made by the company behind Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, is definitely more Inbetweeners than Bridget Jones and provided an extra slightly scary motivation for him to get buff â€" a full-frontal nude scene.

At one point in the movie the newlywed couple’s X-rated honeymoon snaps are accidentally screened in front of their horrified in-laws.

Rafe says: “Unfortunately no amount of working out will make a difference to your willy.

"But I dropped a few carbs and lifted a few weights in order to get myself into any form of shape so the audience could conceivably believe that Rose Byrne, who plays my new wife, would want to marry me.

“For this scene I had to go into a room with a stills photographer at the end of the shoot and have him take close-up pictures of my willy, which was a strange thing to get paid for.”

Leading man: In I Give It A Year

He adds: “I didn’t want to ask for a body double because that would have implied that I have got a really small willy so I had to brave it out and go: ‘Here we go, here it is’.

“At the premiere I was sat with my wife, who had not seen it yet â€" she’d seen my willy but not the film â€" and my mother-in-law, my mother, my two sisters, my wife’s sister. All with a giant blown-up picture of my willy on the cinema screen.

“It was like a strange anxiety dream that I was living for real. They thought it was funny, thankfully.”

Willy apart, Rafe is virtually unrecognisable as the overweight shop worker he played in Shaun of the Dead. But it has been a long road.

Despite being the son of Timothy Spall, star of the Harry Potter movies and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, his weight saw him singled out at school.

“Kids take the p*** out of each other â€" that’s what kids do â€" and sure, I was called names for being fat but everyone got it.

“Whatever slight weakness or anything about you, it would get picked on. That went for everyone, I wasn’t just singled out for that.”

With dad: Rafe and Timothy

With his new slimline look his career has been on a rapid rise.

Appearances as a deranged gangster in The Shadow Line on BBC Two and romantic drama One Day made directors sit up and take notice.

Now with I Give It A Year and the Oscar-nominated Life Of Pi he has arrived as a leading man.

It has taken a long time for Rafe to find success. And it’s a good job he made it as an actor, he admits, as his school career was far from spectacular.

He left his comprehensive in New Cross, South London, with just one GCSE and from an early age was getting into trouble.

“School wasn’t something for me,” he says. “Perhaps I went to the wrong one but I was never very academic because I always knew I wanted to be an actor.

"I had this silly innocent belief that that’s what would happen, which is ridiculous really.

“I was even expelled from nursery. I started early, didn’t I? I think I pushed another kid or something.

"Even at a really early age I displayed traits of not being good at school. I mean that was pre-school, that is ridiculous.”

Youngster: With mum and dad

Rafe was, and still is, in awe of his father. Watching his dad on screen made Rafe realise he wanted to become an actor.

And he is under no illusions that in those early days the family name helped him get on.

“Early on in my career I was very keen to prove that I wasn’t just getting employed because of who my dad is,” he explains.

“I have sort of made my peace about that but I am nothing but proud of the association with him and to be linked to him.

“Not only is he one of the great actors that we have in this country but he is also an amazing man and an amazing father.

"He is a national treasure. He is a great Englishman.

“It took me a while to admit to my dad that I wanted to act because I was a bit embarrassed about it really.

"Then he overheard me saying it to someone else and as soon as he heard that I really wanted to do it, and saw that maybe I had a little bit of talent, he was nothing but encouraging.

“The name certainly opened doors for me and I am not going to lie about that, it is something I have been very lucky with.

“If you have a list of young actors on a page and the casting director sees Timothy Spall’s son they are going to see you out of interest. But then when you get through the door you still have to prove yourself.”

Rafe has one more reason to feel ­especially happy with life right now. Just before we speak he put his 12-week-old baby son Rex down for a nap.

He met his wife, former Hollyoaks actress Elize du Toit, in 2008 and it was love at first sight.

Rage Spall: Rafe's terrifying role in The Shadow Line

First child Lena, 21 months, was conceived on their honeymoon, putting Rafe on his way to recreating the happy family life his parents gave him.

“I fell in love with my wife and it became very clear quite quickly that it was for life,” he says.

“I can remember her exact expression the very first moment I saw her and I have never been able to do that with anyone else in my life.

“Disgust was the expression... no!” he laughs.

“I can’t describe the expression but it’s never happened with anyone else in my life and perhaps that’s love at first sight.

"We had been together for a few years before we got married so it wasn’t a rushed thing.”

He adds: “My ambition to have kids far outweighed any acting ambition and I’ve achieved my dream, which is to have beautiful healthy children with the woman of my dreams.”

Nakedly ambitious for his acting career or not, my guess is we will be seeing a lot more of Spall Jnr â€" willy included â€" in the years to come.

 

I Give It A Year is on general release in cinemas nationwide.